Marianne Steinberg Ostrand Collection

Marianne Steinberg was born February 2, 1911, in Altenessen, a borough of the city of Essen, to Alex and Selma (née Kaufmann) Steinberg. She had two elder siblings: Kurt (born 1906) and Charlotte (called Lotti, born 1908). In their household lived also Selma's sister Henriette (called Henny) and Alex's brother Hermann. Alex Steinberg was a grain wholesaler, and Selma and Henny had a manufactured goods store. The family's large apartment was located above this store.

After attending the Jewish primary school, Marianne Steinberg attended the Luisenschule (Städtisches Lyzeum und Oberlyzeum, a girls' high school), where she was elected prefect for several years and graduated with honors. She competed in several sports while in school, including tennis, swimming, triathlon, and running and belonged to her school's rounders team. She also traveled frequently as a young woman.

Although she at first wanted to study law like her brother, after a trip to Norderney where she saw a home for sick children, Marianne decided to study medicine instead. In summer 1930 she began her medical studies at the university in Freiburg im Breisgau, and continued her preclinical studies at the universities of Kiel and Würzburg. In summer 1932 she passed the preliminary medical exams in Würzburg, and began her practical training in Würzburg and Düsseldorf. In Würzburg she also worked as a dissecting demonstrator for anatomy and histology courses. In June 1933 her father died. She spent some time in 1933 and 1934 in England, where she worked as a cook and nanny. In December 1935 she passed the German state exams in medicine in Düsseldorf, but since she could not complete her medical studies in Germany due to being Jewish, she matriculated later that month at the University of Bern, financing her studies there with the assistance of a scholarship from the International Student Service. In February 1936 she passed the Swiss medical exams and was granted permission to begin work on her doctoral thesis. In August 1936 she returned to Essen, and from September 1936-April 1938 had an internship in internal medicine and gynecology and obstetrics at the Israelitisches Asyl für Kranke und Altersschwache. On April 11, 1938 she was informed by the German Ministry of the Interior that she had met the qualifications to receive a medical degree except for proof of German (Aryan) descent. Later that year she completed her thesis, titled Letzte Aufzeichnungen von Selbstmordern nebst kurzer Selbstmordstatistik der Stadt Bern 1929 bis und mit 1935 (Last notes of suicides including brief suicide statistics of the city of Bern from 1929 until and including 1935). She received her medical degree from Bern in June 1938 and that same month left for the United States, assisted by distant relatives who had previously emigrated.

Marianne Steinberg spent her first months in the United States studying to pass the New York State medical exams in order to practice as a physician, which she did in September 1939. At the same time she worked as a nurse for the elderly and also as a first-aid counselor at a girls' summer camp in Connecticut. After submitting numerous applications for internships, she was accepted at the Tewksbury State Hospital and Infirmary, where she had a rotating internship from December 1939-January 1941.

While Marianne was continuing her education her siblings were also leaving Germany. Her sister Charlotte had married her first husband Hans Kaiser Blüth and they had emigrated to Tel Aviv by 1935, where Charlotte opened a dental practice. On November 8, 1938 their brother Kurt was arrested and taken to the concentration camp at Buchenwald. His fiancée Hanna Levy eventually was able to free him at the end of the month; they joined Charlotte in Tel Aviv in February 1939. As news of the conditions in Germany spread Marianne and her siblings tried various ways to get their mother, aunt Henny, and aunt Emma Kaufmann out of Germany, at first trying to acquire American visas for them. After American consulates were closed in Germany Marianne pursued Cuban visas for them; Selma was issued a Cuban visa in November 1941 but Germany had by then refused to permit Jews to leave the country. In February 1942 Selma and Henny were sent to the Müngersdorf ghetto outside of Cologne, and in September 1942 were sent to the Theresienstadt concentration camp. They were later deported to Auschwitz.

By December 1939 Marianne Steinberg had met Arnold Oestreicher in Massachusetts. Arnold was a fellow immigrant born in 1911 in Leipzig who had studied structural engineering at the Technische Hochschule (technical university) of Berlin and later changed his surname to Ostrand. The couple married in March 1941 and would later have two children. Marianne became an American citizen in November 1943, Arnold the following April. After their marriage Marianne established a medical practice in their apartment in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan, where their living room doubled as a patients' waiting room, and the bedroom as her office.

In 1955 the Ministry of the Interior of North Rhine-Westphalia granted her a medical degree, retroactive to March 1938.

In 1957 the Ostrands moved to Englewood, New Jersey, where Marianne opened her own practice and also worked as an attending physician at the Englewood Hospital until her retirement in 1981. On May 28, 2002 she passed away in Maryland; Arnold passed away in Maryland in 2004.