Wolf, Ludwig, James Wolf, and Leopold Wolf | A comedic German music hall trio

Wolf, Ludwig, James Wolf, and Leopold Wolf

Wolf Trio. Humoristisches Gesangs-Terzett. Hamburg: Lith Adolph Friedländer, ca. 1899 (no. 932)

Color lithograph poster (33 x 25 1/4 in.; 840 x 652 mm). Closed tear at top just into lettering, wrinkle at center right, some foxing in lower right margin. Laid down on linen.

A very scarce poster for the Wolf Trio, three sons of a Hamburg butcher, Isaac Joseph Isaac, who capitalized on the German vogue for humorous song to launch a successful music hall act. The trio was relatively short-lived: James left the group in 1906, and Ludwig and Leopold went on to greater fame as the Gebrüder Wolf, making recordings and appearing in several films.

Leopold died in 1926 and was replaced in the act by his son James. But in the 1930s, increasing restrictions against Jews forced the Wolfs off the stage. Ludwig survived the war, but James died in 1943 at Theresienstadt, a ghetto and Nazi "show camp."

REFERENCE:

cf. Marion Kaplan & Beate Meyer, Jüdische Welten: Juden in Deutschland vom 18. Jahrhundert bis in die Gegenwart (Hamburg, 2005)