LAMAMIMET

Manuela V. Hoelterhoff was born on April 6, 1949, in Hamburg, Germany, to a Latvian mother and a German father. She immigrated to the United States with her family in 1957 and earned a bachelor's degree from Hofstra University followed by a master's degree from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University.

She began her journalism career writing for National Review before joining The Wall Street Journal, where she spent two decades as a reviewer, arts editor, books editor, and editorial board member. In 1983 she received the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism for her wide‑ranging arts commentary. Hoelterhoff later helped launch SmartMoney magazine and contributed to Conde Nast Traveler, and in 2004 she created and led the arts and culture section, Muse, at Bloomberg News.

Hoelterhoff authored the book "Cinderella & Company: Backstage at the Opera with Cecilia Bartoli" and was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2000 to study Adolf Hitler’s fascination with opera. At the time of her death she was working on a manuscript about Hitler’s relationship to weather and maintained a popular blog, Daisy Mae at Her Interspecies Cafe, focusing on animals. She died on May 6, 2026, at the age of 77.