The Julius Stern Institute, founded in 1850 as the Stern Conservatory, is part of the Faculty of Music at the Universität der Künste Berlin (University of the Arts Berlin) and is one of Germany's largest and most renowned institutions for the promotion of young musical talent. Currently, 81 particularly gifted children and young people between the ages of 9 and 19 receive a comprehensive musical education. The support consists mainly of intensive, age-appropriate individual lessons.

Additional courses in music theory and ear training, playing in chamber music ensembles and in the Julius Stern Chamber Orchestra as well as regular performance opportunities within and outside the university round off the musical education. Numerous students at the Julius Stern Institute have won prizes at national and international competitions.

Prof. Doris Wagner-Dix was director of the institute from 1999 to 2009. Prof. Anita Rennert took over as director in 2010. Since 2024, Stefan Lietz has been director of the Julius Stern Institute.

The Stern Conservatory of Music, Berlin's oldest conservatory, was one of the most important European music schools of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Due to the catastrophes of German history, it has been marked by many disruptions. Despite its changed institutional structure, the Julius Stern Institute remains a successor institution to the Conservatory.

The conservatory was founded on November 1, 1850 as a music school for singing, piano and composition by Julius Stern, Adolf Bernhard Marx and Theodor Kullak. The private initiative was intended to replace a state conservatory, the founding of which had failed at the beginning of the 1940s. The establishment of the conservatory became the life's work of singing teacher and choirmaster Julius Stern, who was appointed sole director in 1857.

After his death in 1883, Stern's sister-in-law and pupil Jenny Meyer took over the management of the conservatory. Bruno Walter, a student at the conservatory, later wrote in his memoirs: “The school was characterised by a romantic classicism that was still holding back the triumphant advance of wagnérisme; the ‘solemn, somewhat melancholy seriousness’ of the principal embodied this spirit” (cf.: Bruno Walter: Thema und Variationen. Frankfurt/M. 1960, pp. 13-64.).

Jenny Meyer was succeeded in 1894 by the composer, conductor and violinist Gustav Hollaender, who ran the institute until his death in 1915. He modernised the conservatory both musically and in terms of organisation and created a thriving business conservatory that managed without any financial assistance and was supported by the bourgeois prosperity of the Wilhelmine era. Under Hollaender's direction, the conservatory experienced its heyday. Since it was housed in the Berlin Philharmonie in 1899, attendance rose to more than a thousand students a year. Among them were numerous foreign students whose music studies brought them to the metropolis of Berlin. After Hollaender's death, the institute was temporarily renamed the “Stern'sches Konservatorium der Musik Gustav Hollaender”.

In addition to the musicians already mentioned, Robert Radecke, Friedrich Gernsheim and Alexander von Fielitz were among the conservatory's directors. Renowned artists such as Hans von Bülow, Hans Pfitzner and Arnold Schönberg, Edwin Fischer and Claudio Arrau taught students such as Otto Klemperer, the Japanese music scholar Shohé Tanaka and the chansonette singer Trude Hesterberg.

After the National Socialist “Machtergreifung” or seizure of power in 1933, the conservatory was aligned with the Nazis. The American composer Ruth Schönthal, who died in 2006, described her school years as a Jewish girl in Berlin and a student of the conservatory: in 1936 she was expelled for racist reasons, the Jewish owners were expropriated and could only run the Hollaender Jewish Music School for a few years. The former owners and children of Gustav Hollaender, Kurt Hollaender and Susanne Landsberg-Hollaender, were deported and murdered like countless other teachers. The substitute conservatory in the capital of the Reich, run by supporters of the National Socialist regime, was nowhere near as important as the Stern Institute.

After the end of the Second World War, the Municipal Conservatory in (West) Berlin was given the additional name “ehemals Stern'sches Konservatorium” (formerly the Stern Conservatorium). In addition to the link to tradition, this expresses a certain historical continuity: although the National Socialists destroyed the intellectual substance of the Stern Conservatory, the school continued in municipal hands - it was succeeded by the Municipal Conservatory.

This Municipal Conservatory was integrated into the then state college Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst (School of Music and Drama) in 1966/67 and the Julius Stern Institute was founded as an institution for the promotion of young musicians. The Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst merged with the Hochschule der Künste (School of the Arts) in 1975 and into the Universität der Künste in 2001.

In the 1990s, increasing emphasis was placed on the development of musical talent through early professional mentoring. The University's Faculty Council therefore decided to strengthen the Julius Stern Institute in 1998. In 1999, Doris Wagner-Dix took over the management of the Institute and founded the Julius Stern Chamber Orchestra. In November 2000, the Julius Stern Institute celebrated its 150th anniversary.

In January 2001, the first performance of the twelve cellists took place under the direction of Rudolf Weinsheimer, followed by numerous concerts by the young students both within and outside the UdK Berlin. In 2005, the European Circle of Friends was founded under the chairmanship of Ottokar Hahn. The current chairman of the board is Dr. Raimund Haje. Stefan Lietz has been director of the Julius Stern Institut since 2024.