Cornelius Stuessgen

Cornelius Stüssgen (born May 8, 1877 in Dormagen ; † June 24, 1956 in Cologne ) was a Rhenish trading entrepreneur and founder of self-service shops .

biography

When Cornelius Stüssgen was born in Dormagen on May 8, 1877, his father Joseph Stüssgen ran a locksmith's shop there, and his mother Maria, nee Pütz, sold household items. A few years later the family moved to Stommeln , where Joseph Stüssgen took over the parental locksmith's shop. However, he soon decided to move to the economically thriving Cologne-Ehrenfeld . After completing an apprenticeship in the Cologne grocery store Daniel Lippmann , Stüssgen founded his first grocery store at Venloer Strasse 466 on August 28, 1897, together with his mother and sister. Under the name Cologne consumption Institution distribution business coffee, rice, noodles cheap, Petroleum and Tran . At that time, Stüssgen sold a pound of green coffee for one mark; Peas and beans cost 15 to 20 pfennigs a pound. At that time a herring cost five pfennigs at the Cologne consumer institute. The shop opening hours were from 4 a.m. to 11 p.m., including Sundays and public holidays.

In 1899, Cornelius Stüssgen opened his first branch in Brühl . In 1903 the company was renamed "Rheinisches Kaufhaus für Lebensmittel". A year later, the young company already had twelve branches. Stüssgen found the constant weighing, measuring and packing of the goods to be no longer up to date. His customers then received goods that had already been packed in the warehouse. He created the private label "Cornelia" which he with a S was marked.

Gravestone of Cornelius Stüssgen in the Melaten cemetery in Cologne

On January 1, 1928, Cornelius Stüssgen converted his business into a stock corporation, Cornelius Stüssgen AG, with a share capital of one million marks. Cornelius' sister, the widow Maria Geyr, had a 20 percent share. In 1929 the company received a new headquarters in Cologne-Braunsfeld . Stüssgen had four automatic packing systems built here in the 1930s, each with a daily output of ten tons. The goods on each floor were collected and checked by roller - skating magazines before they left the warehouse . Stüssgen had record music played over Pantophone loudspeaker systems, which he wanted to increase work performance. In the egg department alone, 60,000 eggs were checked and sorted every day. At the end of 1933, Cornelius Stüssgen AG had 150 branches in Rhineland, Westphalia and Hessen-Nassau. He built the Cologne wine cellar by basing the company headquarters in Cologne-Braunsfeld and storing wine .

The company suffered severe damage in the Second World War. Both the headquarters in Cologne and half of the branches were destroyed in 1945. The 68-year-old Cornelius Stüssgen began the reconstruction immediately. In 1948 his company was able to operate 82 branches again. In 1950 he founded the first so-called "Tempo store", in which there was only one central cash register and the customer no longer had to have the seller write down the individual goods. In 1952, Stüssgen fundamentally changed the grocery trade when he opened the first self-service shop in Brühl.

In the last years of his life, Cornelius Stüssgen was consul of Haiti . Cornelius Stüssgen died on June 24, 1956.

family

Cornelius Stüssgen was married and the father of the daughters Mary and Sylvia. Marys was married to the Cologne architect Peter Neufert . The daughter Dr. Sylvia Berger-Stüssgen was actively involved in the company and was Chairman of the Supervisory Board until the company was sold in 1989. When economic problems arose for the company in the 1970s, the family first tried to get Cornelius Stüssgen AG, which was also called the "Emperor of the Cologne Bay", to overcome these problems by building a drugstore chain, hypermarkets and discounters to free. However, this failed. In 1984 it was decided to sell 51 percent of the company to the Rewe Group . Finally, Stüssgen's widow and her two daughters also sold the remaining block of shares worth 55 million marks to the Rewe Group. This restructured the company and until 2006 retained 46 branches with the name "Stüssgen - The Freshness".

Individual evidence

1. ^ German biography: Stüssgen, Cornelius - German biography. Retrieved April 13, 2018 . 

literature

• Bernhard Mux: Cornelius Stüssgen from Dormagen is considered to be the founder of self-service shops. Roller skates were a must before the food retail revolution. In: Neuss-Grevenbroicher Zeitung of July 30, 1998
• Eva Lanzerath / Ulrich S. Soénius: Cornelius Stüssgen - successful and innovative entrepreneur. Published by the Cornelius Stüssgen Foundation at the Cologne Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Cologne 2009 [also in: Yearbook of the Cologne History Association e. V., 80 (2009/10), pp. 87-100, ISBN 978-3-89498-254-6 ]

Web links

• Early documents and newspaper articles on Cornelius Stüssgen AG in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .