Manfred Wolf

Manfred Wolf
12/22/2025
Manfred Wolf was fond of saying that he had adopted several identities in his life: Dutch boy, Jewish refugee in the Caribbean, immigrant to the U.S., professor, writer, and finally all those identities associated with family.
Surrounded by friends and loved ones, the longtime San Franciscan died Dec. 22 after a long illness. He was 90.
At just 21, Wolf started as an instructor at then San Francisco State College. He received emeritus status at SF State University in 2000, thus completing 44 years of teaching, occupying the same office in the humanities building.
Wolf was born New Year's Day 1935 in Chemnitz, Germany. In 1937, the Wolf family of four moved to Holland "in search of a better life," away from the mounting anti-Semitism of Nazi Germany. In an idyllic small town near Amsterdam, they found that better life, but it was short-lived.
In 1940, the Nazis claimed the Netherlands, and by early 1942 Max Wolf, a Polish-born businessman, saw three bad options for him and his wife, Bertha, and their two children, Siegfried and Manfred. They could wait out the war, hide (in the fashion of the Frank family), or flee.
Hastening the decision making, a Dutch policeman passed on the tip that the Wolfs were about to be deported to an unknown destination. They fled a furnished home, hopped on a train, and embarked on a yearlong escape.
For a great many years, Manfred Wolf avoided discussing, chronicling, or otherwise wrestling with his past. At midlife, he was drawn toward it.
Wolf's definitive memoir, Survival in Paradise (2014), is an account of the family's flight through Belgium, France, Spain, and Portugal. It is a tale of border crossings and bribes, concealed identities and forged documents. The family's eventual safe haven was the Caribbean island of Curaçao, both Dutch-speaking and blessed with a modest, nestled Jewish community.
At just age 16 in 1951, Wolf enrolled as a student at Brandeis University, in Massachusetts. By age 21 he had graduated from Brandeis, married Barbara Young (1933-2024), settled in San Francisco, and soon after started a family.
Arriving in the U.S. fluent in German, Yiddish, Dutch, and French, Wolf assimilated rapidly and remarkably achieved an unaccented English. Still, he remained conscious of his upbringing and continued to read in Dutch and to specialize in Dutch translation, the focus of his eventual PhD.
In hundreds of columns and several books published throughout his lifetime, Wolf took advantage of this outsider's perspective, adhering to the view that American culture was "incurious and sentimental" but generally welcoming and good-natured.
"It's one of the few places in the world," he would say, "where people really DO want you to have a nice day."
In another book, Almost a Foreign Country (2008), Wolf describes his fondness for (along with his mixed feelings about) the United States.
Family members say Wolf's outsider's view and attunement to language were key to his acerbic sense of humor, replete with impersonation, imitation, and outlandish characterizations. He maintained warm, lasting friendships and correspondences in the U.S. and Europe.
In mid-career he taught at the University of Helsinki and, after his retirement from SFSU, at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Fromm Institute at the University of San Francisco. His freelance writing continued in thousands of columns and articles.
Manfred Wolf is survived by his three sons, Dana, Michael, and Paul Wolf, four grandchildren, Sam, Lucie, Alyssa, and Josh Wolf, and great-grandson, Beckham Wolf Raphel.