Dortmund-born Max Sternheim lived for almost 70 years, i.e. nearly all of his life, at Aplerbecker Straße 503, where he was the owner of the property. He worked in various trades, including as a confectioner/pastry chef, a merchant and a cattle dealer.

With his wife Johanna, née Haas, who came from Castrop and whom he married in 1894 in her birth place, he had two children, Karl and Bertha.

His son Karl, born 1897, also became a merchant like his father. In 1933, he moved to Aachen. He survived the Holocaust, and after the war applied for compensation for his father.

Bertha, Karl’s younger sister, was born in 1906. At the age of 26, she moved to Hamburg; seven years later, she married Karl Herbert Kaufmann in Aplerbeck, and went to live with him in Remscheid-Lennep.

After the death of his wife Johanna in 1938, Max also left Dortmund and moved to Wuppertal-Elberfeld to be near to Bertha. In 1942, he was deported from Düsseldorf to Theresienstadt, where he died the following year. Bertha was deported to Minsk, and also became a victim of the Shoah.