Harry Fuld

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Harry Fuld (born February 3, 1879 in Frankfurt am Main , † January 26, 1932 in Zurich ) was a German entrepreneur . He founded a company for renting house telephones , which developed into one of the leading companies in the telecommunications industry in Europe. After the seizure of power of the NSDAP early 1933 the expropriated Nazi regime Fuld's heirs, because the family was considered "Jewish."

Life

Fuld was the only son of a wealthy Frankfurt art and antiques dealer and was supposed to join the family's own art and antiques shop, J. and S. Goldschmidt . After a bank apprenticeship in Frankfurt and traineeships in London , Paris and Brussels , there was no room for him in the family business. He then began to rent house phones based on the American model. After clarification of the law, these systems were 1900 post officially admitted.

Together with the German master watchmaker and technician Carl Lehner (1871-1969), Fuld founded the German private telephone company H. Fuld & Co in Frankfurt am Main in 1899 . In 1928/1929 this was converted to H. Fuld & Co. Telephon- und Telegraphenwerke AG and, after Fuld's death, to National Telephon- und Telegraphenwerke GmbH . After an order boycott and the subsequent “ Aryanization ”, Telefonbau und Normalzeit GmbH (T & N) emerged in 1937 . The "normal time" refers to the production of electrical works and station clocks .

Around 1925, a large part of the private telephone systems inside and outside Germany were manufactured and maintained by his company. In 1928, Fuld's rapidly expanding company had developed into a group with over 100 companies and an extensive network of branches. By 1930, Fulds Gesellschaft was one of the leading companies in the European telecommunications industry.

Harry Fuld collected modern art and was advised by the then director of Frankfurt's Städel Art Institute , Georg Swarzenski built up an extensive collection whose fate to the more spectacular cases of looted art is part of recent times. After Fuld's death on a business trip in Switzerland in 1932, his sons Harry and Peter Harry Fuld and his widow inherited the company and the art collection. While the company was already "Aryanized" in 1933, the authorities confiscated the stored property of Fuld's son Harry Jr., who had emigrated in 1937, in 1941 , including the painting Le Mur Rose by Henri Matisse , which Harry Fuld senior had bought in 1917 . It came into the possession of Kurt Gerstein in 1943 , was considered "ownerless" after his suicide in 1948 and was only restituted to the heirs of Fuld in 2008 . After lengthy negotiations, Peter Harry Fuld received his limited partner's participation in the company Telefonbau und Normalzeit GmbH back in 1951.

literature

  • Leo Parth: Harry Fuld. A life sketch. (Private print by H. Fuld & Co., Frankfurt am Main) o. V. (Stalling), o. O. (Oldenburg) o. J. (1933).
  • Franz Lerner:  Fuld, Harry Herz Salomon. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 5, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1961, ISBN 3-428-00186-9 , p. 725 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • "Tremendous need for telephone traffic". Telenorma, founded by the young Harry Fuld as a company for in-house telephone systems. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , No. 235 of October 10, 1991, p. 46.
  • Caroline Flick: Looted art is an example. Harry Fuld, Hans W. Lange, Kurt Gerstein and Herni Matisse “Le Mur Rose”. In: Yearbook for Westphalian Church History , Volume 105 (2009), pp. 419–486.

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personal data
SURNAME Fuld, Harry
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German entrepreneur in the telecommunications industry
DATE OF BIRTH February 3, 1879
PLACE OF BIRTH Frankfurt am Main
DATE OF DEATH January 26, 1932
Place of death Zurich