Oscar Hammerstein II Mathias by his first wife, and James Hammerstein by his second wife, with whom he also had a stepdaughter, Susan Blanchard. Hammerstein was one of the most important "book writers" in Broadway history – he made the story, not the songs or the stars, central to the musical and brought musical theater to full maturity as an art form. According to Stephen Sondheim, "What few people understand is that Oscar's big contribution to the theater was as a theoretician, as a Peter Brook, as an innovator. People don't understand how experimental "Show Boat" and "Oklahoma!" felt at the time they
Baumwollspinnerei Hammerstein changed in a 1930 referendum to Wuppertal (“Wupper Valley”). The Hammerstein manor house controlled much of the valley floor of the Wupper. In 1825 it gave its name to the in , that still stands on the "Hammersteiner Allee", and to a station of the suspension railway. Sonnborn itself gave its name to the on the autobahn 46 and autobahn 535. Downhill from the Villa Hammerstein, the businessman Johann Christian Jung built the weaving sheds and the cotton mill "Baumwollspinnerei Hammerstein" alongside the Wupper between 1835 and 1837. He included workers accommodation in the form of an apartment block. The