Ella and Ernst Stern Collection

This collection documents the lives of Ella (née Kalt) and Ernst Stern, including their professional careers in Vienna and later their dressmaking business in New York. It consists of four folders in one box. This collection documents the lives of Ella (née Kalt) and Ernst Stern, including their professional careers in Vienna and later their dressmaking business in New York. It consists of four folders in one box.

The first folder mainly pertains to Ella and Ernst Stern’s lives in Vienna. It includes their personal records such as birth, marriage and residence certificates, which were stamped by Nazi authorities on October 26th, 1939. The folder also holds various educational and professional certificates of Ella and Ernst Stern, documenting their careers until 1938.

Folder two contains documents, mainly business certificates, regarding the dressmaking company Ella and Ernst Stern ran on the Upper West Side on Broadway until 1955, when Ella Stern became the sole owner, as one document in the collection indicates. It also includes a letter concerning a business premise Ella Stern rented in Manhattan in 1946, a social insurance award notification to Ernst Stern, and Ella Stern’s lease for an apartment in Washington Heights from October 1974 to September 1977.

In the third folder can be found records of Ella and Ernst Stern in the United States such as social security documents and Ella Stern’s certificate of naturalization. It also includes an inventory of Ella Stern’s estate after her death in 1979.

Finally, the fourth folder contains an anti-Semitic propaganda sheet by the organization “Phalanx--Christian Patriots” and an information brochure by the “Non-Sectarian Anti-Nazi League to Champion Human Rights, Inc.” (both circa 1939). It also includes a photocopy of the essay “Wie ich als Jude in der Diaspora aufwuchs” by Eduard Bernstein in German (from: “Ich bin der Letzte, der dazu schweigt”, Verlag für Berlin Brandenburg, 2004), labeled with the note “Aunt Tess L. Segal (Lawyer for Ella Stern)”.