Otto and Erna Stein family papers

The Otto and Erna Stein family papers include biographical materials and correspondence documenting the Stein family, their immigration to the United States in 1938, and their relatives’ experiences under Nazi rule in Neustadt an der Haardt, Nieder-Olm, Wiesbaden, and Mannheim. Biographical materials include birth, marriage, and death certificates, death notices, International Tracing Service forms, Yad Vashem “Hall of Names” forms, passports, student and apprenticeship record, military papers, records from Otto Stein’s time as a Prisoner of War in England during World War I, identification cards, money transfer receipts, a certificate for Otto Stein’s Cross of Honor for World War I soldiers, visa applications, and a receipt for the family’s passage to America. Correspondence files primarily consist of letters to Lotte Zinner’s family in America from her mother’s parents, Albert and Justine Kramer, in Nieder-Olm and then Wiesbaden, from her paternal grandmother, Klementine Stein, in Neustadt an der Haardt and then Mannheim, and from her uncle and aunt, Wilhelm and Flora Stein, in Berlin-Neukölln, London, and then Chicago. These letters describe immigration efforts and life in Nazi Germany Additional correspondence files include postcards congratulating Justine Selig and her family upon her engagement in 1896 and letters from great uncle Ferdinand Bach in St. Louis in 1915 that later served as the basis for Otto and Erna Stein’s family search when they were ready to immigrate. The collection further includes a 1911 postcard to Otto Stein from his brother with a photograph of Wilhelm pasted to it, a 1925 letter enclosing a photograph of Lotte Zinner as a baby, correspondence describing family and friends’ efforts to emigrate, letters after the war describing the fates of family and friends, and correspondence between Lotte Zinner and the National Museum of American Jewish Military History about Zinner’s father and her family records.

The Otto and Erna Stein family papers are arranged as two series: Series 1: Biographical Materials, approximately 1889-2000 Series 2: Correspondence, 1896-2000 (bulk 1911-1947)