Karl Wolf died in October 2012 aged 86 after a long and eventful life. He was born 16th Feb 1926 in Graz, Austria into a happy, prosperous family. His father, Paul passed on a love of the mountains and Karl became a fanatical skier, rising early in winter to get a run in before school. His mother made a fine apfelstrudel that we tried and failed to replicate. His half-brother Kurt was his partner in crime in a series of robberies of preserved-fruit from the panty and bow and arrow attacks on various trees in the garden. All this happy childhood came to an abrupt end the day Hitler marched into Austria in the Anchsluss of 1938; the union of the two countries under nazi control. School became an ordeal of bullying under the direction of teachers and he was forced to leave. His father, a community leader, was arrested along with every other leader and sent to Dachau. The family managed to secure a visa to Shanghai, the only visa available, that enabled them to extract his father from Dachau and legally leave the country. Their passports, stamped with a red J were rendered ineffective and they became stateless refugees. In Trieste, the family managed to obtain a visa to Cyprus from where Karl was sent, aged 14 to a youth agricultural school in Palestine.
His parents made their way to Tanganyika and Karl followed, attending school in Arusha, then work in a gold mine. Gold mining was not to his liking so he walked 70 miles across the savannah to work on a cattle farm. He had caught the agricultural bug and farming became his profession.
His parents made their way to Brazil to join Kurt and he followed later, working on various farms and cutting down more than his fair share of tropical rainforest. He returned to Israel to work on a project for a university, introducing coffee production to a hot, dry climate. Israel’s coffee industry is a testament to his failure in this department but he did succeed in meeting and marrying Rayner.
After a year or so back in Brazil, Dad decided to upgrade his qualifications by studying at the Royal Agricultural College. Karl and Rayner packed their bags and caught a ship to Britain. Karl always claimed that he was not a refugee in Britain, he made his home and raised his family here. After graduation he worked as Farm Manager in Oxfordshire then in Suffolk, living in Diss. It was here that Norwich began to feature in the Wolf story, as Karl and Rayner joined the NHC in 1970.
Karl grew frustrated at working for other people and took a gamble to buy some land and start his own farm. The economic situation was not favourable to small business or farmers and the work was long and hard but Karl was doing what he liked and he was working for himself. We all joined in and slowly the farm grew to modest proportions. Eventually the work became too much for the reward and they sold up to retire to the city. The farm is now a market garden and the name he chose, Daganya Farm, (the name of the first kibbutz) lives on in the village of Hoxne.
In retirement, Karl always kept active, his DIY projects were always extra strength, his wood carving can be seen above the synagogue door. He took up skiing again at 60. He and Rayner became avid travellers and Karl was able to make good use of his 5 languages. Karl was a scholar as well as a farmer, an avid reader in English, Hebrew and German and active in the translation community of UEA. Karl had a unique attitude to risk which was evident in his skiing and his driving. A cycling accident on black ice left him with a broken hip, but he accepted the consequences with a tough stoicism that had seem him though many hard times.
Karl will be remembered as a quiet but tough character, always good humoured, with a twinkle in his eye.
The Wolf Family