The more important ones reveal several stages of changing emphasis and shifts in intent. These changes, however, are not reflected in any of the editions of his plays that have been published to date.
Since Wolf's plays would have missed their purpose if they failed to elicit a response of committed solidarity from their audiences, his individual position on any specific issue was less important than his party's policy on that issue. Thus, his creativity was subordinated to the programs of the organization for which he was a spokesman, and ideological discipline superseded inventiveness. This limitation does not altogether eliminate artistic subtlety or enduring intellectual and emotional relevance from Wolf's plays, but his basic impulse as an artist was to dramatize social injustices in a simplified style that used model situations to press home a few fundamental points.
Wolf was born on 23 December 1888 in Neuwied on the Rhine, the only child of a respected Jewish cloth merchant and tailor, Max Wolf, and Ida Meyer Wolf. He received a humanistic education at the Jewish elementary school and then, from 1899 until 1907, at the Royal Prussian Gymnasium in his hometown.
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