Kenneth Stern obituary

The Guardian

12-03-2025

My father, Kenneth Stern, who has died aged 96, came to the UK in 1939 as a 10-year-old refugee from Nazi Germany, and in later life played a key role in fostering relations between the place of his birth, Hamburg, and his adopted home of London.
He lived a stone's throw from Marble Arch in central London for more than half of his life, but it was not until retirement that he became more involved in local affairs, largely through the circumstance of acquiring a dalmatian, William, whom he walked through Hyde Park.
Subsequently he became a member of the London Diocesan Synod of the Church of England and chairman both of the Hyde Park Estate Association (1995-2000) and of the Friends of Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens (2000-05), helping to raise the latter's membership from 250 to 1,000.
Born into a middle-class non-observant Jewish family in Hamburg, he was the second son of Ilse (nee Schoening) and Walter Stern. Always adaptable, once in the UK he learned English quickly (although, as someone once observed, he 'lost his German accent and never quite found an English one'), and converted to Christianity.
After attending Uppingham school in Rutland, he went to Oxford University in 1949 to read law at Worcester College, afterwards becoming a member of Lloyds of London and working as an insurance broker alongside his father at Bleichroeder Bing until retiring in the mid-1970s.
Keen to acknowledge the strong links that for centuries had existed between London and Hamburg, Michael Savory, the 2004 Lord Mayor of London, tasked Kenneth with arranging for a delegation from Hamburg to take part in the Lord Mayor's Show of that year. The move was a great success, and the Hamburg Chamber of Commerce continued to take part in the show for a number of years, while various lord mayors were invited to the Hamburger Morgensprache, an annual festival dinner descended from the 13th-century business meetings of the same name attended by Hamburg merchants living and working in London.
Kenneth loved London and Hamburg in equal measure, visiting his birthplace frequently and only stopping when ill-health made all foreign travel impossible. It was a source of pride and joy to him when in 2014 the senate of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg presented him with the Silver Portugaleser, one of its highest awards, for his services in fostering links between the cities.
His marriage to my mother, Elizabeth (nee Benett), ended in divorce. He is survived by me.