Leo (Lev) Stein was born in Cologne on March 24, 1904 as the son of the Jewish merchant Louis Stein and his wife Helena née Blum. In Leo’s birth certificate one finds “artist” as his father’s profession. His mother Helena was a Catholic, her son Leo is always described as “Israelite”. 

In April 1928, Leo Stein moved to Bad Kissingen for the first time. The young director of music found his employment as a conductor in Kissingen Kurtheater. Leo Stein, who took turns in conducting the Munich Philharmonic in Kurtheater with Fritz Schmidt-Westendorf and Dr. Franz Wödl, could quickly establish himself in the spa town. After the end of the spa season, which was identical with the season of the Kurtheater, he moved back to Cologne. At the end of 1928, he married Lydia Brandt in Weiden/ Upper Palatinate. She was a Protestant who had been born in Atsch in the district of Aachen and lived in Upper Palatinate with her parents. In the following years till 1932, the young couple lived in the Lower Franconian spa during the spa season and spent the winters in Cologne till 1930, then in Würzburg. In these summer months they lived in Hartmannstrasse 27 with the Director of the State Spa Theatre Otto Reimann. In the following five years, the celebrated conductor Leo Stein and the director Otto Reimann formed a very successful pair whose performances of operettas were equally appreciated by the critics and the audience as the enthusiastic reviews in “Kissinger Kurzeitung” show. One of the highlights was surely the musical direction of the operetta revue “Through 25 years” as part of a festive ball in Regentenbau celebrating the 25^th anniversary of Kurtheater in June 1930 in the attendance of Alfred Nobel (See: H.-J. Beck, Kissingen war unsere Heimat).

After the end of the season of 1932, the Stein couple checked out for Würzburg presumably without suspecting that that had been Leo Stein’s last season in the Franconian spa. Why Otto Reimann didn’t offer him a renewal in spite of the big successes he had been able to celebrate in Bad Kissingen in the previous years, can’t be said for sure. But maybe it isn’t wrong to assume that Stein’s Jewish descent may have played a decisive role in that. The beginning of the spa season and, therefore, of the Kurtheater in 1933 occurred at a time in which the Nazi dictatorship had already found its bearings. A Jewish conductor was no longer bearable for the Weltbad (world spa) Kissingen and the director Otto Reimann (See ibid.).

The Stein couple later (at least in 1935) moved to Berlin and lived in the bohemian and artsy quarter in Motzstrasse 22 in an apartment building by the Berlin architect Gustav Gebhardt that is protected as a monument nowadays. According to the Berlin directory, Leo Stein still lived there in 1941. In the directory of 1943, his name is no longer to be found, but the one of his wife Lydia can be found at this address. It is sure that Leo Stein survived the Nazi Era – where and under what circumstances hasn’t been found out so far. He died on July 15, 1958 in Berlin-Schöneberg.