Memory of Clara Stier-Somlo: A life between knowledge and annihilation

Memory of Clara Stier-Somlo: A life between knowledge and annihilation

A current project at the University of Kiel is dedicated to the life of Dr. Clara Stier-Somlo, a Jewish librarian who worked on the university library until 1933. According to information from Uni-kiel.de Stier-Somlo released due to their Jewish origin, which represented a profound cut in their academic career.

dr. Clara Stier-Somlo was born on December 22, 1899 in Charlottenburg and was the daughter of Fritz Stier-Somlo, a lawyer, and Gertrud Rosenthal. Her grandfather, Josef Stier, served as a rabbi of the new synagogue in Berlin, which underlines the family roots in the Jewish educational tradition. Her academic career led her via Cologne, Munich and Frankfurt am Main until the doctorate in 1924 at the University of Cologne. Her dissertation dealt with the "Substitution Principle and Substitution Act in Economic theory" ( de.Wikipedia.org ).

exile and deportation

After the successful exam for the higher library service in 1930, she worked on various libraries, including the Prussian State Library in Berlin and the Kiel University Library, where she took a job in 1932. On April 1, 1933, however, it was dismissed by National Socialists under the threat of violence, since she was accused of having procured "too much Catholic and Jewish literature". This dismissal was part of a systematic discrimination and persecution of the Jewish population in the German Reich, which was accompanied by the NSDAP power in 1933 ( segu-geschichte.de ).

After her release, Bulled Sier emigrated to Prague. But fate should be cruel: On June 10, 1942, she was deported to Poland with 1000 other Jews, as a act of revenge for the attack on Reinhard Heydrich. Your deportation number was 73, and it is assumed that between June 1942 and October 1943 it was murdered in the Sobibor extermination camp de.m.wikipedia. .

memory and commemoration

The project to remember Dr. Stier-Somlo includes an audio installation that brings the life of the librarian alive and is presented in the university library for three months. The project is supported by the producer Daniela Herzberg and the artist Kristin Grothe. It is accompanied by Dr. Beate Kennedy and Anja Wucherpfennig from UB Kiel. Headmaster Gerhard Müller recognizes the importance of the project for the memory of past injustice, while Dr. Kerstin Helmkamp, Director of UB Kiel, emphasizes the responsibility of the library for free access ( Uni-kiel.de ).

In addition, dealing with exiled poems from the time of National Socialism is dealt with in another class. These poems will be integrated into the exhibition from June 3, 2025. The project, which also wants to live and set up a scientific body for researching Clara Stier-Somlos and fate, is the third souvenir project of the RBZ economy. Earlier projects included multimedia contributions in cooperation with the Center on the History of Kiel.

A stumbling block in honor of Clara Stier-Somlo was relocated to Kiel on March 5, 2015, and her sister Helene and her family were murdered in 1944 in the Auschwitz concentration camp. The Holocaust, a genocide of six million Jews, is viewed as the greatest crime in human history, the shadow of which still has an impact.