On 9 October 2026, a stumbling stone was laid for Ida Herz. Sponsors were Michaela and Conny Regus. Ida Herz created a large collection about the life’s work of the author Thomas Mann. Herz fled in 1935 via Switzerland to London.

Ida Herz was born on 18 October 1894 in Nuremberg, as the daughter of Moritz and Lina Herz, née Beselau. She trained as a bookseller in Nuremberg and worked for a time at the famous antiquarian bookshop “Joseph Baer & Co” in Frankfurt, before she returned to her home town in 1928.

As she by chance met the author Thomas Mann in 1924, began for her a lifelong mission: The creation of an extensive private collection about the life’s work of the Nobel Prize winner, assembled in her apartment at Zufuhrstrasse 15.

In the 1930s, as Herz became the target of the Gestapo and the SA and was arrested in 1934, she hid part of her collection in the French consulate in Munich and fled in 1935 via Switzerland to London. Before she left, she sent Thomas Mann, who had gone into exile in 1933 in Switzerland, 33 crates with books and household items.

In England she continued to expand her collection. Herz died on 25 February 1984 in London.