Emil Brass

Emil Brass (born September 21, 1856 in Berlin ; † March 1938 there ), also Emil Braß , was a Berlin tobacco shop and author of specialist literature and editor of a fur magazine. His most important work was the standard work From the Empire of Furs . It described the history of the fur trade and the animal species used by the fur trade, for the first time and to this extent unique to this day. Despite his side entry into science, he was considered an equal expert among zoologists, geographers and anthropologists.

Life

Emil Brass, son of a furrier and tobacco merchant , attended the Kölln high school in Berlin up to the Obertertia and then the royal high school up to the Prima. In 1886 he married, his first wife left him and his only son, senior physician and deputy regimental physician, died in the First World War . Apparently nothing is known about his second marriage. In his spare time he did sports, especially water sports in all forms, and during his stay overseas he also went horse riding and hunting.

Philipp Manes , the fur journalist who was murdered by the Nazis , writes about Brass in the last years of his life : “Our generation only knew the 'old Brass', with his gray, slightly overgrown beard, the not very well-groomed clothes (how should they? Keeping bachelors scrupulously clean?) And the eternal cigarette in the corner of his mouth, [...] Brass was and remained closely connected to old Berlin, he knew everything and everyone. His love for everything that was called old Berlin was enormous, the purrs and stories when he began to tell endless. His phenomenal memory seldom left him and never deceived him. In the field of fur animal science there was no greater expert in the European world than Emil Brass. He just shook scientific papers out of his sleeves ”.

During the National Socialist era , he continued to flag in black, white and red . When his physical strength failed, colleagues from Berlin and Leipzig helped him. His last great joy was the participation of the industry on his 80th birthday. Manes concludes: “On March 12, 1938, we brought him to his final rest. The three of us followed the coffin. There were no more who knew about his death ”.

Tobacco shop

The father, master furrier Michael Brass (born June 16, 1813), opened a furrier business in Berlin in 1836. He recognized the problems of purchasing materials for retailers at the time. The trip by post from Berlin to the Leipzig fur trade center in Brühl took two days, with overnight stays en route. The goods were transported by truck, which took several weeks. It was a great relief when the Anhalter suburban railway was completed. But at first she only drove as far as Dessau , from there the stagecoach still had to be used. Brass therefore brought furs from Brühl for his furrier colleagues, making him the first fur wholesaler in Berlin. As early as 1840, the shop sign read "Kürschnerei und Rauchwarenhandel". Just two years later he acquired the property at Brühl 19 in Leipzig, albeit under the name J. Freystadt, Jewish traders were not yet allowed to own land in Leipzig at this time. The company on Berlin's Königstrasse also gained in importance through its Leipzig headquarters . The Leipzig company, founded in 1842, was later continued under the name B. Freystadt and Co (Bernhard Freystadt † 1921) by the owner's nephew and still existed in 1940. For 1856, the year Emil Brass was born, an inventory by Michael Brass listed: 65,000 thalers , finished goods approx. 20,000 thalers, cash desk and bills of exchange 18,000 thalers, outstanding receivables 10,000 thalers, liabilities 18,500 thalers. His customers included the Radziwiłł princes , the Heckmanns and many names in Berlin society. An increase in rent from 2500 to 18,000 thalers prompted him to give up the retail business and to devote himself entirely to the tobacco shop in Berlin and Leipzig.

Son Emil finished his apprenticeship at Easter 1876. He gave up his subsequent traineeship at the Leipzig branch of the American company Ullmann because he felt that he did not have enough opportunities there to acquire the desired knowledge about raw tobacco products. On April 1, 1877, he started working as a smokers merchant at DJ Lehmann (later Anton and Alfred Lehmann) . He then worked for a few months as a trainee in the London branch of the tobacco company Josef Ullmann, Leipzig and then for a year in the same position at N. Händler & Son, also in London. During this time in London he acquired the basis of his extensive knowledge of goods. Mr. Stamp, the senior boss of Blatspiel, Stamp & Heacock , took him to inspect the goods and, together with his brother and nephew, taught him the differences between the individual fur types, the fur characteristics of the places of origin, etc., a lesson like him a few members of the industry.

For further training he went to Paris, a coup d'etat did not allow him to find a job there, even without a salary, despite excellent recommendations, neither in the fur industry, nor in banks, grain shops and export companies. After six months of studying, he ended his stay in Berlin and in January 1878 joined his father's company, one of the oldest fur stores with a retail and wholesale business in Berlin and a tobacco shop in his own house at Brühl in Leipzig . Business had done well. The father reopened a retail store in Berlin and handed the management over to his son, who immediately tried to combine wholesale production with it and to increase exports. He started out with fur hats and children's wardrobes, which he sold well to London. Until then, the company had only exported Fuchsschweif and Fehboas to England. Foxtail boas were a favorite fashion item at this time, and Emil Brass praised his father that he was the first to have them produced in 1874. It was also fox and feudal tails that, according to his statement, made Emil Brass lose his entire fortune. After a competitor appeared and bought up the raw material, Brass was no longer able to deliver the promised half a million pieces at the agreed prices. He felt compelled to negotiate with his "English friends" and agreed on very large compensation payments. First, however, he expanded production to include all types of fur clothing, which were sold both in retail and wholesale to many countries, with England remaining the main export business. According to Brass, he and the AB Citroen company in Berlin were also the first to have fur coats made as ready-made clothing and keep them in stock, while the other furriers only worked to order. In addition to the branch in the London fur trading district around Garlick Hill , agencies were also in Hamburg, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Paris, Vienna, Milan, Vienna, Trieste, Manchester and Glasgow. The first exports of Chinese skins to Europe took place around 1860. Even with Brass import business grew, first in 1887, he led Chinese furs, Japanese marten furs , Japanese Seefuchsfelle , Tibet lamb skirts and -felle and another to Germany.

In 1882 he became an authorized officer of the company and in 1884 a partner. In 1886, the year he married, he took over the company as sole owner. In times of unfavorable economic conditions, he later had to give up clothing production again. In spite of all his talents, Emil Brass unfortunately lacked the business acumen of his father Michael: "He was a scholar who completely caught himself in his world of thought, forgetting time and reality."

Since the important export business was over and sales had shrunk a lot, in April 1891 he went on an extensive trip around the world with sample collections from German manufacturers to gain new business connections. He came through part of the United States and Canada. At that time only few immigrants arrived in Canada, in the vast prairies he often saw only herds of antelopes for days, but also the bones of the mass slaughtered buffalo, which were brought to the bone mills of Chikago by wagon on the only railway line. From British Columbia we went on to Alaska, through all of Japan, China, Manchuria , Korea (according to him, he and his companion were the first Europeans to visit the holy Kŭmgangsan mountains ), Saigon , Singapore , Penang , Burma , Indian suburbs and, most recently, Ceylon. 14 months after his departure, he started his journey home from there.

However, “uncomfortable family circumstances” prompted him to leave Berlin and settle permanently in Shanghai . From there he made regular trips to northern and central China, Japan (he was here seven times) and eastern Siberia. He ran a general import and export business in China and even ran steamers in coastal shipping for a while. During the Boxer Rebellion he became a member of the "Shanghai Volunteers" and received the China Medal after the end of the hostilities.

In 1902 he returned to Germany and ran a commission and import business, mainly importing tobacco products and decorative feathers from China, Japan and later also from Argentina . With the import of pahmi skins and other Chinese fur sorts to Germany, and thus partly also to Europe, he was also the pioneer here. His title of consul, of which he was very proud, came from that time in China.

In 1905 Brass successfully organized the employers' association against a serious strike. When the jewelry feather industry was “seriously threatened”, he organized the fight against the “extreme demands of animal rights activists” with the help of colonial society. In 1920 he was involved in the founding of the "Association of German Tobacco Companies", an interest group of tobacco dealers and representatives.

In addition to his studies, Brass ran his small tobacco shop compared to others. He received direct shipments from China - including tea boxes, the contents of which he sold to business friends. He never made a lot. In his departments he could not keep order, "since he did not accept any help, everything went haywire". Philipp Manes: “Whenever the creditors pushed too hard again, we friends took the lost cart in hand and refurbished its current handlebars. Nobody was angry with the old man if he didn't pay the bills at all or only partially. He had done so much for the branch that people tend to forgive his weaknesses ”.

• From: From the realm of fur , 1911
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  Image from Brühl

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  From the Nizhniy fair

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  Eskimos, the skins according to Nome (Alaska) have brought

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  Aleutian catch people on the Pribiloffinseln

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  Fell warehouse of a Chinese store ( Godown )

Scientific activity, author and publisher

Front page of the "Neue Pelzwaren-Zeitung and Kürschner-Zeitung" from August 16, 1926

Father Brass owned an estate in the then still rural Berlin district of Tiergarten . In his childhood Emil was already out and about from there on foot, by canoe, rowing boat or sailing boat and explored the Margraviate of Brandenburg and thereby acquired the basic knowledge of his later nature studies. In addition to his apprenticeship as a smokers merchant, he learned in his spare time in the Museum of Natural History, among other things, how to prepare animal hide. His interest in geography also began early, in 1874 he attended the meetings of the Geography Society for the first time . During his stay in England, the then twenty-year-old was elected as the youngest member of the “Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society ”, which meant a high social position in England. Mr. Harris, [ "and"?] The longtime secretary of the Hudson's Bay & Co also led him into the Cosmos Club one. As a specialty of his studies he chose the British North America, which later became a focus of his scientific work on the tobacco trade. In London the archives of the Hudson's Bay Company were open to him, he worked extensively in the library of the British Museum and the Royal Geographical Society. In Paris, while working in the French National Library , he copied valuable old maps; in addition to studying in the library of the Geographical Society there, he was also given all the help in the naval archives. During this time he attended lectures by the well-known zoologists Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire and Alphonse Milne-Edwards .

When he returned to Berlin, he used all the material available there for his work. Through his friend, the Africa explorer Otto Kersten , he became a member of the Geography Society in 1877 , of which he was a board member from 1919 to 1931. In the following year he and others founded the " Central Association for Commercial Geography and Promotion of German Interests Abroad ", which in the 1880s had over 5000 members worldwide. In April 1919 he took over its management. In 1904, together with Leo Korach, later continued by Brass, he founded the trade journal “Neue Furzwaren- und Kürschnerzeitung” in order to meet the needs of the rapidly developing fur industry. Brass was universally active in his studies; in addition to geography and zoology, he conducted research in history, ethnography, anthropology and prehistory and conducted language studies. He spoke English, French, Russian and Italian perfectly and understood Spanish well. He was still fluent in about a dozen languages ​​in old age. In addition to countless articles in the New Fur Goods. and Kürschnerzeitung, he published a number of other works and wrote for all specialist journals in the world. His most comprehensive and extensive book "From the kingdom of furs" was at the same time the thickest and most complete work in the fur industry at all; Manes described it in 1940 as "the only source of technical knowledge". Even if some things are classified differently in zoological terms, they are still informative today and, because they were written by a practitioner, easy to read. It is almost certainly not only in the western world that nothing comparable has appeared to this day.

The most striking event in the history of the fur industry was the Internationale Pelzfach-Ausstellung (IPA), a large-scale trade show that was held in Leipzig for four months in the summer of 1930. During the preparation period, the organizers brought Brass to Leipzig. Here he worked in all scientific departments, "his advice was obtained wherever one did not know what to do next". The fact that he was needed again made him very happy.

From the realm of furs

Book cover from the 1924 edition

The standard work "Aus dem Reiche der Pelze" appeared in two editions, the first with 709 pages in April 1911 by the publishing house of the "Neue Pelzwaren-Zeitung and Kürschner-Zeitung". Both editions are divided into two so-called volumes combined in one book: Volume I: “History of the tobacco trade”, Volume II: “Natural history of fur animals”. Brass had previously published parts of the book in the Neue Pelzwaren-Zeitung.

Although richly illustrated, the photos do not appear to be from Brass himself; it is also not noted whether he is shown on any of the photographs. In the foreword he thanks Mr. Harris from the Hudson's Bay Company, the tobacco merchant and refiner Thorer and the tobacco merchant and Leipzig chinchilla fur specialist Peter Gloeck for making recordings available .

The first volume of the book deals with the history of the tobacco trade. A special focus is the fur trade in North America, which is closely connected with the development of the continent. Fur hunters and traders are among the most important discoverers and pioneers of the European settlement of the country. It was similar with the Asian parts of the Russian Empire, 7 chapters are devoted to the Russian tobacco trade. The fact that Brass also devotes a somewhat larger contribution to the German fur trade is not only due to its origins and its readers; in its time, until the Nazis came to power, Leipzig was the leading world trade center for tobacco products, at times even ahead of London. The extensive statistical part formed the basis for many works by other authors on the fur trade. In the second volume, Brass deals, for the first time in this detail, with all the animals traded in the fur industry and, for the most part, also with the animal species that can be used for fur processing. He describes the different skin qualities, the trading history of the respective skin type and the significance for the fur industry at the time and allows his personal experiences to flow into it.

It was not until December 1924 that the 859-page and partially updated edition appeared. In between was the period of inflation , which had prevented a new edition for economic reasons. After his long stay in China, Brass used his newly acquired knowledge and above all enlarged the section on the Asian fur trade. China had only just started exporting and Brass was involved with some initial imports to Germany. The second and last edition of the book has apparently been printed in quite large numbers. After the end of World War II , a Berlin heiress still had 1,000 books that were previously unbound, half of them with water damage. These all came, now bound, to a specialist publisher and second-hand bookshops around the 1950s. The attractive work, which looked valuable with its gold printing, was found there, mostly for a long time, in almost all larger and many smaller bookshops. It remains to be speculated whether the apparently too generous circulation volume was also one of the somewhat unrealistic decisions by Emil Brass mentioned by Philipp Manes.

Brass' "World map of the geographical distribution of fur animals" in the fur department of Hirsch & Cie., Amsterdam (around 1900)

Works

• World map of the distribution of fur animals "which is drawn up according to scientific principles and shows very pretty, but above all correct animal images" (Brass). Verlag Neue Pelzwaren-Zeitung , Berlin, undated (around 1900)
• Usable animals of East Asia. Fur and hunting animals, domestic animals, sea animals . J. Neumann, Neudamm 1904, 130 pages. → Cover 1 , → Cover 2 and table of contents
• Sturm und Drang in Tientsin and other East Asian coastal stories . Verlag Leo Korsch, Berlin 1906. → Cover and table of contents
• Publications in the magazine "Winke für die Aufzugung Generation"
• Various statistical tables, including the statistics of world production of tobacco products prepared on behalf of the Leipzig tobacco trade for the First International Hunting Exhibition in Vienna in 1910 , the first statistics of this kind
• From the realm of furs . 1st edition, published by the "Neue Pelzwaren-Zeitung and Kürschner-Zeitung", Berlin 1911, 709 pages. Figures and table of contents
• From the animal world . Verlag Neue Pelzwarenzeitung, Berlin 1916, 32 pages, → cover and table of contents
• The fur animals in different theaters of war
• From the realm of furs . 2nd improved edition, publisher of the "Neue Pelzwaren-Zeitung and Kürschner-Zeitung", Berlin 1925, 859 pages
• Tobacco products . In: Large Textile Handbook . Benno Marcus (Hsgr.), Berlin 1927
• Tobacco products . Reprint, now in: Textile technology and machine technology and tobacco products . Benno Marcus, Berlin (eds.), Undated, before 1931 ( → book cover and table of contents )
• Rabbit Breeding in America (1927); Why is rabbit breeding declining in Germany? (1928); Rabbit breeding in England (1928); Rabbit Breeding (1928). In: Neue Furzwaren- und Kürschner-Zeitung , No. 839, 930, 930, 938
• The raw materials of the animal kingdom , 5th delivery. Chapter IV, main part of the “Fur” chapter. Verlag Gebrüder Bornträger, Berlin 1930
• From the history of the German tobacco trade. In: Neue Furzwaren- und Kürschner-Zeitung , Berlin, June 18, 1932
• The natives as suppliers of the fur trade , as continuations in specialist newspapers
• Landscape pictures from the homeland of furs , as continuations in specialist newspapers (1912-1924)
• Geographical distribution of fur animals
• Statistics of world production of tobacco products

and display information about the image

Father M. Brass, Berlin and Leipzig, in the accounts of the Dedo company, Leipzig, 1883

See also

• Bruehlfur

Web links

Commons : Emil Brass  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j} Gez. "M." [Manes]: An industry veteran. 50th anniversary of Emil Braß's professional life . In: Der Rauchwarenmarkt No. 37, March 29, 1927, pp. 2-4.
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g} Philipp Manes: The old brass . In: Die Pelzwirtschaft , No. 1, January 1965, Berlin, p. 104. Excerpt from: The German fur industry and its associations 1900–1940, attempt at a story .
3. ↑ ^{a b c} Emil Brass: From the realm of fur . 1st edition, published by the "Neue Pelzwaren-Zeitung and Kürschner-Zeitung", Berlin 1911, p. 232, 239.
4. ^ 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. 7–8, 77. ( G. & C. Franke collection ).
5. ↑ ^{a b c} A century of tobacco trade history (1st episode). In: Der Rauchwarenmarkt no. 38, September 18, 1936 (the information used comes from a verbatim record by Emil Brass).
6. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g} A century of tobacco trade history (continuation and conclusion). In: Der Rauchwarenmarkt No. 39, September 25, 1936 (the information used comes from a verbatim record by Emil Brass).
7. ↑ Aladar Kölner: Chinese, Manchurian and Japanese fur skins . In: Rauchwarenkunde. Eleven lectures from the knowledge of the fur trade , p. 92.
8. ^ ^{A b c d e f g} Emil Brass: The history of my work: "From the realm of fur" . In: Der Rauchwarenmarkt No. 18, Leipzig, March 7, 1934, p. 7.
9. ^ Philipp Manes : The fur city of Berlin 50 years ago . In: All about fur , October 1975.
10. ^ 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. 166 ( G. & C. Franke collection ).
11. ↑ Editor: A new work on the science of fur . In: Der Rauchwarenmarkt No. 90, Berlin, July 29, 1930, p. 2 (advance notice of publication).
12. ^ Benno Marcus (Hsgr.): Large textile manual . Verlag Heinrich Killinger, Nordhausen, undated, p. 1120.