 Esther Schiff Goldfrank married the historian and sinologist Karl August Wittfogel after the death in 1935 of her first husband, Walter Goldfrank.Esther Schiff Goldfrank was born in 1896 New York City to Dr. Herman J. Schiff and Matilda Metzger Schiff.Before she was twenty, she had outlived both of her parents and her only sibling, Jack.