Fränkel (company)

The S. Fränkel textile factory , today Frotex , was - and is today again - an internationally significant company in the textile industry in Neustadt in Upper Silesia (today in Polish : Prudnik ). The company's history is closely linked to the related families of the Fränkel and Pinkus, from whom the directors came.

history

1845, Samuel Frankel a linen - weaving right on the banks of the river Prudnik in Neustadt. By buying up competitors and insolvent companies, the company quickly grew into a monopoly in Silesia, opened further branches (including in Berlin and Augsburg) and became one of the largest linen producers in the world. 1903 began the production of terry fabrics and cloth goods, especially damask , which were sold throughout Germany, England, France and as far as America. "S. Fränkel ”also carried out designs by renowned designers such as Peter Behrens for tableware (tablecloths, serviettes, etc.). The First World War stopped the dynamic growth of the factory. Between 1915 and 1923 the textile factory, which in the meantime traded as the “ Open Trading Company S. Fränkel”, issued its own emergency money several times , initially still in pennies, and in the inflation of the 1920s also in millions and billions. According to the Nuremberg Laws of National Socialism, the company was taken over by the heirs of Samuel Fränkel in 1938 while they were forced to emigrate. After the Second World War , the company was rebuilt in 1949 and renamed “Frotex” in 1965. After the political upheaval in Eastern Europe, it was transferred to state trustee management in 1992, and in 2002 it was sold to the private "Frotex Management" holding company, which today holds 72% of the shares. Under the name "ZPB (Zakłady Przemysłu Bawełnianego) Frotex SA" , the company manufactured household linen and yarns and, with 700 employees, was not only the largest employer in the city until 2010, but also the largest towel and bathroom textile producer in Poland, and one of the largest European companies in this business area. Production was then stopped, the imposing factory buildings are empty and exposed to vandalism.

The entrepreneurial families

The Frankel family

The Fränkel family (spelling also Fraenkel , Fränckel or Fraenckel ) was a Silesian family with several important members. Ancestors of the former US presidential candidate John Kerry also come from this family: Mathilde Fränkel (1845–1935), his great-grandmother, was born in Oberglogau .

Originally Jewish, the family later converted to Catholicism . The owners of the Fränkel textile factory came from a respected merchant dynasty. They were not only industrialists, but also important cultural patrons .

Samuel Fränkel (1801–1881), founder and namesake of the textile factory “S. Frankel ". Samuel Fränkel was also a patron, organized poetry readings and brought world-famous pianists (including Wilhelm Backhaus and Walter Gieseking ) to the region for chamber concerts . He was friends with Gerhart Hauptmann and supported him significantly. The former guest house of Samuel Fränkel, a villa built in 1883 at Kościuszki Street 1, today “House of Textile Workers”, is one of the sights of the city of Prudnik. Samuel Fränkel also financed the synagogue in Prudnik .

Pinkus family

Auguste Frankel

The devout Jew Joseph Pinkus (1829–1909) became a partner in the company “S.” through marriage to Auguste Fränkel (1838–1919 in Neustadt). Frankel ". His daughter Hedwig (1864–1948 in the USA), who had an excellent education in the fields of literature and modern languages, married at the age of 19 on August 14, 1883 in the synagogue of Neustadt the then 28-year-old, who later became famous immunologist and Nobel laureate Paul Ehrlich , whom she had met shortly before on a visit to Strehlen. The marriage resulted in two daughters. The father-in-law supported Ehrlich generously financially by setting up a private laboratory and enabled him to devote himself exclusively to his research together with Emil von Behring at the Charité for a while. Also with the support of his father-in-law, Ehrlich was able to live with his wife in Egypt for almost two years after his dismissal from the Charité in order to cure his tuberculosis disease. However, Joseph Pinkus died in Neisse in 1909 .

His brother Benjamin (Benno) Pinkus (1831–1879 in Neisse) headed the representative office of the textile factory in Berlin.

The son of Joseph Pinkus, Max Pinkus (born December 3, 1857 in Neustadt; † June 19, 1934 there), a businessman, was his successor as director of the factory until 1926. At that time the factory employed 4,000 people. In addition, he wrote books about Silesia himself, was a book collector and patron of the city and culture. In particular, he supported Gerhart Hauptmann and the writer Hermann Stehr (for example by buying the house in Schreiberhau , which he and his family moved into in 1926). Stehr dedicated his 1926 work "The Violin Maker" to Pinkus with the words: "Max Pinkus, the great philanthropist and collector of Silesian intellectual property" . Max Pinkus edited the first bibliography on Hauptmann (together with Victor Ludwig) ( Gerhart Hauptmann. Works by and about him . Private printing, Neustadt in Schlesien 1922). At the funeral of Max Pinkus, Gerhart Hauptmann spoke at his grave in the Jewish cemetery; the city of Neustadt refused to commemorate its honorary citizen after the National Socialist seizure of power and forbade its citizens to attend the funeral. Hauptmann's works “ Before Sunset ” (premiered in 1932) and “Die Finsternisse” (written in 1937, only published after the war) are based on Max Pinkus. Max Pinku's unique collection of Silesian books was taken from his second son Klaus Valentin Pinkus as an “emigration fee” and handed over to the University of Wroclaw for safekeeping. She has been missing since then.

The eldest son of Max Pinkus, Hans Hubert Pinkus (1891–1977) was director of the company until the Aryanization . He emigrated to England with his family in 1939. After the Second World War, Hans Pinkus tried unsuccessfully to rebuild the company in Bavaria.

Pinkus collection

Max Pinku's interest in collecting was literature, history and handicrafts. He had a large and valuable collection of Judaica, mainly made of silver, which he made available to the Jewish Museum Association in 1929, as well as textiles, glass, goldsmithing and furniture from the 16th to 18th centuries.

literature

Walter Albert Reichart and Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Behl (eds.): Max Pinkus: December 3, 1857 to June 19, 1934 . Bergstadtverlag Korn, Munich 1957.
Kurt Schwerin: Max Pinkus, his Silesian Library and his friendship with Gerhart Hauptmann . in: Yearbook of the Silesian Friedrich Wilhelms-Universität Breslau 8, 1963, pp. 210–235.
Fritz Homeyer: German Jews as Bibliophiles and Antiquaries , 2nd edition, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1966 (series of scientific papers by the Leo Baeck Institute; 10), pp. 52–55.
Walter Requardt: The royal Prussian Kommerzienrat from Neustadt OS: memories of Max Pinkus . (Schlesien: Arts, Science, Folklore; 27), Sigmaringen 1982, pp. 26-46, ISSN 0036-6153 .
Albrecht Zappel: Max Pinkus: the Silesian entrepreneur, his Silesian library, his friendship with Gerhart Hauptmann . The green series; 8. Self-published, Leverkusen 1992
Krzysztof A. Kuczyński: Max Pinkus (1857-1934) . In: Klaus Hildebrandt and Krzysztof A. Kuczyński (eds.): Companions of Gerhart Hauptmann. Sponsors - biographers - performers . Bergstadtverlag Korn, Würzburg 2002, pp. 47–56, ISBN 3-87057-245-0
Baron, Arkadiusz: Max Pinkus (1857-1934): Śląski przemysłowiec i mecenas kultury . Wydaw. MS, Opole 2008, ISBN 978-83-88945-82-3 .

Web links

Tablecloth [1] or serviette [2] by Peter Behrens, around 1904. Each linen damask with ray ornament as a woven stylization of a crystal, executed by S. Fränkel (attribution).

Individual evidence

↑ Katharina Weiler / Grit Weber: Robbed. Collected. Deceived. The Pinkus / Ehrlich Collection and the Museum of Applied Arts . In: Angela Jannelli (ed.): Bought collected stolen? From the way of things to the museum; Documentation , Frankfurt am Main: Henrich Editions 2019, ISBN 978-3-96320-024-3 , pp. 46–53, here: p. 46.
↑ Marius Winzeler: Jewish collectors and patrons in Wroclaw - from donation to "utilization" of their art possessions . In: Collect. Pens. Promote. Jewish patrons in German society , red. Andrea Baresel-Brand, Peter Müller, Magdeburg 2006, pp. 131–150, pp. 142f.

[1] Katharina Weiler / Grit Weber: Robbed. Collected. Deceived. The Pinkus / Ehrlich Collection and the Museum of Applied Arts . In: Angela Jannelli (ed.): Bought collected stolen? From the way of things to the museum; Documentation , Frankfurt am Main: Henrich Editions 2019, ISBN 978-3-96320-024-3 , pp. 46–53, here: p. 46.

[2] Marius Winzeler: Jewish collectors and patrons in Wroclaw - from donation to "utilization" of their art possessions . In: Collect. Pens. Promote. Jewish patrons in German society , red. Andrea Baresel-Brand, Peter Müller, Magdeburg 2006, pp. 131–150, pp. 142f.