Stumbling stone laying on 5 December 2019

Stumbling block for Gertrud Stern

In the 1920s, the social democrat, freethinker and careers counsellor Gertrud Stern worked hard to ensure the success of the Chemnitz Adult Education Centre, which was founded in February 1919. She was the head of the "Working Group for Women". Until the adult education centre was dissolved in March 1933, she was one of the most important contacts for women's issues in Chemnitz. Due to her long-standing political commitment, Gertrud Stern was targeted by the Nazi authorities at an early stage and was therefore held in "protective custody" from 9 March to 5 November 1933. As a former city councillor, she was arrested again in July 1944 as part of "Aktion Gitter" and "narrowly escaped the concentration camp", as she later wrote. She died on 29 September 1977 in Karl-Marx-Stadt.

Sponsor: Chemnitz Adult Education Centre

Stumbling stone for Herbert Kaulfuss

The Social Democrat Herbert Kaulfuss was born in 1912, the son of a stonemason. The family moved into a flat in the suburb of Gablenz at the end of the 1920s. Kaulfuß learnt the trade of a bricklayer. He was an early supporter of the aims of the Socialist Labour Youth. He earned lasting merit through the construction of the Keilberghütte, two kilometres from Oberwiesenthal, of which he was a financial backer. The builders were spied on by the National Socialists, persecuted and in some cases taken into "protective custody" as early as 1933, including Kaulfuß. He therefore decided to flee Germany at the end of 1933. Together with a carpenter friend, he boarded a passenger ship in Hamburg on 22 December 1933. During the crossing, he drowned off the coast of Brazil.

Sponsor: VVN-BdA Chemnitz

Stumbling stones for the Frisch family

The Frisch family was one of the Jewish families in Chemnitz that were completely wiped out by the National Socialists during the Shoah. The travelling salesman Jakob Frisch had lived in Saxony since 1921. In spring 1923, he married Ryfka Kirschen in Vienna. From then on, he lived with his wife at Wiesenstraße 52, where their daughters Erika and Charlotte were born in the following years. Ryfka Frisch fell seriously ill around 1935 and was admitted to the Hochweitzschen state sanatorium at the end of 1936. From then on, the school-age daughters lived in the Jewish children's home in Leipzig. Jakob Frisch was arrested in January 1940 and sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Ryfka Frisch was murdered in Pirna-Sonnenstein on 19 July 1940 as part of the Nazi "T4" murder campaign. Jakob Frisch's life ended on 4 June 1941 in the same killing centre. Erika and Charlotte were deported from Leipzig on 10 May 1942 on a transport of central German Jews to the Belzyce ghetto near Lublin, where they were murdered.

Godparents: Kerstin Hermann-Nitz, lawyers Georgi & Hartmann, Hanife, Sylejmani

Stumbling stone for Alice Glaser

Alice Glaser was the pioneer of the first Jewish kindergarten in Chemnitz. She came from a respected merchant family in the city. Her father was co-owner of the fashion house Gebr. Wertheimer on Johannisplatz, which was founded in 1889. Alice attended the girls' secondary school. On her 25th birthday, she married the doctor, social hygienist and social democrat Dr Kurt Glaser. The couple lived in Berlin for a while, where their daughter Marianne was born. Alice Glaser was one of the women who founded a local branch of the Jewish Women's Association in 1925. In this capacity, she was instrumental in the founding of the kindergarten in February 1927. Alice Glaser, who had studied at the Bauhaus from 1928, last lived in Berlin. On 14 November 1941, the 48-year-old was deported to the Minsk ghetto and murdered there.

Sponsor: Montesorri School

Stumbling stones for the Löwi family

The watchmaker Lieber Löwi was one of the Jews from Chemnitz who recognised the potential dangers that threatened them and their families in view of the boycott measures introduced by the Nazi state in the spring of 1933 and therefore turned their backs on the country at an early stage. In the spring of 1920, he married Ester Wurzel, the daughter of a merchant, in Chemnitz. In 1926, the couple found a suitable flat in the apartment block at Bismarckstraße 9. At this time, Lieber Löwi also took over the watchmaking business that his wife had built up. Their children started school at the end of the 1920s. The couple left the country in 1934 and decided to live in the Republic of Poland. No reliable statements can be made about their whereabouts. It is only known that they lived in Sędziszów in the autumn of 1940. The family was subsequently murdered in one of the countless ghettos or extermination camps in occupied Poland.

Godparents: Tabea Böhme, Ines Schwittaua, Martina Lange, Beate Legler

Stumbling stone for Dr Ernst Martin Müller

The physician Dr Ernst Martin Müller was one of the many Jews in Germany who, faced with the threat of deportation, decided to "flee to their deaths". From 1901 to 1905, he studied medicine in Königsberg. Dr Müller completed his specialist training in Breslau at the beginning of 1913 and then set up as a specialist for skin and venereal diseases in Chemnitz. His practice was located in the inner-city office building at Lange Straße 12. In autumn 1926, Dr Müller married the concert singer Helene Maria Winterer, a Christian, in Munich. In September 1938, the Nazi authorities revoked his licence to practise as a Jewish doctor. The couple then moved to Munich. When "transports of Jews" were assembled almost weekly in the summer of 1942, Dr Ernst Müller decided to commit suicide on 30 August 1942.

Godparents: Friedrich Schönemann, Ruth Hellmann

Stumbling stone for Fritz Bernstein

Fritz Bernstein was one of the German Jews who was prepared to fight against the Nazi state with a weapon in his hand. He grew up in a successful family of factory owners. Hans Bernstein, his father, had made a name for himself in the city when he had the architects Kornfeld and Benirschke build a modern factory building for his mechanical woollen goods factory at Zwickauer Straße 173/175 in 1927. During the global economic crisis, the woollen goods factory went bankrupt. This also meant that the family had to give up their villa on Parkstraße in autumn 1934. They then emigrated to Holland. Fritz Bernstein moved to London in 1935. On 24 January 1940, he was accepted into the 97th Pioneer Corps of the British Army. His unit was stationed in the Cardiff area. He died in a military hospital on 4 August 1942 as a result of an infection.

Sponsor: Agricola Grammar School

Stumbling stones for the Nussberg family

The five-member Nussberg family belonged to the Polish-Jewish families from Chemnitz who were arrested in the course of the "Poland Action" (1938) and deported to their supposed homeland, where they were murdered in one of the numerous Nazi ghettos or extermination camps after 1941. The merchant Samuel Aron Nussberg had lived in Chemnitz since November 1922. In the summer of 1923, he opened a hosiery shop in the Reitbahn district. The following year, he married Frieda Avramovici here. The couple had three children, Rachela, Manfred Moses and Fany Rosa. In the mid-1930s, the family finally found a suitable flat on Kaßberg. On 28 October 1938, the Nussberg family was taken to Poland by the Reichsbahn, where they found a place to live in Krakow. On 17 February 1941, the couple and their children were deported to the Leibitsch camp. After that, their trail is lost.

Godparents: Katja Knop, Markus Eidam, Frank Luge, Dr Gunnar Müller and Simone Neddermann, Konrad and Beatice Reinhold

Stumbling stone for Jacob Degen

In his first novel "Nicht alle waren Mörder - Eine Kindheit in Berlin" (1999), actor and writer Michael Degen wrote about the fate of a Jew in the Nazi state. In it, he also described the terrible fate of his father. The textile merchant Jacob Degen had married Anna Rosalia Rudolf in Chemnitz at the end of 1922. The couple had two sons. The family had lived in Kaßberg since the late 1920s. They later moved to Berlin-Tiergarten. Jacob Degen was arrested on 13 September 1939 and deported to Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where he was severely mistreated in the weeks that followed. The father of the family was released on 2 February 1940. Despite intensive care, Jacob Degen never recovered from his injuries. Michael Degen noted in his novel: "He died after two months in terrible agony" in the Jewish Hospital in Berlin.

Godparents: Ralf and Andrea Pötzsch

Stumbling stones for Günter Neubauer and Adele Prager

Günter Heinz Neubauer and Adele Prager were murdered in the course of the Nazi "T4" programme in the former Pirna-Sonnenstein state hospital. Due to their state of health, they spent some time in the Chemnitz-Altendorf State Educational Centre. Günter Neubauer was transferred from there to the Arnsdorf state institution on 30 May 1940, where an "intermediate institution" was located on the way to a violent death. Just six weeks later, the eleven-year-old boy was taken to Pirna-Sonnenstein with numerous other patients and gassed there on the same day.

Adele Prager, who was married to a Jewish merchant, had been in the Leipzig-Dösen State Hospital since 1907 due to an incurable nervous disorder. At the end of 1939, she was transferred to Chemnitz-Altendorf. From there, the mother of two sons was transferred to Hubertusburg on 29 May 1940 and three months later to Großschweidnitz, where there were further "intermediate institutions". On 25 September 1940, Adele Prager was taken to the Pirna-Sonnenstein "euthanasia" institution and murdered there.

Godparents: Udo Schreyer, Dieter Nendel