Steinhardt family papers

Hugo Steinhardt, who had been the head of the Jewish boys children’s home, Floersheim Sichel Stiftung, in Frankfurt am Main, arrived in 1939 with his wife, Lilly (Joanette), their two daughters, Helga and Lore, and 21 boys from the orphanage. The boys, who became known as the ‘Cedar Boys’ when they settled on the Rothschild Estate, Bucks, were later accompanied by more of their fellow residents.

Hugo Steinhardt was born in 1887, one of six children of David and Rose Steinhardt in Friedberg, Hesse. The family lived in the small Jewish quarter of Friedberg, where his father had been an observant Jew, but once Hugo was grown up he was quite secularised. He had been a student at Giessen University and Berlin. He graduated in 1911 and taught modern languages in Friedberg and Mainz until being called up for active service in the infantry during WWI.

Whilst a teacher at a grammar school in Butzbach between 1921 and 1933, he married Lilly in 1923. They had two daughters- Lore, born in 1924 in Friedberg, and Helga born in 1928 in Butzbach.