Department store Sternberg

In the 1830s, the Sternberg family came to Spandau from Poznan (Poland). From 1841 they ran a department store, the business was managed by several generations. At the beginning of the 1860s it was still a small business with four employees. But by the 1920s it had developed into a larger company with 50-100 employees. In 1927, the Sternberg department store bought new business premises in Breite Straße and Fischerstraße. It was mainly active in textile trade, selling clothes, curtains, carpets and fabrics. 

In 1935, the Sternberg family moved from Hakenfelde to Neu-Westend because of anti-Semitic attacks in the neighborhood. During the pogrom on November 9, 1938, the department store was also attacked and looted. Hans Sternberg, the son of the owner Julius Sternberg, reported about it: "My father received a telephone call in the early morning of November 10. He learned: the windows of our department store had been smashed, the merchandise looted." When Julius Sternberg turned to a Schutzpolizist, he only answered: "My name is Hase". That means, it's none of my business, I don't see anything. Still in 1938 the family had to sell the department store.

The Sternberg family fled to Colombia via London in 1939. In Bogotá (Colombia) it was not easy for them. After World War II in 1950, Hans and Julius Sternberg returned to Berlin-Spandau. After his return, Julius Sternberg quoted Hans Joachim Schöps in a speech 

"Only Jews who really want to be Jews can, if they have the willingness, stand for Germany. They walk a German path as Jews, and the hope remains that the hour will come when a gate that is closed today will open and this path will lead to the new Germany."

Today there is a savings bank on the site of the department store, and since 2000 there has also been a memorial plaque.