Wolf-Oppenheimer Family Collection

Hermann David Wolf was born on April 28, 1880 in Alzey, Germany, the younger son of the leather merchant Theodor Wolf of Alzey and his wife Caecilie Levintas. Theodor Wolf owned a leather business, Wolf und Söhne, in Alzey. In addition to the family business Theodor Wolf was a prominent member of the community. For twelve years he was deputy mayor (erster Beigeordneter) of Alzey, as well as a long-time member of the Chamber of Commerce and the county council of Alzey-Bingen, a member of the leadership of the Jewish Community for forty years, and he was head of the Jewish Charitable Society and the Jewish War Welfare Society. Theodor Wolf's eldest son was Paul Jakob Wolf, who became a lawyer but died in April 1922 of leukemia. Hermann and Paul had a sister, Ella, who became a physician who was killed in the euthanasia center at Hadamar in 1941. Hermann Wolf studied law at the universities of Giessen, Heidelberg, Munich and Berlin, and in 1908 was admitted to practice law in Germany. He served as an officer in World War I. On March 9, 1920 he married Irene Oppenheimer in Berlin. The couple moved to Darmstadt, where Hermann Wolf had established a legal practice with his partner Dr. Mainzer.

Irene Oppenheimer was the daughter of Max and Mina (née Adler) Oppenheimer. Max Oppenheimer began working for the leather firm Adler & Oppenheimer A.G. in 1883 in their Strasbourg (then Straßburg, Germany) branch as a travelling representative for Württemberg until in October 1892 he was made head of the firm's new branch in Berlin. Adler & Oppenheimer became a success partly because it supplied leather to the German army during World War I. Irene had a younger sister, Hilde (after marriage Hilde Menke), who lived in Jerusalem in the 1930s but later joined her sister in the United States.

Irene and Hermann Wolf had three children in Darmstadt: Paul Theodor (born in 1922 and named for his recently deceased uncle), Ellen (Elfriede) Mathilde (born in 1924), and Marlies (Marie-Luise) Johanna (born in 1927). The family had servants as well as a nanny (Haustochter), Lisbeth Hake, the daughter of Hermann Wolf's orderly in World War I, who remained with the family for sixteen years until Nazi laws made it impossible for her to stay in the household. The Wolf family was well-regarded in Darmstadt, with Hermann Wolf working pro bono for needy clients and helping those in need financially. In December 1936 Hermann and Irene Wolf traveled to New York, where Hermann's cousin, Milton Opton, lived, to determine if the family should move there. Upon their return to Germany they began the process of acquiring American immigration visas.

The Wolf family was finally able to emigrate from Germany to the United States in 1939, traveling via London, where Paul Wolf had been attending boarding school. They crossed the Atlantic on the R.M.S. Queen Mary, and arrived in New York City on February 27, 1939. The family eventually settled into an apartment on Riverside Drive in Manhattan. Mina Oppenheimer eventually joined them there in 1941.

In fall 1945 Marlies Wolf began her studies at Barnard College in Manhattan, where she majored in philosophy. In her sophomore year she met Eugene (called Gene) Plotnik; several months later the couple began dating. They married in March 1950. Eugene Plotnik wrote about television for The Billboard, while Marlies worked as a copywriter. The Plotniks shared a spacious apartment on Central Park West with Marlies's sister, Ellen Wolfson, and her husband, son, and daughter. The Plotniks had two sons, whose surnames were eventually changed to Potter. After nine years the Plotniks and the Wolfsons moved to separate apartments near each other. Marlies Plotnik established a freelance copywriting group and also later wrote a nationally syndicated column with Joy Singer, called Women @ Work. Eugene Plotnik advanced in his career, eventually becoming the creative director of the television department of King Features, which produced cartoons such as Popeye and the animated Beatles. The family later moved to Scarsdale, New York, where the two families once again shared a large home.

Hermann Wolf died in New York City in 1951, his wife Irene in 1972. Their son Paul passed away in 1992, daughter Ellen in 1998, and son-in-law Eugene Plotnik in 2008.