Biography1

Wolff was born on 24 January 1679 in Breslau, Silesia. Coming from a modest background, he received his degrees from the University of Leipzig and spent his entire life as a university professor of mathematics, sciences, philosophy and, later, public law at the Universities of Halle, Prussia (1706­23 and 1740-54) and Marburg, Hesse-Cassel (1723-40).

In 1723, Wolff was ousted from his first chair at Halle in one of the most celebrated academic dramas of the eighteenth century. By decree of the King of Prussia, initiated by the pietist Divinity Faculty, which saw in Wolff a dangerous rival and enemy of the faith, Wolff had to leave Prussia within 48 hours or be hanged. The immediate cause had been his farewell address as vice-rector in 1721 (Wolff, 1985), in which Wolff describes Confucianism as ethically rather admirable.

Wolff immediately found refuge at the Hessian university of Marburg. As one of the most popular and fashionable university teachers in Europe, he increased matriculation figures within five years by about 50 per cent. How­ever, he returned to Halle in 1740 after the accession of the new King of Prussia and admirer of his, Frederick II (the Great).

When Wolff died on 9 April 1754, he was a very wealthy man, almost entirely as a result of his income from lecture fees, salaries and royalties. He was also a member of many academies and probably the first scholar to have been created hereditary Baron of the Holy Roman Empire on the basis of his academic work. His school, the Wolffians - the first ‘school’ in our sense that any German philosopher had - dominated Germany until the rise of Kantianism.