After having had to leave behind their hometown of Tübingen, the Bernheim family lived in Stuttgart for a short while. There, they experienced the complete exclusion of Jewish people from public life. During a train journey from Berlin to Stuttgart, Adolph Bernheim was barred from the sleeping car and the dining car.

On the 9th of November 1938, the family’s situation worsened dramatically yet again. They were required to relinquish 20 per cent of their wealth as “atonement", and because they wanted to leave National-Socialist Germany, they had to pay a “Reich flight tax". This left the Bernheims with very little of their wealth remaining.