Stefan Stenzel was born on February 29, 1884, in
Kolomea, in the family of a leading pharmacist
Edward Stenzel. Then he studied at the Chemistry Department of the Faculty of Philosophy of the
Francis I University of Lviv, finishing a master's degree of pharmacy. Presumably, for this thesis at the
University of Lwów, Stefan Stenzel received the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in 1908, as evidenced by the newspaper "Gazeta Lwowska" of June 14, 1908. Dr. Stenzel also worked as a "scholar" in the chemical laboratory of the university. According to the decision of the District Court of Kolomyia on June 8, 1911, he officially inherited the pharmacy of his father Edward, who had died a year earlier, near the city hall. In December 1913, he became deputy head of the Catholic relief fund "Wyłom" in Kolomyia. Also during his stay in his hometown, Dr. Stenzel was a member of the Tatra Society and the Society of Public Schools. During the
First World War, Dr. Stenzel appears in the memoirs of Jadwiga, the daughter of the owner of the roof tile factory, A. Wimmer. It happened in the summer of 1917, when Russian army, fleeing from Kolomyia, burned down Wimmer's wooden villa in A. Tchaikovsky Street. At that time, Stefan Stenzel, Jadwiga's uncle, sheltered the entrepreneur's family for a while in the pharmacy building. Little Jadwiga remembered the moment when the pharmacist made cough drops: Stenzel poured thick honey-colored syrup onto a long table covered with tin, then, when the syrup solidified, he cut it into small cubes, making a net with a knife. These drops seemed very tasty to the child. During the war, his pharmacy was not damaged by Russian soldiers, as evidenced by the German-language newspaper "Pharmaceutische Post" of August 25, 1917. Remaining the owner of the pharmacy in Kolomyia, in 1919 Stefan Stenzel moved to
Lwów, where he bought the pharmacy at the building at Hetmanska Street, 8 from Josef Groblewski. On the ground floor of Stenzel's pharmacy, medicines were manufactured and sold, and on the first floor, the owner's family lived. Later, the family moved to a villa at what is now Konovaltsa Street, 100. In May 1922, he became a member of the Pharmaceutical Chamber of Eastern Lesser Poland. In the late 1920s, he was the secretary of this society together with Dr. Otmar Tenecki. In February 1929, he joined the management of the so-called "labor courts". Stefan Stenzel was well-versed in the manufacture of cosmetic creams and other skin care products. Stefan Stenzel's patented Benignin face cream, designed to eliminate freckles and sunburn, which were undesirable at the time, was also a hit, and was popular at the time of the opening of the Lviv pharmacy, as it was created by Edward Stenzel, Stefan's father. ==Stenzel's hobby of cars==