See photo archive
Open
The Strauss and Sterzelbach families came from Weiden, Bavaria, where Immanuel Strauss, grandfather of the depositor, was teacher, rabbi and shochet of the Jewish community. He was a teacher at the small Jewish school in Weiden for many years. Kossy Strauss, the second of six children of Immanuel strauss, attended high school in Karlsruhe and then studied chemistry and metallurgy in Munich. Having heard Hitler ranting in a bierkeller, he decided to leave Germany for England in 1933. He married Berta Sterzelbach in the UK and set up a company, 'Foundry Services Ltd'. Kossy was instrumental in assisting all his close family and many friends and acquaintances in their efforts to leave Nazi Germany. His sister, Relly and her husband, Moritz went to Kenya. His brother, Hermann also spent some time in Kenya. Minni and Gustav Roseman along with Hannah and Willy Marx went to Montevideo, Uruguay. David, Kossy's youngest brother, came to Birmingham. The Sterzelbach family in Weiden consisted of the depositor's grandparents, Leo and Elise, owners of a haberdashery store. Leo ran it together with his brother, Moritz and they lived on the premises. Berta, the donor's mother, was the eldest of three daughters. Her middle sister, Hanna, married and went to live in Paris from where she had to flee at the outbreak of war. Her husband, Max Schloss, joined the Foreign Legion to escape, and Hanna and her small daughter met him again in Spain after she had trekked across the Pyrenees. The youngest sister, Hedwig, came to England as a student nurse and trained at the general hospital in Birmingham. Leo's brother, Moritz, went with his wife, Irene (nee Frank) to Montevideo, Uruguay, where they lived until 1957, when they came to England to join their only son, Heiner, who had come to Birmingham in 1939 as an electrical engineering apprentice.
1 box
Original order retained
This collection contains family correspondence, 1858-1923 (1866/1) replete with English translations- correspondents include Leo and Elise Sterzelbach, Jette Hoenigsberger, Moritz Lichtenstetter, Berta Lichtenstetter et al; correspondence between Kossy Strauss and Moritz Sterzelbach et al 1938-1939 (1866/2); Correspondence concerning assistance with emigration of family and friends, 1938-1939 (1866/3-4); Summary and inventory of correspondence in 1866/3-4 (1866/5); Index and copy correspondence re emigration, 1938-1939 also copy photographs (1866/6); miscellaneous documents re the Lichtenstetter family (1866/7); Papers re the family of Ilona Grabnerfamilies covering the period around Kristallnacht and the subsequent efforts to emigrate (1866/8); copy earlier correspondence from the 19th and early 20th centuries; detailed summaries and inventories of some of the correspondence.
Strauss/ Sterzelbach Family papers