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Otto "Este" Sternfeld * 1900

Grindelweg 4 Eingang Bundesstraße (Eimsbüttel, Rotherbaum)

HIER WOHNTE
OTTO STERNFELD
’ESTE’
JG. 1900
MEHRMALS VERHAFTET
1941 KZ FUHLSBÜTTEL
DEPORTIERT
AUSCHWITZ
ERMORDET 10.2.1943

Otto Sternfeld (artist’s name "Esté”), born on 18 Dec. 1900 in Cologne, died on 10 Feb. 1943 in the Auschwitz concentration camp

Grindelweg 4, entrance at Bundesstrasse (formerly Grindelstieg 4)

Otto Sternfeld, born in 1900 in Cologne, was the son of the photographer Max Sternfeld and his wife Pauline, née Fromm. He was a slim boy with blond hair – in adulthood, he reached a height of 1.65 meters (nearly 5 ft 5 in) – and attended an eight-grade Jewish elementary school (Volksschule) in Cologne until the First World War. He had three siblings. In his father’s business, he completed an apprenticeship as a photographer when he was a young man. When his father took over a laundry detergent plant in 1915 to secure the family’s livelihood, Otto Sternfeld was employed there as a worker until he was drafted into military service in 1917. However, his life’s dream was to become a dance teacher. Thus, he learned to dance on the side and passed a dance teacher examination in 1922. From the acronym of his last name, Otto Sternfeld adopted Esté as his artist’s name, founded a dance school, and named it the same. He was also considered a whistling artist.

Before he moved from Görlitz to Hamburg in Aug. 1933 to reside as a subtenant in a ground-floor apartment at Rothenbaumchaussee 1, he lived in Hirschberg/Silesia (today Jelenia Gora in Poland) and in Berlin. He was married to Dorothea, née Döbber, in his first marriage. The marriage was divorced in 1928. In 1931, he married a second time, to Elsbeth Maretzki, a union that was annulled in 1935 in Breslau (today Wroclaw in Poland) because of his homosexual disposition. For his part, he called himself bisexual. He had been separated from this woman as early as 1932. After his second wife did not pay him any more alimony and he did not earn any income worth mentioning with his dance teacher business either, he asked the Hamburg welfare authority for financial support. Attempts to earn a living as a commercial clerk, e.g., in a vending machine sales company, failed when the company filed for bankruptcy. Thus, he had no choice but to perform compulsory labor, e.g., in railway construction.

In order to acquire foreign language skills for a planned emigration, he applied for financial support in Nov. 1936 to attend the relevant courses offered by the Jewish Cultural Federation (Jüdischer Kulturbund) in Hamburg. Otto Sternfeld belonged to the Reich Association of Jewish Cultural Federations in Germany (Reichsverband jüdischer Kulturbünde in Deutschland), in which the regional Jewish cultural associations were united. At the cultural events held by this organization, he earned an extra income by taking over admission controls and working as a waiter.

In the spring of 1937, he was arrested due to his homosexual predisposition for the first time by the criminal investigation department, which had been keeping him in relevant files since 1933. From 26 Apr. to 14 July 1937, the criminal investigation department held him in the Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp, followed by imprisonment in the Holstenglacis pretrial detention facility until the beginning of August. Then he started serving his eight-month prison term in Fuhlsbüttel on 4 August, after having been sentenced by the Hamburg District Court (Amtsgericht) for continued offenses in accordance with Sec. 175 [of the Reich Criminal Code].

While still serving his prison term, he was incriminated in an interrogation by a former sexual partner, who reported sexual experiences in Feb./Mar. 1936 and expressed further suspicions against him. By this time, in Apr. 1938, the associate judge at the District Court (Amtsgerichtsrat), Joachim Lohse, who as a member of the Nazi party (NSDAP) and the SA was judged in official assessments to be "politically absolutely reliable,” sentenced the Jewish homosexual Otto Sternfeld to a further three-month prison term. At the same time, he assumed the following in his verdict: "Perhaps he has – and life experience would support such a conclusion – much more on his record than he admitted.” Possibly, in order to extort further confessions from him, the criminal investigation department committed Otto Sternfeld to the Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp again in the period from 16 to 24 June 1938 after he had finished serving his regular prison sentence on 6 May 1938. A passage in the files of the welfare authority noted in addition that he had subsequently been imprisoned in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp from 23 June to 24 Mar. 1939.

Under the impression of concentration camp internment, Otto Sternfeld intensified his efforts toward emigrating to Shanghai with the help of the Relief Organization of Jews (Jüdischer Hilfsverein), but these failed. He was forced to stay in Hamburg after his release, but moved to Grindelstieg 4, the small street at the beginning of Bundesstrasse, and was deployed for the Karl Vogt Company on Finkenwerder since Aug. 1939 and in July 1940 also for draining a bog in Hannoverian Harsefeld. In the very end, he worked as a stoker for the Nagte & Neffen Company.

In the fall of 1941, Otto Sternfeld was again named as a partner by a former sexual partner during his interrogation by the 24th Office of the Criminal Investigation Department (24. Kriminalkommissariat), which was in charge of "homosexual offenses.” Otto Sternfeld was arrested and subjected to interrogations by the criminal investigation department, during which he was detained for the third time in the Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp from 1 to 10 Oct. 1941. Under the impression of these coercive measures, he stated in his defense that he maintained regular sexual relations with Jewish women and that he only happened to have had a one-time homosexual contact with the 19-year-old worker who gave him away to the police. Following his confessions, he was transferred to regular pretrial detention.

Because of the young age and the assessment of the intellectual abilities of Otto Sternfeld’s sex partner (District Court Director [Amtsgerichtsdirektor] Erwin Krause described him in his judgment of Nov. 1941 with the following words: "... makes a completely dull-witted impression, the hair growth reaches deep into the middle of the forehead. The expression is that of a typically stupid, idiotic person”), Otto Sternfeld was sentenced to one year and six months imprisonment as the "seducer” of a person with diminished responsibility according to Sec. 175a item 3.

He served his sentence from the end of Nov. 1941 in the Lingen prison in Emsland. From there, he was transferred to the Emsland Camp V in Neusustrum in Jan. 1942. On 26 Sept. 1942, he was transferred to the Bremen-Oslebshausen penitentiary because he was "unsuitable for bog use.”

In Dec. 1942, the Gestapo inquired with the Hamburg public prosecutor’s office "whether the Jew Sternfeld could be evacuated to the East in accordance with the guidelines.” In fact, by that time, since the fall of 1942, a decree had been in force to the effect that penitentiaries, prisons, and concentration camps in the Reich were to be made "Jew-free” ("judenfrei”). The Hamburg District Court responded compliantly and made Otto Sternfeld "available for use there.” The execution of his sentence was considered "interrupted” at the point when he was transferred to the State Police station. On 14 Jan. 1943, he was deported from the Bremen penitentiary to the Auschwitz concentration camp. About a month later, on 10 Feb. 1943, his death at the age of 42 was recorded there.

In front of Otto Sternfeld’s last residence at Grindelstieg 4, today Grindelweg 4, – the house there survived the wartime destruction – no Stolperstein could be laid, as it is a private street. The Stolperstein is therefore located at the intersection to Bundesstrasse.

Translator: Erwin Fink
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

© Bernhard Rosenkranz (†)/Ulf Bollmann

Quellen: 1; StaH 213-8 Staatsanwaltschaft Oberlandesgericht – Verwaltung, Ablieferung 2, 451 a E 1, 1 b und 451 a E 1, 1 c; 213-11, Staatsanwaltschaft Landgericht – Strafsachen, 3946/38 und 3222/43; 242-1 II Gefängnisverwaltung II, 27537 (= 741-4 Fotoarchiv, A 262) und Ablieferungen 13 und 1998/1; 314-15 Oberfinanzpräsident (Devisenstelle und Vermögensverwertungsstelle), FVg 5813; 331-1 II Polizeibehörde II, Ablieferung 15 Band 1; 351-14 Arbeits- und Sozialfürsorge – Sonderakten, 1916; Rosenkranz/Bollmann/Lorenz: Homosexuellen-Verfolgung, S. 110 u. 261.
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