AB Citroen

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AB Citroen

logo
legal form one-man business
founding 1871
resolution before 1940
Seat Berlin
Branch Fur manufacture, fur wholesale, fur dyeing

The company AB Citroen was one of the founders of the Fur Engros Confections and the most prestigious fur clothing company in Berlin , the former center of the German Konfektions - and fur industry .

Founding years

Abraham B. Citroen

In 1871, the Dutchman Abraham B. Citroen (* 1847; † June 9, 1928 in Berlin), described as "small and skinny", opened a skinning workshop on Werderstrasse in Berlin . When the French capital Paris, where he had worked as a journeyman, was threatened with enclosure in the Franco-Prussian War (1870 to 1871), he first went to Brussels, where he was well received as a capable worker. After the end of the war he moved on to the German capital to set up his own business in the vicinity of the fabric manufacturing companies. He received plenty of orders from the expanding textile industry and "people appreciated his correct manner, punctuality and were amused by the somewhat difficult handling of the German language". After a few years he was already buying large quantities of furs himself at the fur center in Leipzig's Brühl and stocking the coats with his own goods.

Obviously, Citroen was very innovative right from the start-up phase. Probably dated slightly too early, it says in a specialist article: “In 1870, at the instigation of AB Citroen, Berlin, in the sewing machine factory of Joseph Priesner, Berlin, the first attempts were made to manufacture a machine that produced an overly sewn seam for fur . “In any case, the single-thread machine, which is derived from a glove sewing machine, was awarded first prize at the World Exhibition in Paris in 1873. The fur sewing machine revolutionized the fur industry within a short time and made modern fashion with fur possible at an affordable entry price for almost everyone. In 1878 an Abraham B. Citroen from Berlin had a cigarette mouthpiece patented in the USA.

In 1878 the AB Citroen company moved to larger rooms on the second floor of the new high building at Jerusalemer Straße 18. The fur manufacturers of that time mainly worked for the so-called trimming business of fabric manufacturing. They sold all kinds of skins in various widths by the meter, " swan trimmings " made from the skins of the great French geese and finished collars of all kinds, men's and women's hats and sleeves . These articles were widely exported, especially to England.

Until the First World War

In 1882, the nephew Hendrik (Roelof) Citroen (* January 18, 1865 - October 9, 1932) also Dutch, son of Roelof Barend Citroen and Lena Citroen , joined his uncle's company. He took care of the international business and traveled to all customer countries. When he was still old, he visited customers in London with his collection. A son of Hendrik Citroen, called Peli in the family , and his Dutch wife was Paul Citroen (1896–1983), a well-known painter, draftsman, photographer and art teacher. Born and raised in Berlin, he worked in the Netherlands for most of his life.

The company had developed brilliantly on its own. “» ABC «had become a name, a concept in Germany”. The boss knew how to train a lot of capable young employees, "who earned their first spurs with him", then continued their training in other global companies in order to then become self-employed - or start with the main competitor H. Wolff , where they could do better Found prospects for their advancement. In 1886, as usual, only male employees worked at the standing desks in the office. In 1896 the first female typist and accountant came to the company. After the First World War, women soon “broke the supremacy of the accountant” everywhere, and he was only used for auditing the accounts.

In 1887 it moved again in order to complete the second, third and fourth floor of one of the architect Alfred Messel built modern Werder homes , Werder Markt 7, opposite the Reichsbank and the "Emperor Bazar", later opened against even the clothing store Gerson . The wholesale business was handled from here until the end.

After the First World War

The Berlin address book from 1915 is listed by AB Citroen at Werderscher Markt 7, 2nd floor with the owner Hendrik Citroen, it also names the authorized signatory G. Mühlenthal as well as M. Wollenberg and Benno Citroen . Hendrik Citroen's factory was located at Derfflinger Strasse 21. In 1933, many clothing companies, including the Citroen company, had to vacate Berlin's oldest quarter due to the new building of the Reichsbank. Quite a few of them had been here for fifty years.

Around 1924 there was no longer any demand for one of the industry's major sales drivers for several decades, the fur set for women and girls, consisting of a fur hat, scarf and muff, and possibly gloves. This gradual change in fashion was barely noticeable during the years of hyperinflation with a heyday of the fur industry and what appeared to be huge earnings. Shortly before the turn of the 20th century, garments with the hair facing outward had found their way into modern fashion for the first time, initially as capes and jackets, later also coats. Some important companies now turned to the pure fur trade and thus achieved world renown. Others stayed with the fur processing and had to switch to the much more difficult and risky subject of fur manufacture. In 1924, larger fur manufacturers, including AB Citroen , joined the Association of Berlin Tobacco Manufacturers , which had been founded four years earlier .

Over the years, AB Citroen has not been able to keep up with other, younger companies and sales have steadily declined. The son Benno Citroen “stood in the shadow of his uncle Hendrik Citroen as long as he was in his father's business. He didn't let any employee do anything independently - nothing happened without his express permission ”. Since Benno Citroen was not allowed to become a partner either, he left the company and started his own business. The junior was very solid and correct in his business conduct, but his company remained small in the twenty years of its existence. In 1937, four years after the National Socialists came to power, Benno went to Holland and ran a rawhide trade there.

In the 1920s, Hendrik Citroen's son, Hans Citroën (1905–1985), brother of the artist Paul Citroen , worked as his father's “right hand” in the AB Citroen company (the “ ë ” with the Trema in the name has the family only increased before they fled to France, similar to that of their French relatives). Since he learned languages ​​quickly, he was often sent to England, where the company had "its best and most loyal customers", to London, the second world fur trade center next to Leipzig and New York. As a Dutchman, he didn't need a passport or visa anywhere. In October 1925 he married Franziska-Margarete Vallentin (1906–2002), who came from a family of artists. She was also artistically gifted, had taken part in a Bauhaus apprenticeship at a very young age and has always been particularly interested in creative weaving. Around 1931, Hans took over the entire management. "Despite the deteriorating conditions in Germany, ABC was doing relatively well in business," was the later assessment of Hans' wife Ruth.

In early 1933, however, the difficulties came when the National Socialists began to show an interest in the company with its owner of Jewish origin. Probably out of consideration for his Dutch citizenship, only one National Socialist, previous employee was appointed as the "provisional" managing director. With the right foresight, Hans Citroën decided to leave their actual homeland as quickly as possible with his wife and daughter Charlotte , named Dolly after her middle name (in Israel then Tamar ). Her first path led her to Paris via Holland. For the time being, Hans Citroën remained the owner of his company. Later he was forced to "sell the whole business with all the precious reserve material for 1000 marks to the" so loyal "former employee" In 1934 his son Vincent-Raphael was born in Paris , and in May 1939 his daughter Eliane was the third child .

Hans Citroën opened a small fur shop in Paris, which some of his former French customers also came to. The name Citroën was also helpful to the family everywhere; it was actually quite closely related to the important car manufacturer André Citroën . The cousins ​​Hans and André were descendants of the Amsterdam jeweler of the same name.

In 1942, the family had to flee again from the Germans invading Paris, and under repeatedly dramatic circumstances they came to Switzerland. Because of the good sales figures, Hans Citroën was able to sell the Paris store for a normal price. "Apparently, German officers and other Nazis had already bought expensive fur coats for their wives and mistresses without knowing or without wanting to know that this Citroën business was a Jewish business, because of course they could no longer get anything like this in Germany" , so the wife.

Company closure

AB Citroen and various other clothing companies still list the fur specialist directory from 1938 at Krausenstrasse 33. Philipp Manes , whose father's career in the industry began in 1886 as an accountant at Citroen, named Erich Schreitmüller, the successor to AB Citroen, who manufactured trimmings and trimmings in his own workshop for Berlin in 1940/1941 as the successor to AB Citroen. Manes, himself a Jew and still living in Berlin, avoided direct references in his history of the fur industry to the circumstances of the often compulsory takeover of Jewish businesses by Aryan entrepreneurs. He introduced the chapter “The New Era”, in which this change of ownership is also noted: “The Winckelmann book from 1930 lists the impressive number of 175 companies in Berlin tobacco merchants and representatives. You don't need a book to find the ones that remained from 1940; you can count them on the fingers of one hand. ”Philipp Manes was deported soon after completing his biography and murdered in Auschwitz in 1944 .

Hans Citroën decided in 1940 to study economics and not return to the fur industry. From 1947 until a successor organization was formed, he was a member of the newly founded UN refugee organization IRO . In 1952, the couple emigrated to Israel following their children. As is customary in Israeli diplomatic circles , the family changed its European name and was now called Cidor . Hans, now Chanan Cidor, got a job in the Israeli Foreign Ministry after just a few months. In 1957 he was appointed Israeli ambassador to the Netherlands, where the couple represented the State of Israel until 1963. Chanan (Hans) Cidor died in Jerusalem in 1985. Ruth Cidor-Citroën, as she is called in her posthumously published memoir “From the Bauhaus to Jerusalem: Stations of a Jewish Life in the 20th Century”, died in February 2002 at the age of 96, also in Jerusalem.

Personal details

Martha Bräutigam worked for AB Citroen in the 1880s. She started her own business on the floor in Motzstrasse in Berlin and soon enjoyed an excellent reputation as a fur model house in the high-quality genre, also thanks to her master craftsman Otto Berger , who later ran Edelfurze Berger, one of the leading fur houses.

Carl Weg joined AB Citroen in 1905 after spending his apprenticeship in fabric manufacture. He looked after the city customers and traveled Germany. In doing so, he gained knowledge and business connections that enabled him to set up his own company, Weg & Hanke , in 1920 together with his colleague Hanke . However, the expected private customers did not materialize. But the wholesaling business needed stripes again, which was once a specialty of AB Citroen. “The young boss saw his great opportunity here; with ardor he pounced on the article, which he mastered like no other. It was cut and sewn in our own workshop, and soon word got around in Germany and abroad, in Kommandantenstr. 84 a company is growing up that delivers promptly, reliably and inexpensively. The turnover from exports in 1925/26 was around Rm. 60,000 and went mainly to Holland, Sweden and Buenos Aires . ”Ms. Hanke left the business in 1928. When trimmings were no longer so popular, he switched to fur clothing. After the fur material became scarcer before the beginning of the Second World War, he remembered his apprenticeship years and produced fabric coats.

Adolf Franken was a nephew of AB Citroen. Along with a native of Mannheim Hans A. Frank he made in fur wholesale with the company Hans A. Frank & Co. independently. The latter had taken over the management of the Berlin branch of the tobacco shop Samuel & Rosenfeld , which was closed at the time, in 1908 . The company Hans A. Frank & Co. dealt mainly with the import of Chinese and Japanese fur types, lambskin loops for glove leather were also imported from South America . After the end of the First World War, the partners separated.

A Frieda Vallentin is the author of an article in the specialist magazine “Die Pelzkonfektion” from March 1925, entitled “Wiener Chic im Pelz”, with a fashion sketch probably made by the author. On the side in front of it there is an advertisement from "AB Citroen, Furware Factory".

The "Abraham Citroen" dye works

Obituaries Abraham B. Citroen

As part of his company, the founder of ABC Citroen, Abraham B. Citroen, dealt intensively with fur dyeing, initially in a modest workshop on Berlin's Lohmühlenweg. Around 1895 he succeeded there a great success when he managed the original Nerzfarbe on Fehfell fabrication standard apply a development of nearly two decades. "This showed the paint industry new paths and Germany was finally freed from the compulsion to dye brown near Lacourbat (in a company founded in 1860) in Lyon".

The management of the company AB Citroen had gradually passed to Hendrik Citroen and the "old Citroen", as he was now commonly known, "devoted himself almost exclusively to his favorite occupation, dyeing". Far outside, at the Schlesisches Tor , he had opened a fur processing factory “and worked there tirelessly like the least of his workers at the vats to uncover the secrets of color”. Despite great diligence, AB Citroen did not make progress, its attempts cost a lot of money and large lots of rotten skins had to be replaced. He was looking for a mink color that was durable and should always come out evenly from the dye bath. There were big arguments with his nephew, who no longer wanted to bear the losses. Since AB Citroen did not want to give up the factory, the partners separated and the dye works was named Abraham Citroen .

Ultimately, however, Abraham was successful in his endeavors. The color called "Mink 3", "the mink color", made him "a rich man" - until he lost almost everything again during the inflationary period. After he left the company at the age of 75, the dyeing factory was continued with great success by “capable specialists”: “AC dyed fine colors on noble goods”. When Abraham B. Citroen died in June 1928, the owner of the Abraham Citroen dye works was Wolfgang Rawack. In 1934, the Abraham Citroen company, Sebastianstraße 34, advertised that it was Berlin's oldest fur dye factory.

AB Citroen spent his last years with his partner, "Grandchildren cheered his old age". One son owned a large fur shop in Bordeaux , the other had started his own business in Berlin. The business address can be found in a list of Jewish businesses that was created between 2005 and 2012: Benno Citroen , Sebastianstraße 34 in Berlin-Kreuzberg.

Abraham B. Citroen died on June 9, 1928 at the age of 81 of an old heart condition in a sanatorium in Berlin-Lichterfelde, where he had been cared for since his 80th birthday.

literature

Ruth Cidor-Citroën: From Bauhaus to Jerusalem: Stations of a Jewish Life in the 20th Century . Library of Memory, Wolfgang Benz (Hsgr.), Center for Antisemite Research at the Technical University of Berlin, Metropol Verlag, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-936411-39-5

Web links

Commons : AB Citroen  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Emil Brass : From the realm of fur . 1st edition. Publishing house of the "Neue Pelzwaren-Zeitung and Kürschner-Zeitung", Berlin 1911, p. 238-239 .
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h Philipp Manes : The German fur industry and its associations 1900-1940, attempt at a story . Berlin 1941 Volume 4. Copy of the original manuscript, pp. 14–16, 320, 327. ( → table of contents ).
  3. ↑ Without the author's name: 100 years of Rittershausen fur sewing machines . In: All about fur internationally . No. 4 , 1970, pp. 215 .
  4. ↑ Figure and text of patent no. 205,475 of July 2, 1878. (English).
  5. ^ Philipp Manes : The German fur industry and its associations 1900-1940, attempt at a story . Berlin 1941 Volume 1. Copy of the original manuscript, p. 155 ( G. & C. Franke collection ).
  6. ↑ Afstammelingen van Roelof Jacob Raphael Limoeneman Citroen - joodsamsterdam.
  7. ^ Philipp Manes : The German fur industry and its associations 1900-1940, attempt at a story . Berlin 1941 Volume 4. Copy of the original manuscript, p. 390.
  8. ↑ www.bilderbuch-berlin.net: picture Werderhaus with company sign AB Citroen, fur goods . Last accessed March 18, 2018.
  9. ↑ Ruth Cidor-Citroën: From the Bauhaus to Jerusalem . P. 73.
  10. ^ Address book Berlin 1915.
  11. ^ Address book Berlin 1915 .
  12. ↑ a b c d Philipp Manes : The German fur industry and its associations 1900-1940, attempt at a story . Berlin 1941 Volume 3. Copy of the original manuscript, pp. 197, 211 ( → table of contents ).
  13. ^ Philipp Manes : The German fur industry and its associations 1900-1940, attempt at a story . Berlin 1941 Volume 1. Copy of the original manuscript, pp. 12, 119 ( G. & C. Franke collection ).
  14. ↑ Cidor, Hanan Aharon , in: Werner Röder, Herbert A. Strauss (ed.): Biographical manual of German-speaking emigration after 1933. Vol. 1: Politics, economy, public life . Munich: Saur 1980, p. 111.
  15. ↑ Ruth Cidor-Citroën: From the Bauhaus to Jerusalem . P. 76.
  16. ↑ Ruth Cidor-Citroën: From the Bauhaus to Jerusalem . Pp. 52-53, 56, 65.
  17. ↑ Illustration in: Die Form. Journal for creative work. Edited for the Deutscher Werkbund by Dr. Walter Riezler. Issue 10, 1930, May 15, 1930. Berlin, Reckendorf.
  18. ↑ Ruth Cidor-Citroën: From the Bauhaus to Jerusalem . Pp. 73-76, 79.
  19. ↑ Ruth Cidor-Citroën: From the Bauhaus to Jerusalem . Pp. 94, 111.
  20. ↑ Ruth Cidor-Citroën: From the Bauhaus to Jerusalem . Pp. 66, 81.
  21. ↑ Ruth Cidor-Citroën: From the Bauhaus to Jerusalem . P. 86.
  22. ↑ Ruth Cidor-Citroën: From the Bauhaus to Jerusalem . Pp. 139-140.
  23. ↑ Guide through the Brühl and the Berlin fur industry , Werner Kuhwald Verlag, Leipzig 1938, p. 85.
  24. ↑ Ruth Cidor-Citroën: From the Bauhaus to Jerusalem . P. 146.
  25. ↑ Ruth Cidor-Citroën: From the Bauhaus to Jerusalem . Pp. 222-223.
  26. ↑ Anja von Cysewski: Afterword . In: Ruth Cidor-Citroën: From the Bauhaus to Jerusalem . Pp. 265-268.
  27. ^ Philipp Manes : The German fur industry and its associations 1900-1940, attempt at a story . Berlin 1941 Volume 4. Copy of the original manuscript, pp. 99-100.
  28. ^ Philipp Manes : The German fur industry and its associations 1900-1940, attempt at a story . Berlin 1941 Volume 3. Copy of the original manuscript, p. 202.
  29. ↑ Frieda Vallentin: Viennese chic in fur . In: Die Pelzkonfektion Nr. 1, March 1925, Berlin, pp. 32–34.
  30. ^ The advertisement of AB Citroen on page 31 of Die Pelzkonfektion
  31. ^ A b Philipp Manes : The German fur industry and its associations 1900-1940, attempt at a story . Berlin 1941 Volume 2. Copy of the original manuscript, pp. 19, 142 ( G. & C. Franke collection ).
  32. ↑ "Bm.": Abraham B. Citroen died . And Abraham B. Citroen's obituary notice. In: Der Rauchwarenmarkt No. 71, Berlin and Leipzig, June 14, 1928, 2. 71–72.
  33. ^ Advertisement by Abraham Citroen , 1934.
  34. ↑ www2.hu-berlin.de: Jewish commercial enterprises in Berlin-Kreuzberg 1930 to 1945 Last accessed March 16, 2018.
  35. ↑ Philipp Manes: Abraham Citroen . In: Der Rauchwarenmarkt No. 72, Berlin and Leipzig, June 18, 1928.