Karoline (Lina) Stern, née Mainzer was born in Bad Kissingen in September 1865 as the daughter of Löb Mainzer and his wife Jette (Sabine), née Löwenthal. In the files, different dates of her birth are to be found (On the registration card of the Municipal Archive of Fulda, the birthday of Karolina Mainzer was later corrected from September 19 to September 16. In the Kissingen birth register, September 13 can read.) Karoline’s father is mentioned there as a “Ökonom” (farmer) and house owner, at other places he is to be found as a cattle dealer (student’s file of his brother Sali, Jack-Steinberger-Gymnasium).

In 1888, Karolina married Emanuel Stern, the son of a factory owner from Fulda. They had seven children, but two of the girls already died as infants. In Fulda, the Stern family belonged to the most respected and best-known Jewish families. In 1894, Emanuel Stern and his brother Max took on “Lack- und Farbenwerke Stern AG” (lacquer and paint works), which had been founded by their father Hirsch. They expanded the firm into a flourishing enterprise that was also able to withstand the difficult years of World War I and the “Weltwirtschaftskrise” (Depression). Since 1901, the family lived in Karlstrasse 10 in Fulda in an ornate, imposing residence.

Karoline’s husband was not only very successful in business matters but also showed great commitment in Fulda’s Jewish Community who elected him chairman of the Cultural Community. He held this office for nearly 40 years. Emanuel Stern died in January 1930 at the age of 74. His wife Karoline outlived him by four years: She died on November 3, 1934.

Fortunately, all her children could leave Germany in time and emigrate to England and the USA respectively. Obviously, they had inherited the entrepreneurial talent of their father. His son Theobald had already worked in the management of his father’s lacquer factory in the 1920s. Then, the members of the extended family of Stern had been forced by the “Aryanization” policy of the Nazis to sell their shares to the Rhodius firm below value. Now Theobald established a new factory for the production of lacquers in Cardiff in Britain’s South West together with his cousins Simon, Fritz and Willi. His brother Siegfried had been a car dealer till his emigration in 1933. And his younger siblings Max and Gustav first founded a weaving mill for scrubbing cloths and later had the unusual idea of establishing a firm who exported budgies to the USA in a big way.