Paul Stern

Paul Stern (4 April 1892 – 12 June 1948) was an Austrian international bridge player and lawyer, who fled to London in 1938.

According to his obituary in the Contract Bridge Journal:[2]Paul Stern - whose "Dr." was a so inseparable part of his name that he signed the most casual post-card with the prefix - was, both in his early life and in his exile, an unforgettable figure.

He was tall, burly, irascible, with a voice so rough, a temperament so volatile that half the people who saw him called him a dictator; but with a charm so great, a sweetness so unexpected that even those he castigated seldom bore malice for long.Stern was a member of the Austria open teams who won the first two European championships, 1932 and 1933, under the auspices of the International Bridge League in Scheveningen, Netherlands, and in London.

Culbertson traveled with four players, as usual —Ely and Josephine at one table, Helen Sobel and Charles Vogelhofer at the other— and it was widely thought at the time that this quartet was not America's best.

[10] A dictatorial leader, Stern insisted that his players adhered with rigidity to his system, but his over-emphatic statements and instructions were tempered by an underlying warmth of personality.

[12] When Germany annexed Austria in 1938 (Anschluss), he returned his military medals, awarded in World War I and which included the Golden Merit Cross with Crown awarded for the highest level of bravery in the face of the enemy, to the Nazi authorities and included an insulting letter.