Ernst Stiefel was born in Mannheim in 1907. He received a law degree from the University of Heidelberg and praticed in Mannheim for two weeks in 1933 before he was disbarred. He obtained law degrees from the University of Paris and the Middle Temple in London, as well as an advanced degree from the University of Strasbourg, he practiced briefly in France and Engalnd before he immigrated to New York in 1939. He was an adviser to the Allied military government in Germany after World War II. He practiced law in New York and maintained an office in Duesseldorf, focusing largely on Germany. He also published on legal issues on taught at New York Law School. He died on a trip to Germany in Baden-Baden in 1997