Eduard Schopf

Eduard Schopf (born July 8, 1893 in Hockenheim ; † June 10, 1935 in Mözen near Bad Segeberg ) was a German businessman in Bremen and founder of the Eduscho company .

Life

Eduard Schopf came from a Catholic family. His father Georg (1856-1919) was a coal merchant and innkeeper in Hockenheim, where he also co-founded the trade association and was a member of the citizens' committee from 1903 to 1912, the expanded city council. In 1883 he married Elisabetha Hartmann (1858–1909). In addition to Eduard, the couple had nine other children, two of whom died young.

Eduard Schopf trained as a businessman at Volksbank Hockenheim. Before he took part in the First World War from 1916 to 1918, where he belonged to a Prussian telegraph battalion , he worked for a construction company in Rastatt. There he met his Protestant wife Friedel Hildebrandt (1896–1987), whom he married in 1922. At this point he was already living in Bremen. The couple had three children.

Eduard Schopf died at the age of 41 in 1935 of a heart attack while swimming in Lake Mözen near Bad Segeberg. In Mözen he and his family were invited to his friend and business partner Bernhard (Bernd) Rothfos .

plant

Eduard Schopf began his professional career as a businessman in Bremen in 1920 with a fuel and building material trade. Later he took part in a small grocery store in Bremen. He saw a market opportunity in the direct shipment of typical Bremen imported products such as coffee , cocoa and tea . He supplied the consumers with coffee, which was previously roasted by wage workers . At first his company was a one-man business, where he put together the shipping packages himself in the laundry room of his rented apartment. Schopf's customer orientation was exemplary, so he delivered his coffee even to the most remote places. This enabled his company to grow rapidly.

In 1924 he founded his own coffee roasting company, maintaining his sales strategy of exclusive mail sales and not opening any branches. He initially called his company ESB (Eduard Schopf Bremen). Since 1925 he used the acronym Eduscho (originally written eduScho ), derived from the first letters of his first and last name.

Schopf took over Siedentopf GmbH in 1928 in order to run another large coffee roasting plant in addition to Eduscho and to dispatch tea, cocoa and chocolate.

After his early death, his wife Friedel continued the company and rebuilt Eduscho after the main building had been completely destroyed in World War II . Bernd Rothfos was given a general power of attorney for the Bremer roastery and the guardianship of his son Rolf (1928–2018), who took over the management of the company in 1952 until the company was sold to Tchibo in 1996/97 .

In 1996, Rolf Schopf transferred the Caffeine Compagnie in Bremen- Sebaldsbrück to his son Bernd Schopf , which developed into the world market leader in the decaffeination of coffee and tea, a process that had been developed by Ludwig Roselius between 1903 and 1905 .

Honors

• The Eduard-Schopf-Allee in the Überseestadt of Bremen was named after him. The former administration buildings, which today form the coffee district , are located on this avenue .

literature

• Rolf W. Maier: Eduard Schopf - A Hockenheimer founds the coffee empire Eduscho in Bremen , Badische Heimat , issue 1, 2016, pages 139–153
• Thomas Schaefer: Who is where? Celebrities at Bremen cemeteries . Siepmann und kurz , Bremen 1998, ISBN 3-933410-00-2 .

Web links

• Takeover of the Siedentopf company by Eduard Schopf