Josef (Seppl) Adler was born on December 17, 1903 as the first child of the cattle dealer Emanuel Adler from Schonungen and his wife Bella, née Steinberger. Josef Adler was a cousin of Jack Steinberger. His mother was a sister of Jack Steinberger’s father. Josef attended Schonungen elementary school, year 1 of Schweinfurt Realschule and in 1914 moved to Kissingen Realschule, which he finished with good results in 1920. During that time he lived with Herr Nußbaum in Salinenstrasse 15. “After that he became an apprentice as a painter but worked as a bank accountant afterwards.”

At the beginning of the Nazi regime, he was arrested for three weeks, then left Germany immediately and went to the Netherlands where he met his wife Henriette (Henny) De Groot (1908-1983) and married her on February 12, 1936. Shortly after their marriage the couple emigrated to South Africa, where Joseph Adler founded the painter and decoration company “Adler and Heinemann” together with Werner Heinemann. Whereas the Adlers had lived the lives of strictly orthodox Jews in Europa, they joined the “United Johannsburg Jewish Reform Congregation” in South Africa, which practised a modern, liberal form of Jewish life. Their children Peter Emanuel and Stephen Simon were born in 1939 and 1943.

Joseph Adler died on March 31, 1975 at the age of 72, his wife survived him by eight years: She died on October,4, 1983 at the age of 75. Some of their offspring have been living in Australia since the 1970s.