Carl Laemmle and Sophie N‪.‬

My meeting with Sophie Nördlinger
G. Bayer
In the following few words, I would like to relay my meeting with
the last, Jewish owner of the inn Die Ochsen
(The Oxen) in 1989 in New York. Sophie Nördlinger knew Carl Laemmle personally
from Laupheim and thus piqued our interest for our research on
Carl Laemmle..Sophie Nödlinger, née Sänger, was born on April 4th, 1989 as
the only child of Albert († 1929) and Klara Sänger (née Einstein,
1865–1942). Sophie Nördlinger’s grandfather, Benjamin Sänger,
bought the Ochsen , known today as Zum Rothen Ochsen
(To the Red Ox), in 1860. The building was built around the beginning of
the 19th century.In an age without television, radio and internet, the Jewish inn
was a pivotal location for the small city of Laupheim’s cultural
and communal life into the 1930. It was a first-class house, as one
can see in a comical advertisement by the choir group
Frohsinn published in 1914. The popular inn had more to offer than just
a kitchen and its specialty “sour tripe”. For wedding and Purim
parties, however, the larger Jewish inn Zum Kronprinzen
(To the Crown Prince) was more popular. The reader familiar with the inn
today, Zum Rothen Ochsen , may find the list of the many rooms
amusing, even if the authors of the article meant to highlight this
ironically.

The painful fate of the emigrants
Between 1987 and 2003, and together with my husband, Udo Bay-
er, who passed away in 2015, I met a number of Jewish Americans
of German descent, both in the US as well as here in Laupheim, all
of whom were connected by their shared fate: due to the barbaric
Nazi terror of the Hitler era, they were forced to find a new home-
land. In the Hitler era, Jewish lives mattered little. Thus, as these
emigrants saw it, they had survived by chance.
Yet, when we met them, we sensed how much these events still
pained them inside like a thorn. Many had long repressed their
painful experiences. For some, it was the first time that they had
opened themselves up to Germans of today’s generation. Faltering,
they relayed what they experienced and their flight in these terri-
ble times. They were very thankful that we listened. Burned into
the memory of the survivors were both the incredibly emotional
events and, just as much so, their happy childhood memories from
their city of birth. ...