Martin Wolff (26 September 1872 – 20 July 1953) was a professor of law at the University of Berlin in Germany.
In 1935, he was prematurely retired from his post by the Nazis, and emigrated to Britain in 1938, where All Souls College, Oxford supported him with a scholarship.
In 1894, he was awarded a doctorate from the law faculty based on a dissertation on The beneficium excussionis realis.
In 1900, he obtained his habilitation in Berlin, with the thesis Der Bau auf fremdem Boden, insbesondere der Grenzüberbau nach dem Bürgerlichen Gesetzbuche für das deutsche Reich auf geschichtlicher Grundlage[2] [Building on the Property of Another, in Particular Building that Encroaches on Adjoining Land According to the Civil Code for the German Reich on a Historical Basis].
About this time, he wrote his treatise on property law in Enneccerus [de]–Kipp–Wolff, which became a standard work for almost half a century and was translated into Spanish in 1937.
[1] In 1935, because of his Jewish descent Wolff, along with his colleague Ernst Rabel, was ousted from his professorship by the new dean of the Law Faculty, the fanatical Nazi Wenzeslaus von Gleispach, although neither he nor his colleague came under the proscriptions of the Civil Service Restoration Act, because they had had tenure since before 1914.
Wolff's Das Sachenrecht [Property Law] was first published in 1910, and it soon became a standard work.
Wolff was criticized for ignoring economic and historical relationships and the connections to public law.