Erika Guttentag

September 15, 1916 – March 3, 2019

Erika Wolff Guttentag, 102, beloved wife, mother, grandmother, teacher, and friend died in her adopted home of Durham, NC last year. A longtime resident of Piedmont, California, where she lived with her husband and raised three children, Mrs. Guttentag taught for many years at the College Preparatory School in Oakland. Born in Germany, she lived long enough to travel by horse-drawn carriage as a child and then to teach computer skills to seniors in the Bay Area, where she lived for more than fifty years.

Mrs. Guttentag survived wartime Germany and after World War II met her future husband, Dr. Otto Guttentag, a pioneering medical ethics scholar and longtime faculty member at UCSF Medical School. He had fled Germany as a physician in 1933 and returned to help liberate the country as a naturalized U.S. citizen and captain in the U.S. Army Medical Corps. He and his wife-to-be met in Berlin in 1945. She immigrated as a war bride and they married in 1948 to embark on a new life in the Bay Area.

Mrs. Guttentag taught German at CPS for 19 years, inspiring generations of students with her enthusiasm, energy, intensity, and discipline. She adopted America wholeheartedly while infusing her home with German traditions. She loved opera, taught her children to speak German, rooted at Piedmont High football games when her sons played, and became an avid 49ers fan.

She adored being a wife and mother, pursuits she executed with energy, commitment and love, never shying from sharing frank opinions and sly humor throughout her life. She remained active after retirement, teaching computer skills at a senior center in Oakland and traveling to many parts of the world. In 2001, she gave up her Piedmont home and moved to Durham.

Otto Guttentag died at home in 1992. Mrs. Guttentag is survived by Maria Parker and husband Rod Parker of Durham, NC; Christoph Guttentag and wife, Cathy Clabby, of Durham, and their son Eren Guttentag, of Cambridge, MA; Lucas Guttentag and wife Debbie Smith of Albany, CA, and their sons Ben Goldenson and fiancée Kelly Nesseth of San Diego, and Nick and Ye-Hui Goldenson and their infant twins of Los Angeles; and extended family in Germany.

Mrs. Guttentag will be interred at the Presidio Golden Gate National Cemetery. An informal gathering to remember her will be held at the UC Berkeley Faculty Club on Saturday, April 4.