Felicie (LIzzi) Wolff came from a long-established Jewish family in Bad Kissingen, whose roots can be traced back to the 18^th century. Felicie was born in Bad Kissingen on September 5, 1896 as the third child of the jeweler Hermann Simon Rosenau and his first wife Luise, née Feuchtwanger. The family owned a jeweler’s shop and a residential home in Munich and Bad Kissingen. They spent the summer season in Bad Kissingen and the winter months in Munich.

In 1921, Felicie Rosenau married the art dealer Hans (Henry) Wolff in Munich. Their son Georges was born there in 1924. In the summer months, the Wolffs lived in Bad Kissingen and took residence in the first floor of the imposing estate of Felicie’s father Hermann Simon in Kurhausstrasse 10. Not far away from that, Hans Wolff ran an antiques’ shop at the entrance of the spa gardens. The family regularly spent the winter months in Munich and lived in Holbeinstrasse 7 in Bogenhausen, a suburb of the Bavarian capital that is still classy these days. When after Hitler’s seizure of power, the Bad Kissingen District leader Karl Renner threatened her father he would be arrested in case he ever returned to Bad Kissingen and her half-brother Arthur had been threatened with murder by phone in Munich, the family didn’t return to Bad Kissingen but already emigrated to Paris in March 1933. The Wolff family emigrated to Paris at the same time. Their financial situation there was very bad at the beginning. Hans Wolff worked for the Refugee Committee there.

Their niece Kate Kallenbach, née Bock visited Felicie in December 1934 and describes her aunt as an extraordinary woman: “I think I learned more about art from her in the ten days I spent in Paris than I ever knew before. … She was a very, very special woman. … I loved my aunt Lizzi so much that I looked on her as a second mother. She used to make up long stories about travelling here and travelling there which she told to Georges and me holding each of us by the hand. I learnt from her all about far away places. She had a vivid imagination and a wonderful sense of humour” (Kate L. Kallenbach, My memories – a letter to my son, Ch. 11).

The Wolffs were still in Paris when Germany attacked France in 1940 and German troops invaded Belgium. Hans (who called himself Henry by then) joined the French “Légion ètrangère” (Foreign Legion). Felicie and her then 15-year-old son Georges met in an unknown place and crossed the Swiss border together. There they were interned in a camp as “refugees” and had to stay there for the years of the war and were not treated well. The men were separated from the women and Felicie’s husband first had to fell trees in the forest and then to do forced labour in a canning factory. When the war was over, the three of them managed to escape from the camp across the mountains to France on foot. Georges who was 19 then literally carried his parents across the mountains because they were completely exhausted. At long last, the family arrived in Paris. In their first time there, they lacked everything which caused Felicie’s sister Ida who had emigrated to South Africa to send food parcels on a regular basis to them. But then Henri Wolff found an occupation. He took part in the auctions of Hotel Drouot, the greatest and most famous French auction house and received provisions from wealthy customers. By means of that the family slowly became prosperous once more (See ibid.)

After 1948, the Wolffs were regularly visited by Felicie’s sister Ida Bock and her husband Julius and accompanied them during their holidays in Paris or went to Switzerland together with them. The two sisters were friendly and, therefore, the sudden deaths of Felicie and her husband were a great shock for Ida Bock.

There are different data as to the death of Felicie Wolff. According to a family tree created by Uri Rosenau, Felicie Wolff died in Paris in February 1961 at the age of 64 in the same month as her husband Hans Wolff. According to information provided by Gary Kallenbach, a grandson of Felicie’s sister Ida, both already died in 1958 (Mail by G. Kallenbach, April 21, 2020).