Josef Stahl was born in Bad Kissingen on January 23, 1868 as the youngest child of the cattle dealer and “shoemaker” Lämlein Stahl. The family lived in “Judenhof” (small ghetto in the old part of Bad Kissingen) in Bachstrasse where Josef grew up with his two older brothers Hermann and Philipp. Just like them, he attended Kissingen Realschule, the predecessor of contemporary Jack-Steinberger-Gymnasium. He entered it in October 1878 and stayed till class 3 in the school year of 1880/81.

Josef Stahl got a training as a merchant, performed his military service and moved to Nuremberg. There he married Nuremberg-born Anna Marx in May 1897. After the wedding he obviously moved into her hometown, where he received citizen’s rights in 1912. Their only child – son Walter – was born there in 1905.

His further life can only be patchily reconstructed. Anyway, the family managed to escape from Nazi Germany in time. Josef Stahl and his wife initially emigrated to Meran. In June 1938 - when the situation became increasingly dangerous there as well – Josef and Anna Stahl emigrated via Neapel/ Naples to New York where they found an apartment and got their naturalization as American citizens. Their son Walter, who obviously had lived in Italy for a longer period of time and had become an Italian citizen before his emigration, had also emigrated from Naples to New York in 1936 with his wife Edith, née Silberthau, and their then two-year-old daughter Eva.

And the elder son Leo Josef Stahl, a chemist by profession, had already left for the USA in 1924 and applied for naturalization there. However, this obviously did not happen, because Leo later stayed in Europe - still as a German citizen. At the end of 1936 he lived - like his parents - in Merano and emigrated in January 1937 via the Italian port of Genoa to New York. In April of the same year he married, but died already in March 1938.

Josef Stahl and his wife Anna first went to Merano. His sister Ernestine, née Oppenheim, her husband Siegmund and their eldest daughter Auguste had also found refuge here. 

In June 1938 - when the situation in Italy was also becoming increasingly threatening - Josef and Anna Stahl emigrated via Naples to New York, where they found an apartment and received naturalization as American citizens. Nothing is known about their further life so far.