Olga Stern House

Isidor Stern realized his late wife Olga's idea of a comfortable and enjoyable home for people from the middle class. In memory of Olga, the Olga Stern House was established in the spring of 1930 as a home for the elderly for Jewish people over 60 years of age. The house was located in a beautiful setting and had generously furnished rooms. There was a music room with a piano and a large garden. There the residents came together for common meetings. Through the proximity to nature and through intellectually stimulating activities, e.g. all residents had opera subscriptions, the Olga Stern House was intended to provide an occasion for joie de vivre. Spiritual exchange among the residents and the occupation with art, literature and music should stand against any form of triviality.

The values and guiding principles of the house become clear in Isidor's memoirs and in the speeches of the guests at the official opening in October 1930. Isidor and his daughter Charlotte remembered Olga and emphasized Olga's free thoughts, her warmth and humor. She had the Jewish wit and the Jewish heart. In her spiritual liveliness, in her sense of family and this-worldly realism, as well as her conscious non-heroism, her Jewish identity had been particularly prominent. From these values should also be characterized by the coexistence in the house and develop into a "community of life", as the rabbi Leo Baeck underlined in a speech.

Unfortunately, the community of the Olga Stern House was not of long duration. With the Nazi rule, the Jewish Women's League was forbidden to enter the house. The residents were forced to leave their home and were taken to the Jewish Hospital in Iranische Straße, from where many were deported to Theresienstadt and murdered. The house was bombed out during World War II.

The memory of the coziness and the distinguished and generous management of the Olga Stern House is to be kept alive with this contribution.