Louis Stern affair

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The Louis Star affair was the conflict over the conviction of Jewish businessman Louis Stern from New York. Stern stayed in July 1895 with his wife Lisette, née Strupp, and son Louis Jr. in Bad Kissingen and was sentenced there to a fine and imprisonment for a supposed threat of violence. As a result, there were fierce confrontations with an anti-Semitic character.

The course of the affair

The “Reunion” in the Bad Kissinger Kursaal

On 11 July 1895 a reunion took place in the Kursaal of Bad Kissingen. For this reunion also appeared the New York entrepreneurial family Louis Stern. The Stern couple was accompanied by his 15-year-old son Louis. While he was dancing with his mother, other guests of the evening drew the attention of the deputy bath commissioner (today the office of the spa director) Friedrich Freiherr von Thüngen (1861–1931) to the presence of a presumed minor. Baron von Thüngen then wanted to refer the young star of the hall. There was a fierce confrontation, while Louis Stern threatened the bathroom commissary a slap in the face. But there was no assault and the Stern family finally left the hall.

Whether Thüngen dealt with anti-Semitic motives cannot be proven. However, it is noticeable that the actual Badkommissär Hermann von Mauchenheim called Bechtolsheim was visibly trying to calm the affair. However, Bechtolsheim was absent on the evening of the incident, as his wife had died only nine days earlier. Thüngen, on the other hand, insisted on his rigid position and the demand for a legal prosecution, although Louis Stern had apologized to him in a submissive letter on July 19.

The trial of Louis Stern

At the beginning of August, there was a trial of Louis Stern in Bad Kissingen. Because of the great public interest, the trial was moved to the town hall of the spa town. Defender Sterns was the Munich lawyer Dr. Max Bernstein. Stern was accused of the insult “you mean man!” and the statement “If we were outside, I would cut off a few slaps!”. Continued resistance to state power. Louis Stern was sentenced to 14 days in prison and to the payment of 600 marks. On August 22, 1895, the New York Times reported that the famous lawyer Richard R. Kenney is said to have taken over Stern's further defense.

Effects of the Affair

Shortly after the incident in the Kissinger Kursaal, two journalistic camps had formed. On the one hand, the anti-Semitic publisher and later state parliament member of the Bavarian Farmers' Association Anton Memminger, who published the Neue Bayerische Landeszeitung in Würzburg and had already agitated anti-Jewish in it from 1893. His newspaper immediately launched a racial anti-Semitic smear campaign against Louis Stern and Jews in general. Being