Johanna Margarete Stern

Johanna Margarethe Stern-Lippmann (6 January 1874 in Berlin – 22 May 1944 in Auschwitz) was a German Jewish art collector and victim of the Holocaust. Life From 1918 Margarethe Stern (née Lippmann) lived with her husband the businessman and art collector Siegbert Samuel Stern, founder of Grauman & Stern, in Neubabelsberg, Potsdam. The couple had four children between 1899 and 1909. The couple lived on the Griebnitzsee in the prestigious Villa Stern, in Kaiserstraße 3 (today Karl-Marx-Straße). Nazi persecution and murder When the Nazis came to power in 1933, the couple was persecuted because of their Jewish origins. Siegbert Stern died in Berlin on 7 August 1935. In the spring of 1937, Margarethe Stern fled, first to Badenweiler, then in the summer of 1938 via Switzerland to Amsterdam, where her brother-in-law Albert Stern was already based. Hitler's race laws targeted Jews, throwing them out of work, banning them from owning businesses and imposing special confiscatory fees and taxes that obliged them to sell assets to survive. Margarethe Stern was forced to sell the Villa Stern in November 1940, although its unclear whether she received any of the proceeds.