The death took place here to-day of Dr. Adolf Stern, former member of the Roumanian Parliament and founder and first President of the Union of Roumanian Jews, of which he was Honorary President since his retirement on account of age, in favour of ex-Deputy Filderman, the present President.
Born in Bucharest on November 17th., 1848, he was within less than a month of his 83rd. birthday. At the age of 18, after graduating from the Bucharest Lyceum, he entered Berlin University, proceeding afterwards to Leipzig, where he took his doctorate of law, when he was 21. On returning to Roumania he was refused admission to the bar because as a Jew he was classed as an “alien”. He decided to leave Roumania and live abroad, but Benjamin Franklin Peixotto, an American Jew, who had come to Roumania as American Consul, offered him the post of secretary, and Dr. Stern entered the Consulate, as Peixotto’s Councillor, and was later appointed Vice-Consul of the United States. When Peixotto left Roumania in 1875, Dr. Stern became the Consular Ageht for America.
Together with Peixotto Dr. Stern founded the Zion Brotherhood, on the lines of the Independent Order B’nai B’rith, and later the Brotherhood developed into the Roumanian B’nai B’rith, of which he was for many years Grand President. He was awarded the Gold Medal of the Order B’nai B’rith for eminent services on behalf of the Roumanian Jews, being the second recipient of the medal, the first being ex-President Taft of the United States.
Dr. Stern was from the beginning an active fighter for the cause of Jewish emancipation in 1878, with Disraeli and Pismarck as its dominating figures, he was present as the representative of Roumanian Jewry, and did a great deal to influence Disraeli, M. Waddington, the French representative, and other delegates, to take up the cause of the Roumanian Jews and to secure the adoption of the Berlin Settlement, which states that “hereafter in Roumania difference of faith shall keep no one from acquiring civil and public rights”. The question of the emancipation of the Roumanian Jews was thought to be settled with that, and one effect of the provision was the naturalisation of Jews. Dr. Stern himself was naturalised in 1880, and opened a law office in Bucharest. He encountered great difficulties, however, as the first Jewish lawyer in Bucharest, and he describes these in his memoirs. Nevertheless, he made a big reputation as a lawyer, and he also published a number of annotated law books, which became known as “The Code Stern”.
He continued his efforts to obtain complete emancipation for the Jews of Roumania, not only on paper, and he conducted a campaign against the Jewish persecution in the country, on account of which he had to leave Roumania in 1894 to escape an attack organised against him by the Roumanian students. A proposition was made to exclude him from the practice of the law, but this was defeated in Parliament by a small majority. As the antisemitic laws increased and made life unbearable for the Jews, Dr. Stern saw the need for a purely political organisation, and in 1909 he founded the Union of Roumanian Jews. In 1915 he secured the interest of the late Luigi Luzzatti, the Jewish Prime Minister of Italy, for the protection of the Roumanian Jews, and in 1916 he went to Italy at Luzzatti’s invitation, and stayed there until the signing of the peace. On returning to Roumania he was elected a member of Parliament.
Dr. Stern also made a big reputation for himself as an author. In addition to his memoirs, he published a number of books, and he translated Shakespeare into Roumanian and he also translated some of the Roumanian writers into German.
The late Mr. Lucien Wolf, who was in Bucharest in 1924, speaking at a gathering arranged in honour of Dr. Stern by the Roumanian B’nai B’rith, at which a marble bust of him was unveiled, said, in conveying the greetings of the Anglo-Jewish Community, that Dr. Stern had been an example and an inspiration to the Jews throughout the world.
In recent years, Dr. Stern, who continued, despite his advanced age, to follow political and Jewish developments with close interest, became attached to the Zionist movement, and when the Jewish National Party of Roumania was formed he became its Honorary President. His son, Dr. Stern, is the Secretary of the Party and was one of its candidates at the last Parliamentary elections in May.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
