Before Mann

Abstract Martin Wolff (1872–1953) had been FA Mann’s pre-war supervisor at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Berlin. Mann held a lifelong affection for his teacher, who also had to emigrate to England. One of Wolff’s many fields of work was monetary law, on which he wrote the most comprehensive German treatise at the time (1917). Wolff’s theory was post-metallistic, yet critical of Knapp’s state theory of money. When Wolff began to write on the conflict of laws in 1933, monetary obligations were treated with particular expertise. Mann and Wolff continued to discuss legal matters, most intensively in the area of monetary law, and mutually influenced each other’s views. They both came to endorse Knapp’s theory, alas not without qualifications.