Stuttgart: Ostertag

My grandfather, Harry Oster, was born Hans Daniel Ostertag in Stuttgart Germany in 1915. He arrived to the United States on December 21, 1937 and declared his “first papers,'“ which indicated his intention to become a naturalized citizen, less than two months later on February 3, 1938. His brother Bernard came in March 1939 and Harry was able to petition to bring his parents Elsa and Ernst Ostertag over as well. They arrived on November 10, 1939, kicking off their new life all together in upstate New York, exactly one year to the day after Kristalnacht had occurred in Germany which destroyed any hope they may have had for a return to normal life in the home they had known in Stuttgart.

My grandfather would ultimately join the United States military, enlisting in January 1943, the very same day that his Father Ernst died. I don’t know what came first…Ernst’s death, or Harry’s enlisting. Ultimately in July 1943, Harry became a “Ritchie Boy” serving his newly adopted country dutifully. This is a topic for an entire series of posts to come. 30 years after returning to the United States from the war, his younger daughter, My Aunt Helaine (nee Oster) Damsky and my Uncle Michael would embark on a trip to Europe with a planned stop in Stuttgart. Grandpa Harry hand made a map of his neighborhood and a list of addresses for them to see…his childhood home, his father’s store, the train station etc. Uncle Michael pulled out the map for Debbie and me to bring with us on our trip.

Grandpa Harry had not been back to Stuttgart in more than 30 years when he made this map…we saw a lot of stuttgart on a bit of a wild goose chase before finally seeing what he depicted here. We had a great time on what felt like a scavenger hunt through town.

We stayed in Stuttgart near the University. It is a very large and modern city with a lot of traffic and people everywhere. A lot of energy!

There are great restaurants and places to sit and enjoy the culture.

There are parks and squares every few blocks. This square is in the shadow of the old palace.

Harry lived most of his life in Des Moines, Iowa with my grandmother Phyllis. His parents died in New York. Debbie and I set out to find Grandpa Harry’s grandparents, my Great-Great Grandparents, Bernard and Pauline (nee Rosenthal) Ostertag. We found their resting places in Canstatt at a cemetery that is only half filled. According to the caretake, the last funeral took place over 70 years ago. He said that one or two families come a year to pay their respects to loved ones. He was really very helpful. He had cleared the gravesite before we came so we could easily get to it. Even so, it was hard not noticing the difference between the two cemeteries that are there together…the Christian one across the street which was absolutely beautiful like a botanical garden…and the Jewish one which looks fairly overgrown and unkempt. I placed two stones atop Bernard and Pauline’s headstone and said the Mourner’s Kaddish. I was touched to see that Bernard’s Hebrew name is Pesach ben Yosef (Pesach son of Joseph), named for his grandfather Pesach Ostertag.

Albert Einstein’s Grandmother is buried there too.

I recently learned of my Great-Grandfather Ernst’s sister, Anna (nee Ostertag) Pick, who was married to Ernst Pick . Ernst Pick was Ernst Ostertag’s business partner. I had recently seen a death record for Anna and it said she was in the same cemetery. Debbie and I looked at every stone we could find and didn’t see her, but I knew she was there. The caretaker went and retrieved his records and pointed toward a huge overgrown tree surrounded with hedge. I crawled inside and found her stone.

Looking out from under the brush…we cleared some of it away so we could see her name.

I felt more emotional leaving this cemetery than I had the day before seeing the grave of my Great X5 Grandfather Jakob Aron Fleischer. It is hard to explain as I didn’t know Bernard and Pauline any more than I knew Jakob, but these were my grandfather’s grandparents…and even though he himself was born after they themselves died…it felt significantly closer to home.

From there, we travelled the eight minutes to the center of Canstatt where we found the landmarks Grandpa Harry had put on his map.

Bahnstrasse 4. The location of the store. The building itself is long gone, but there was evidence of its existence. There is a custom emerging in Germany of placing a “stolperstein” at the location of homes and workplaces of people who were forced to leave Germany or who were murdered in the Holocaust. My Grandfather, his brother and their parents were theoretically not forced to leave…they left of their own free-will…so they don’t qualify for a stone. But Ernst Pick, the husband of my Great Grand Aunt Anna (nee Ostertag) Pick, whose headstone is above, died in Aushwitz, so he merited a stone. Ernst Pick is actually better documented than my Great Grandfather Ernst Oster(tag), and as result, we were able to find the exact spot of the store. The stoperstein was right there on the sidewalk.

From there we went strolling through Canstatt toward where we thought we’d find the house Grandpa Harry grew up in with his parents Ernst and Elsa and brother Bernard.

On the way there, we found a monument to the neighborhood synagogue, where I believe Harry became Bar Mitzvah in 1928, which was destroyed in 1938 on Kristalnacht before Elsa, Ernst and Bernard emigrated.