Honorary Doctorate Awarded to Raimund Fellinger

On 25 October 2006, the University of Greifswald’s Faculty of Theology awarded an honorary doctorate to William Wolff, State Rabbi of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and former journalist and correspondent of various English daily newspapers.

Since the beginning of his term of office in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in April 2002, State Rabbi William Wolff has been a distinctive personality of Jewish life and tradition, both in the field of community education and at the level of academic discourse. Since then, State Rabbi Wolff has rendered outstanding services to the in-depth dialogue between Jewish and Christian theology in many ways. In William Wolff, the Faculty of Theology honoured a man who considered the mediation of Jewish heritage between the practice of spiritual counselling and critical biblical studies in the shared responsibility of Jewish-Christian relations a central concern. 

Career

William Wolff was born Wilhelm Wolff in Berlin in 1927. In 1933 he fled with his parents and siblings to Amsterdam and from there to London to escape the National Socialists. He studied economics in London and became a renowned political journalist, who accompanied speakers of parliament and covered world affairs as correspondent for various English daily newspapers. At the age of 53, he began his training as a rabbi at Leo Baeck College in London and received his ordination - the official certificate to practise as a rabbi - in 1984. After his term of office at the West London Synagogue and in Wimbledon, he took over as the State Rabbi of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in 2002 at the age of 75. There, until 2015, he looked after the three Jewish communities in Schwerin, Rostock and Wismar, with almost 2,000 members.
William Wolff passed away on 8 July 2020 in his English hometown.