There are always new stories about Jewish families from Königsberg – now on the occasion of the laying of a Stolperstein for Ernst Lipstein at Falkensee (near Berlin). In his memoirs, Nobel Prize winner Max Born ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Born ) paints a vivid picture of the family of his stepmother Bertha Born, née Lipstein (a sister of Ernst Lipstein). Max Born:” Lipstein [..] had been a merchant in Russia, dealing I think in timber, and had become rich. Now, in the Russia of the Tsars there was violent anti-semitism. Jews were restricted to definite regions and not permitted to travel freely, except when they were wealthy ‘merchants of the first guild’.[…] Old Lipstein had risen to be a merchant of the first guild, yet he detested the Tsarist administration and longed for higher culture, not to be found amongst the Muscovites. Therefore he sent his daughters to boarding-schools in Germany or Switzerland (my stepmother was at Lausanne) and his sons to German universities. Finally he decided to emigrate and settled in Kénigsberg, in East Prussia, but died soon afterwards. His wife, Ida, who became our grandmother Lipstein, lived a few years in Koenigsberg, but removed later to Berlin, where two of her daughters were married. The eldest, Paula, was, like her mother, a handsome woman […]. The second daughter, Helene, was no beauty herself, but married a distinguished, almost aristocratic-looking man […]

There were also three brothers. Only one of them, Alfred Lipstein[…] studied medicine, and was for a long time Paul Ehrlich’s assistant in Frankfurt. When I later studied in Heidelberg we often met and became good friends. […], and this friendship lasted. He did not succeed in leaving Germany and I am afraid that he and his charming wife perished under the Nazi terror, just as did his brothers and sisters. […] Mama’s younger brother, Ernst Lipstein had just finished his year’s service in the 2nd Dragoon Guards Regiment, stationed in Berlin.” Ernst Lipstein (1874-1958), who worked as a mechanical engineer for Siemens and AEG, among others, was the only one of six children to survive the deprivation of rights, humiliation, and persecution of the Nazi era.

Photo: From file at LABO Berlin. You can find everything about the stumbling stone laying event, including the flyer, here (in German):
https://www.stolpersteine-falkensee.de/veranstaltungen/stolpersteinverlegung-falkensee/