[1] His father was an Austrian officer and his mother was Lucilla von Busetti, from the Non Valley.

When he was a child his family moved to Bolzano, South Tyrol, where he heard local Ladinian legends from his nanny during a lengthy illness.

[2] Wolff became a journalist and author, but spent much time travelling through the Dolomites asking the people he met, especially the old, if they could recall the local legends, which he recorded in his notebook, and later published.

He discovered the saga of the Kingdom of Fanes by piecing together the fragments of legend that he had collected with his friend Hugo von Rossi.

[4] During World War I (1914–18) he published articles in the Alldeutsche Blätter in which he called the Italians and French representatives of the African and Asiatic races, who had the audacity to attack the European Germans.