Dressler cigarette factory

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The Cigarettenfabrik Dressler KG was founded in Dresden on August 4th 1929 by Arthur Dressler and his limited partner Ernst Stephan from Weißig / Königstein. This included the cigarette company Sturm GmbH as a marketing company . The company produced cigarettes to be smoked in the Sturmabteilung (SA). Therefore the company was considered the SA cigarette factory.

history

Establishing a new cigarette factory was difficult at the end of the 1920s because the market was competitive and large tobacco companies held significant shares ( oligopoly ).

Dressler, who had many friends in the SA , came up with the idea of ​​starting a cigarette factory and creating several special new brands. a. the names "Sturm", "Trommler", "Alarm" and "Neue Front" and are made into "standard cigarettes" of the SA. At the mediation of the parliamentary group leader of the Saxon NSDAP , Manfred von Killinger , Dressler suggested to the SA chief of staff Otto Wagener , who lives in Munich , that the SA should urge its members to only smoke these brands. Dressler wanted to make some of the profits available to the SA leadership.

Wagener and the NSDAP found this idea interesting, because the SA had hardly any income of its own until then and was financially dependent on the NSDAP. Therefore Wagener and the NSDAP leadership even pledged funds for the construction of the factory. However, since the NSDAP could only raise 30,000 Reichsmarks, an entrepreneur from Dresden named Stephan was won over to support the project. The friend of the NSDAP and founder of the station book trade Jacques Bettenhausen from Dresden, credited a sum of 500,000 Reichsmarks. In the commercial register the name of the founder Dressler stood for marketing the "was cigarette factory Sturm GmbH " was founded. The SA leadership tried internally to ensure that members of the SA would only smoke cigarettes from the Sturm cigarette factory. The SA was prohibited from consuming other cigarettes. Marketing was also carried out under the trust-free label , which almost all of Dresden's cigarette factories were at the time. Dressler was particularly keen on aggressive “anti-Semitism” in marketing, as the larger Dresden cigarette factories were owned by Jewish citizens.

When the limited partner Stephan left the company in March 1931, Otto Wagener and the syndic Eberhard Groos from Dresden took over his shares with a contribution of 5,000 Reichsmarks each . Both left in 1932. Wagner's place was taken on April 14, 1932 by the Munich attorney Rudolf Karpf, who was also a member of the NSDAP. Since the company's business was very positive, Dressler made his wife and three underage children limited partners in November 1932 with a deposit of RM 10,000 each.

After the " Röhm Putsch " in June 1934, Dressler's good contacts with the SA and the high SA leaders became worthless: They were shot, eliminated, Manfred von Killinger was kicked out, and Chief of Staff Wagener had lost his office earlier. This gave the Reemtsma the opportunity to get rid of these competitors. After Reemtsma asked the new Chief of Staff Viktor Lutze , the latter was ready to break ties with Dressler if Reemtsma paid the same amount to the SA as before Dressler - around 250,000 RM. Reemtsma agreed and the SA ended the contracts with the Dressler company.

Since the Dressler's brands, no longer tied to a main customer, turned out to be virtually unsaleable on the open market, the company went bankrupt .

Reemtsma produced the SA cigarettes from 1935 and paid a fixed sum every year - for 1934 it was even 250,000 RM retrospectively - to the SA.

literature

  • Thomas Grosche: Arthur Dressler. The Sturm company - cigarettes for the SA. In: Christine Pieper, Mike Schmeitzner, Gerhard Naser (Eds.): Braune Karrieren. Dresden perpetrators and actors in National Socialism. Special edition for the Saxon state center for political education, Sandstein Verlag Dresden 2012, ISBN 978-3-942422-85-7 , pp. 193–199.
  • Henry Ashby Turner : Otto Wagener: Hitler's forgotten confidante. In: R. Smelser et al .: Die brown Elite II. Darmstadt 1993. S. 246f.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Erik Lindner: The Reemtsmas - History of a German family of entrepreneurs. Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 2007, ISBN 978-3-455-09563-0 , pp. 69ff.
  2. ↑ Thomas Grosche: Arthur Dressler: the company Sturm - cigarettes for the SA. In Christine Pieper, Mike Schmeitzner, Gerhard Naser (eds.): Braune careers. Dresden perpetrators and actors in National Socialism. Special edition for the Saxon state center for political education, Sandstein Verlag Dresden 2012, ISBN 978-3-942422-85-7 , pp. 193f.
  3. ↑ Dr. At that time, Eberhard Groos was authorized signatory of Jacques Bettenhausen , see Dresden 1931 address book, commercial register, p. 5 .
  4. ↑ Thomas Grosche: Arthur Dressler: the company Sturm - cigarettes for the SA. In: Christine Pieper, Mike Schmeitzner, Gerhard Naser (Eds.): Braune Karrieren ... Dresden 2012, pp. 194–195.
  5. ↑ Erik Lindner: The Reemtsmas - History of a German family of entrepreneurs. Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 2007, ISBN 978-3-455-09563-0 , p. 131ff.
  6. ↑ Michael Prellberg: Group picture with a cigarette - From the small tobacco shop to the largest German cigarette company: Erik Lindner tells the story of the Reemtsmas as a family chronicle with a sweet aroma. Review of the book Erik Lindner: Die Reemtsmas - history of a German entrepreneurial family. Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 2007, ISBN 978-3-455-09563-0 . In: Financial Times Germany. June 22, 2007. Online access via Internet archive ftd.de on June 21, 2007: Group picture with a fag ( memento from February 11, 2013 in the web archive archive.today ). Accessed August 20, 2014.