Inge Marx, married Stanton, 1930-2023

Inge Stanton passed away in Sarasota/Florida shortly after her 93rd birthday in February 2023. With her passing, Lichtenfels lost one of the last witnesses to the Nazi dictatorship in the region.

Born in Lichtenfels in 1930, she grew up as the daughter of the Jewish merchant Alfred Marx and his wife Ellen, née Bamberger. The Marx family ran a trading business for hides, furs and butcher's supplies in the so-called Guthmann Villa at Bamberger Straße 19. Inge Stanton, who retained a crystal-clear moral judgement to the end, recounted the beautiful aspects of her childhood as well as the increasing discrimination and attacks by Nazi authorities and Nazi supporters. The highlight was the attack by Nazi hordes on the family home on the night of 9/10 November 1938:

Photo: Inge Marx, 9 years old

„In 39, when they had the crystal night, I remember it very, very clearly because it was a particular frightening time. The Nazis broke down the door, came into the house, destroyed whatever they could, every piece of glass, every dish was thrown through the windows. My mother had a beautiful rose garden, she was a rose person, and all our dishes and whatever that was breakable went through those windows and destroyed her rose garden. My sister and I went up into the third floor, where we had my grandmother’s apartment and we had a non-Jewish tenant in the other half because she didn’t need the whole floor. They were very gracious and kind, they took us in and we hid up in the attic. I was the oldest at nine at that point, I had lots of little cousins and it was my job to keep them quiet and behaved. When they went looking for us, the tenant said: “Oh, there’s nobody here”. He wasn’t Jewish, he was known to all the people there and we came through it fine. But I still cringe any time any glass gets broken, I hear all the glass in our house being thrown through the windows, every window was broken, every piece of glass in the house. Through the windows. Not open windows. Through the windows.”

Photo: The Marx family home at Bamberger Str. 19

The family managed to flee Germany in 1939, first to Great Britain and then to the USA in April 1940, where they were able to build a new life with great difficulty. Inge's parents settled in the New York borough of Queens. Inge's father Alfred founded his own hide and fur trading company, utilising his knowledge and contacts in Germany, especially Lichtenfels. Inge was able to study and became a specialised teacher for children with reading difficulties. She married Erwin Stanton. This marriage produced two daughters - Suzanne and Nancy.

Photo: Inge Marx as a teenager

Inge had already visited Lichtenfels with her husband in 1994 and with her family in 2016. Rachel Schlesinger, Inge's granddaughter, made a short film about the 2016 trip, which can be viewed at https://vimeo.com/195914950.

The reason for a real homecoming was the "13 driving licences" project run by Meranier-Gymnasium in 2018 in close cooperation with the district of Lichtenfels. Among the documents found in the district office was Inge's father Alfred Marx's driving licence. The students tracked down the family in the USA, and Inge Stanton willingly helped reconstruct the family history with a wealth of materials and precise memory.

In November 2018, she, 88 years old, came with family members to the opening of the exhibition "13 driving licences. Thirteen Jewish Fates" and the laying of Stumbling Stones in Lichtenfels. She gave an impressive speech in which, on the one hand, she did not relativise what had happened and, on the other, expressed her willingness to work together in the face of a changed Germany. And she put this into practice: the connection, even friendship, with many seminar participants did not break off until her death.

Inge Stanton was an impressive personality to whom Lichtenfels owes a great deal.