Uncover the History of Europe’s Stolpersteine

The next time you’re in Russia, Scandinavia, or anywhere else in Europe, watch for stolpersteine. A personal connection to history will be literally at your feet…

Links to People and the Past

You’ll find stolpersteine in at least 26 countries. Concrete cobblestones with brass faceplates individually engraved by hand in the local language. More than 100,000 of them to date, set into sidewalks and streets throughout Europe and Russia. 

My nephew and I spotted one at Železná 20 in Prague during a trip to Europe shortly before the pandemic. It read “Emilie Klingenberger” and included details in Czech I didn’t understand. So I snapped a photo and resolved to find out later who Emilie was and why her name was on a brass cobblestone.    

Stolpersteine

The cobblestone, I discovered, was a stolperstein— German for “stumbling stone”. (The plural version has an “e” on the end.) Stolpersteine are placed outside the last known homes or businesses of ordinary citizens murdered by the Nazis during WWII. The victims included Jews, LGBTQ people, Communists, Roma, clergy, the physically or mentally challenged, and anyone else deemed undesirable per Nazi doctrine. 

Each stolperstein bears the name, birthdate, and fate of its honoree. Additional details, if known, are sometimes included. In many instances, it’s the victim’s only memorial. 

Emilie Klingenberger

There wasn’t much about Emilie online, but what I found convinced me she had a difficult life. 

Emilie was born July 8, 1880, in Central Bohemia, to Bernhard Lederer and Johanna Chobotsky. She married Karl Klingenberger and had four children— Rudolf, Stefanie, Jindrich, and Anna. 

Stefanie died an infant in 1910. Four years later, and just six months before the outbreak of WWI, Karl died, too. That left Emilie to raise Rudolf, Stefanie, and Anna— ages 6, 4, and 1– on her own. 

Life in Prague was hard at the time and overwhelmed the young widow. Emilie entrusted her two sons and surviving daughter to the care of a children’s home and tried to survive alone on the streets of Prague. 

She became pregnant and gave birth to another daughter, Markéta Ledererová, in 1915. Unable to look after her baby girl, Emilie left Markéta at the local maternity hospital’s foundling asylum. (A foundling asylum takes in infants whose parents are unable or unwilling to care for them.)

In the span of just five years, Emilie grieved the deaths of a child and spouse, and felt compelled by circumstances to give up her four remaining children. 

One Child’s Journey

Details about Emilie’s and her children’s lives over the next quarter-century are scant. But we can trace what became of Markéta from the onset of WWII. 

When the Nazis essentially annexed Czechoslovakia in mid-March 1939, Emilie’s youngest child hastened to leave Prague. Within two weeks, the 24-year-old Markéta bravely traveled by train through Germany to the Netherlands. There she concealed her Jewish heritage, found work, and married a Dutch man. Markéta lived in Holland until her death in 1987, and her descendants still reside there.

It’s unclear whether Emilie and Markéta ever had any contact after the infant daughter was left at the maternity hospital. As conditions worsened under Nazi occupation, though, Emilie surely wondered and worried about the fate of her children.

The Other Children 

Emilie’s son Jindrich died in Prague in 1941 at the age of 31. I couldn’t determine the circumstances of his death but did find mention of his grave at the city’s Jewish cemetery. 

The fate of Emilie’s other two children— Rudolf and Anna— is also fuzzy, but they appear to have survived the war and relocated to other countries. 

It’s unknown if Emilie ever reconnected with Jindrich, Rudolf, or Anna after leaving them at the children’s home. 

Emilie’s Fate

Emilie, age 62, was living at Železná 20 when the Nazis arrested her in May 1942. They deported her to the Terezín concentration camp 30 miles north of Prague on the 12^th of that month. (The assassination of Reichsprotektor Reinhard Heydrich occurred 15 days later.) In October, Emilie was sent from Terezín on “Transport By, no. 552” to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in Poland and murdered in the gas chambers. 

There are no known photos of Emilie, and she has no grave. The roughly 4” x 4” brass cobblestone outside her residence at Železná 20 is perhaps the only permanent memorial to her. 

Eight other Jewish residents of the building, aged 12-50, also were arrested, deported, and murdered. The fate of seven more Jews who lived there as of October 1, 1941, remains unknown. Only two of Emilie’s neighbors are confirmed to have survived the Holocaust.  

My nephew and I never could have imagined what transpired during the war at that green apartment building on Železná street. Nor the horrible tragedies that befell its residents. And certainly not the tough circumstances Emilie and her children endured. 

Gunter Demnig

I wouldn’t know their names or anything about them if not for the stolperstein outside Železná 20. It was placed there by German artist Gunter Demnig, who year-round supervises the installation of every stolperstein. He’s been doing it since 1996, and the current wait for placement of a stumbling stone stretches well into 2024. 

Demnig is a somewhat unlikely proponent of the project. He was born two years after the war ended, and his father served in the Luftwaffe. But the artist is noted for saying a person is not forgotten until his or her name is forgotten. 

Donations cover the 120-Euro cost of each stolperstein, and research confirms the details for every inscription. Approval to proceed is obtained from the honoree’s descendants, if any. Family members are invited to attend each installation and sometimes travel great distances to participate in the ceremony. 

Emilie’s two granddaughters witnessed the installation of her stolperstein on August 17, 2018. 

Where to Learn More

I was unable to find a comprehensive directory of the 100,000+ stolpersteine currently in place around the world. Instead, there are multiple regional listings. The locations of Berlin’s stolpersteine, for example, are listed here along with the biographies— in German and English— of their honorees. 

The app “Stolpersteine Deutschland” (in German only) allows users to search for stolpersteine by name or address anywhere in Germany that permits them. (Munich notably prohibits stolpersteine.) Photos of each stumbling stone and additional details about the deceased are included. 

If you’d like to witness the installation of a stolperstein in Europe, the schedule is posted here. You can request a stolperstein at the same site. However, there are no maps or biographies available there.  

Finally, click here to access the map of Prague’s stolpersteine. There is also a searchable Facebook page that lists the locations of all stumbling stones in Prague, along with the photos and biographies of the honorees.  

Epilogue

Markéta didn’t talk about the past with her daughter and granddaughters. After she died in 1987, they used Markéta’s old passport and some personal papers to reconstruct her early life. Only then did they discover the name of Markéta’s mother— Emilie Klingenberger.  

Emilie’s name and story were nearly lost. So her descendants arranged the stolperstein in her memory. 

The stumbling stone was less than a year old when my nephew and I spotted it on a sunny July morning in Prague outside her former home. Emilie Klingenberger is not forgotten.   

Learn how this blog post resonated with people in Argentina. This article about a former political prisoner of the East German Stasi also might interest you.