Curt Altmann

Curt Altmann (around 1920)

Curt Altmann (born February 18, 1883 in Altlewin ; † August 23, 1958 in Wunsiedel ) was a German merchant and textile entrepreneur .

Life

Curt Altmann first completed an apprenticeship in textile retail and gained further qualifications by working in leading fashion retailers in Berlin and various major cities in western Germany.

In 1911 Altmann and the businessman Willy Besser founded a factory for the production of leggings under the company Curt Altmann & Co. in Ilmenau. Production began in an empty factory and employed around a dozen workers. While Besser managed the factory operations, Altmann took over the sales of the products.

A great shortage of workers made it necessary to move a branch to the Chemnitz industrial area in 1919. Since the Müller & Schneemann company was up for sale in Lichtenstein-Callnberg in Saxony , Altmann quickly took hold of it. The company was expanded and the area of ​​work expanded specifically to include fashionable knitwear. It quickly became apparent that these rooms were also becoming too small. That is why Altmann bought part of the former Kühn'schen brewery in 1920. In the same year, the conversion and expansion into a modern knitwear factory began.

The knitting mill was incorporated into a stock corporation in 1928. Four larger knitwear manufacturers with eleven different production sites were involved in it. The first letters of the entrepreneurs Curt Altmann (Lichtenstein), CF Roscher ( Markersdorf ) and CL Wagner ( Calw ) formed the new name for the Alrowa company , which is still used today as the name for the factory building in Lichtenstein.

Altmann left Alrowa in 1933 and founded the ALDO knitwear factory Curt Altmann on his property in Chemnitzer Strasse in Lichtenstein-Callnberg . In 1938 a branch in Vienna was incorporated , the Jerlaine knitting and jersey factory Curt Altmann .

The end of the Second World War and the associated division of Germany brought about a break in the company's history. Altmann left his company and first settled in Vordorf near Wunsiedel in the Fichtel Mountains , where he had owned a small hunting lodge since 1938. He brought some of his knitting machines there towards the end of the war. At first he was unable to re-establish his business under the name Altmann. At that time it was called Strickerei Moser with the owners Eleonore Moser and Doris Bloch-Altmann, the niece and daughter of Curt Altmann, and was housed in the outbuildings attached to his hunting lodge. In autumn 1948 construction began on the large plant on Egerstrasse in Wunsiedel. The factory was put into operation in the spring of 1949. With the registration of D. Altmann AG as a commercial enterprise on July 1, 1949, the Moser knitting mill was converted into D. Altmann AG , which was founded on September 9, 1949.

Curt Altmann was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit 1st Class in 1953 .

literature

• Daniel Oelbauer: The textile pioneer Curt Altmann (1883–1958). On the story of a Thuringian-Saxon-Franconian entrepreneur. In: Archive for the history of Upper Franconia , Volume 86 (2006), pp. 395–408.

Web links

Commons : Curt Altmann  - collection of images, videos and audio files