Clara Rosenthal (1863 - 1941)

Born on 9 April 1863 into a Jewish family of factory owners from Karlsruhe, Clara Fanny Ellstaedter lost her parents at the age of 16. In 1885 she married the lawyer Eduard Rosenthal (1853-1926) in Heidelberg, who was at the beginning of a brilliant academic career in Jena. For decades he belonged to the formative personalities of the scientific, political and intellectual-cultural life of the city. In 1920 he was made an honorary citizen of Jena. The intellectual elites of Jena and Weimar met in the "Villa Rosenthal", which they moved into in 1892.

After their only son Curt, born in 1887, was killed in action in 1914, Eduard and Clara Rosenthal bequeathed the villa to the city in their will in 1924. After her husband's death in 1926, the widow had the right of residence for life, but this was not recognized by the National Socialist city administration after 1933. The harassment, especially by the Nazi mayor Armin Schmidt, who aimed to expel her from her home, and the general anti-Jewish reprisals exceeded the strength of the almost eighty-year-old, who took her own life on November 11, 1941. Her grave site remains unknown to this day.

The Villa Rosenthal was turned into a meeting and exhibition place in 2009. The painting of Clara Rosenthal by Raffael Schuster-Woldan, long thought to be missing, has since been recovered and returned to the villa.

The stumbling stone for Clara Rosenthal was placed in front of the Villa Rosenthal at Mälzerstrasse 11 on June 2, 2010 (initiative of the Jenaer Arbeitskreis Judentum).

Hier wohnte Clara Fanny Rosenthal, geb. Ellstaetter, Jg. 1863, gedemütigt / entrechtet, Flucht in den Tod 11.11.1941.