Ms. Ant. Prantl

The Hofdruckerei and Haberdashery Manufactory Prantl (today's company name : Prantl AG ) is a Munich-based manufacturer of commercial items (high-quality individual printed matter), blind embossing, steel engraving , paper finishing as well as luxury and haberdashery goods, handmade leather goods and craft gifts. The company was, among other things, supplier to the royal Bavarian court and also supplied members of the House of Habsburg , Thurn and Taxis etc. The company became famous due to its popularity with Munich artists such as Thomas and Heinrich Mann , Franz von Stuck , Nolde , Rilke etc. The company belongs together with the companies Pineider in Florence, Benetton, Paris and Smythons, London to the oldest still existing of its kind worldwide and produces in its own manufacture and printing plant in Munich, as well as in Italy and England. The company is considered to be the oldest still existing company of its kind in Germany.

history

The company was founded before 1797. The family of the namesake probably originally came from Austria . Even today, the surname is mainly native to Austria. The first name Franz Anton also speaks for it. The name is predominantly represented in Tyrol , which could speak for an immigration of the Prantl family from the Tyrolean area in the 18th century.

A change probably shows that the company was initially based in Rosenstrasse. It is not known exactly when and where the company was founded. The first documented and confirmed mention of 1797 is considered to be the founding date. After that, at an unknown time, the company moved to Sendlinger Strasse . At that time, the Prantl company was selling calico and woolen goods: in 1822 Franz Anton Prantl shows in the Royal Bay. Polizey-Anzeiger on page 795: "that his action has left the previously owned restaurant in Sendlinger Strasse and is now located in Schwabinger Residenzstrasse".

From the 1820s onwards, the company began selling high-quality luxury and imported goods, such as tea, coffee, Bohemian glass, silk, and paper goods and tobacco, in the best inner-city location in the royal court garden arcades, the so-called "Bazar" near the royal residence. In Johann Palm's city guide “Munich, its art treasures and surroundings”, the Prantl company is also listed as a tobacco shop. Spices were also sold: Franz Anton Prantl advertised the arrival of fresh Strasbourg cheese in the "Münchner Politische Zeitung" in 1835, as well as "Caviar, fresh kippers, as well as English and French mustard" in the Bavarian courier from July and December 1840.

In the 1840s, Prantl's son August associated himself with his father's existing business and, in the Bavarian Landebote from 1846, announced the opening of his “paper, stationery and haberdashery in his father's spices and tobacco shop”. The advertising company name was then “Fr. Ant. Prantl in the bazaar: spices, luxury and manufactured goods, the best printed products, steel engravings and engravings, handicraft gifts ”. The company name with the name of the former owner “Fr. Ant. Prantl ”has been preserved to this day. The Bayerischer Kurier of 1863 announced the departure of Franz Anton Prantl and the takeover by August Prantl, the last bearer of the original name in the company. In the second half of the 19th century, the company was taken over by the Munich merchant dynasty Zechbauer, also Austrian immigrants, in partnership. Since the second half of the 19th century there have been several changes of ownership and a wide circle of shareholders. Around 1845, the company was appointed purveyor to the royal Bavarian court for the first time . The last purveyor to the court in the company's history was awarded in 1912 to Adolf Koch, one of the co-owners of the Prantl company before the First World War . The Prantl company is one of the oldest purveyors to the court in Munich.

Originally, the printing business was just an additional offer to give upscale customers the option of personalization. At that time, Prantl employed its own engravers for the production of coats of arms, initials and monograms . So let z. For example, the poet and inventor of the "Kasperls" Graf Pocci at Prantl produce letterhead and card vignettes. The emerging enthusiasm, especially of the proud business and upper middle class of high officials, professors and merchants in the 19th century, to use existing family coats of arms or new coats of arms, as well as elaborately designed company signets and logos, led to a boom in the production of steel engraving and blind embossing as well as historicizing ex-libris, seal stamps, seals and lavishly designed vignettes and richly decorated company papers. The customer base, the famous Munich family of Sedlmayr (included Spatenbräu ), the architects Heilmann and Littmann , the department store owner Oberhummer, most bakers Seidl (father of the architect Gabriel von Seidl ), the family Oskar von Miller , later the Pringsheim , the publisher Oldenbourg that The Maffei family, the food producers Kathreiners Malzkaffee and Eckart (canning factory Johs. Eckart, later " Pfanni "), as well as the entrepreneurial family Rodenstock , Bernheimer , Roeckl and the art dealer Heinrich Thannhauser , to name just a few. Some of these seal stamps, vignettes and letter and business papers are now in the collections of the Bavarian Economic Archives.

In the 1870s, the company began producing high-quality greeting cards based on the French and English models. In the second half of the 19th century, the range of greeting cards was expanded to include notebooks, leather, manuscript books and calendars, resulting in the company "EMWE", a no longer existing brand of the company for the book and calendar sector. Prantl's notebooks, which were printed in 8 languages, were sold across Europe. The lovers of these books included u. a. Emil Nolde , Rilke and Wilhelm Furtwängler . (Rilke's Prantl notebooks are now in the Swiss Literature Archive, Furtwängler estate and collection, Berlin - Prussian Cultural Heritage, Berlin State Library ). A collection of the notebooks manufactured at the time is also in the collection of the Nuremberg Toy Museum.

At the end of the 19th century, the so-called “artist department” was expanded with paints, canvases, brushes, etc., which attracted a number of famous artists of their time, such as Emil Nolde and later Kandinsky. At this time, Prantl also printed Nolde's “Alpine faces” (series of 6 colored postcards, by Emil Nolde, signed E. Hansen, Munich, FA Prantl, 1895/96), as well as bookplates and vignettes for Franz von Stuck, Angelo Janck. The artist department was given up in the 1980s and 1990s. At the beginning of the 20th century, the Mann brothers were also among the company's customers. Thomas Mann mentions the company and its products u. a. in his diaries. "On the said sheet from Mr. Prantl's paper shop ... I wrote the Krull" , as well as "... that I will write down the overthrow of the regime in 1933 on German paper (from Prantl) ..."

After the complete destruction of the factory in Von-Der-Tann-Strasse, the factory was rebuilt after the Second World War , and in 1945 the store moved from Odeonsplatz to Perusastrasse and into the so-called “Röckl-Eck” house. From the 1950s onwards, high-quality fine printing became a mainstay of the company again; particularly elaborate company equipment was a specialty of fine printing during the economic boom, so entire paper equipment and other items were produced. a. for Siemens , BMW , spades, Löwenbräu (now Spaten-Franziskaner-Bräu ), for Bankhaus Merck Finck & Co . The fine bag making was also expanded again. From the 1950s onwards, the company sold fine leather goods in ostrich, crocodile, alligator etc.

In 2003 the Prantl store first moved to the newly designed Maximilianshöfe, then to the Luitpoldblock at Brienner Straße 11 near the original location on Odeonsplatz . The office and writing department was given up and since then the company has specialized in the core range of fine printing, handmade printing and paper goods, print finishing such as B. Steel engraving, blind embossing, bookbinding, and leather goods. In addition, the company sells its own collection of greeting cards, guest books and other printed matter at Ludwig Beck . The company has had a branch in London since 2012 and has also been printing for the English court since then. Hermann F. Moll is in charge of printing in Munich.

Famous customers

Famous customers served with evidence (printed products partly on display in the Munich flagship store): The royal house of Wittelsbach , members of the houses of Habsburg, Württemberg, Hohenzollern, Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, the princes Löwenstein, Castell-Castell etc. Richard Strauss, Heinrich and Thomas Mann, August von Finck, Gunter Sachs, Willy Sachs, Franz-Joseph Strauss, Lujo Brentano, Franz von Stuck, the Begum Aga Kahn, Ambassador Khalil Esfandiary Bakhtiary , father of Emperors Soraya, Prince Johannes von Thurn und Taxis, Albert Ballin, Claude Dornier, Wernher von Braun, Queen Elizabeth II of England etc.

Literature and Sources

Munich in the year, "Latest paperback for foreigners and locals"; Gilsche Bookstore, 1859.
Munich homeowner book, Munich City Archives, various address books from Munich and the suburb of Au, by M. Sibert, literary-artisitiche institution, 1842.
“The People's Messenger for the Citizen and Farmer” January 1866, Munich.
Directory of the full members of the action committee in Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek.
Collection of the German Commercial Register from 1863, Volume 2.
"Guide through Munich", George Jaquets Verlagbuchhandlung, 1854, bay. State Library Munich.
Court supplier Franz-Anton Prantl (royal court printing company FAP), business advertisement. “Fine printing and leather goods, embossing and engraving, luxury and imported goods, bookbinding, steel engraving and the artist department”, Odeonsplatz 17, in the bazaar next to the residence, 1899, Palm University printing house.
Franz Anton Prantl, purveyor to the court of SM to the King of Bavaria, product knowledge and history, page 13, About our company and our workshops, Prantl printing company, Munich 1910.
"Samples of original steel engraving and blind embossing as well as coats of arms from Fr. Ant. Prantl", Hofdruckerei FAP, information sheet, 013, 80s, printed by FAP Munich.
Catalog raisonné by Franz von Pocci, based on the first edition from 1859, Monacensia Library, Munich.
“The artist postcard: from the beginning to the present”, North German State Museum, German Post Museum
The Royal Bavarian Purveyors to the Court, Marita Krauss, 2007.
The magician: the life of the German writer Thomas Mann: [in three volumes]. Years of suspension: 1919 and 1933 (postponed chapters), complete index, volume 3, part 2, Thomas Mann, diaries, S. Fischer, source-critical studies on the work of Thomas Mann by Paul Scherrer, Hans Wysling German Literature Archive, Marbach.
Bavarian Economic Archive Munich, various collections, IHK Munich and Upper Bavaria.
Hofdruckerei FAP, complete overview and product catalog with selection of motifs, self-published, paperback with 13 illustrations, printer & steel engraving company Fr.Ant.Prantl, 1969 and 1970
Fr. Ant. Prantl 1797 GmbH, Munich, “Formats, fonts and color cards for printing and steel engraving”, A4 leaflet, Prantl printer, No. 12A, 2008.
Hofdruckerei und Galanteriewarenmnaufaktur FAP, leather goods catalog, “Crocodile and exotic leather” price list, catalog, printed by Drucker Prantl, Munich, pages 12, 13, ff., 1995
Hofdruckerei FAP, A5 catalog, page 3, "About us", Druckerei Prantl AG, 2009,
Franz Anton Prantl in the catalog of the art and art industry exhibition of old and new German masters and the German art schools
Munich Evening Newspaper: 1864, 3 - 12
The Bavarian Commerce Councils, Prof. Marita Krauss, Volk Verlag Munich, 2016,
Münchner Hofdruckerei, FAP, techniques and materials: An overview, 18 pages with illustrations, Bay. Economic archive
Münchner Hofdruckerei, prices en detail et en gros, 1919, notice of visitors, print Prantl Munich

Web links

Individual evidence

↑ Imprint | Prantl since 1797. Retrieved June 15, 2017 .
↑ Interview, Zürcher Weltwoche, December 3, 1954
↑ Thomas Mann: Diaries . Volume 9-10, p. 247.
↑ About Prantl | Prantl since 1797. Retrieved June 15, 2017 .

[1] Imprint | Prantl since 1797. Retrieved June 15, 2017 .

[2] Interview, Zürcher Weltwoche, December 3, 1954

[3] Thomas Mann: Diaries . Volume 9-10, p. 247.

[4] About Prantl | Prantl since 1797. Retrieved June 15, 2017 .