Victoria Wolff (1903–1992)

Victoria Wolff, née Viktoria Trude Victor, was born in Heilbronn, Germany. She began writing as a teenager and contributed stories and essays to regional newspapers. She earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Munich in 1929, and a master's degree from the University of Lausanne in 1931. Her first novel, Eine Frau wie du und ich (A Woman Like You and Me), about writer George Sand, was published in 1932, followed by others. After the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, Victoria was unable to find work, and she fled to Ascona, Switzerland, where she lived for six years. In 1941 she moved to New York. Her earliest attempts to write for an American audience were unsuccessful, but her novel Spell of Egypt was finally published in 1943. It is one of her most famous works. She moved to Beverly Hills in 1942, joining many other émigré Germans who had found refuge from the Nazis there. She sold several stories and screenplays to 20th Century Fox and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, including the comedy Every Man for Herself (1943). After a bitter legal battle with MGM, she stopped writing for film studios and returned to writing novels. She also became a foreign correspondent for Madame magazine and a contributor to Swiss and German magazines. In 1949, she married Erich Wolff, a cardiologist who treated many in the German émigré community. She published her autobiography, Keine Zeit für Tränen (No Time for Tears) in 1954.