Philipp Stahl was born in Bad Kissingen on January 26, 1864 as the first child of the cattle dealer and shoemaker Lämlein Stahl and his wife Karoline née Gutmann.  The family lived in “Judenhof” (small ghetto in the old part of Bad Kissingen) in Bachstrasse where Philipp grew up with his two younger brothers Hermann and Josef. Just like them, he attended Kissingen Realschule, the predecessor of contemporary Jack-Steinberger-Gymnasium. He entered class 5 in October 1877 and obviously graduated in August 1879.

Philipp Stahl got a training as a merchant and according to an entry in his family document of 1899, lived “in South Africa (Senekal) since 10 years ago”. He had emigrated to South Africa in November 1890 together with his sister Ernestine, who married Siegmund Oppenheim, a merchant from Eschwege. Presumably he worked there in the company of his brother-in-law, who had made great wealth in Senekal within a few years in the grain trade. Senekal is a small town in the Orange Free State that was drawn into the turmoil of the Anglo-Boer War around 1900. When the previously neutral Orange Free State sided with the Boers, the British declared war on the Boer Republics. The Boers were hopelessly outnumbered by the British and had to surrender in 1902. All of South Africa was now under British sovereignty. In addition to the Anglican and Dutch Reformed religious communities, there was also a Jewish community in Senekal, which included Philipp Stahl, his brother-in-law Siegmund Oppenheim and the latter's brothers Hermann and Adolf.

In August 1899, Philipp Stahl briefly returned to Germany and married Theresie Kohl from Kleineibstadt in Bad Kissingen, the daughter of the merchant Seckel Kohl and his first wife Fanny Ambach. Her father was a respected citizen of his community - his example shows how well integrated the Jewish minority (at that time about 20% of the population) had been in the village. Seckel Kohl was head of the Jewish community's cult in the 1870s and was named as Kleineibstadt's deputy mayor in 1889.  
Philipp and his wife Theresie moved to South Africa soon after, where their three children were born: Ernst Ludwig (*1902), Otto (*1906) and Vera Fanny (*1910). The further life of the family is only known fragmentarily.

In 1941, Vera married Dr. Georg Löwenthal in Johannesburg, a renowned Berlin lawyer who had become known in the Weimar Republic for defending mainly communist defendants. In 1933, he was to defend the Dutch communist Marinus Van der Lubbe, who was accused of setting fire to the Reichstag. When the Gestapo heard that he was defending, they went to his home. But neighbours warned him and so he was able to flee in time to Paris and then to Amsterdam. In 1935, he finally emigrated to South Africa, where he called himself George Lowen. After World War II, he became a dedicated defender of black rights against apartheid policies and represented numerous opponents of apartheid in court, including mandates on behalf of Nelson Mandela's lawyers. (More details on George Lowen's extraordinary biography and personality in a BBC report by his grandson Mark Lowen).

Philipp Stahl's eldest son Ernst Ludwig developed a great fondness for German literature and language at an early age. His teachers in Senekal and at the University of Cape Town recognized his abilities early on, and at their instigation he began studying German at Oxford, Heidelberg and Bern. After completing his doctorate, Ernest Stahl was an internationally renowned literary scholar and lecturer at the Universities of Birmingham and Oxford. He died at the age of almost 90 in September 1992. A brief tribute to his scholarly expertise and fascinating personality can be found in an obituary published by the British Internet newspaper "Indepent."

There is only uncertain and contradictory information about the life of the second son Otto. He too may have emigrated. On "Familysearch" there are in any case two relevant passenger lists, according to which he is supposed to have emigrated in April 1936 to England and/or in 1949 to New York, and a burial document, according to which an Otto Stahl born in 1906 was buried in February 1981 in Johannesburg. It has not yet been possible to clarify whether this is Philipp Stahl's son.

Philipp Stahl died in February 1946 at the age of 82 at Senekal, his wife Theresie died a few years later in March 1950 in Johannesburg.