Francis Weiss

Francis Weiss (1981)

Francis Weiss , always Franz Weiss in early publications , (* 1893 in Budapest , † March 25, 1982 in Beckenham , Kent (now London ), England ) was an English tobacco shop and author. Both grandfathers were already active in the fur trade.

Family history

Mother's family

Francis' maternal great-grandfather, Jakob Berg , was a white tanner in Frankfurt an der Oder . His son, the wild goods fur trader Max Berg (* 1834; † 1904) was, despite his origins from Frankfurt an der Oder, a typical, but modest Berliner with a “ Berliner Schnauze ”, “he didn't care much” that his cousin Heinrich was under the adopted name Friedberg was ennobled as Prussian Minister of Justice. Max Berg lived with his family on Berlin's Alexanderplatz on the first floor of the front building at Königstraße 38, his business partner Adolf Schulvater lived one floor higher. Both together owned the company Schulvater & Berg , one of the most important game dealers of the time. The offices and storage rooms were in the rear building of the rather large building complex, which also housed a school that Francis' mother, Trude Berg , had attended as a child. The building was destroyed in World War II.

Francis Weiss's Berlin grandmother and Budapest grandfather died a year or two after Francis was born. Jakob Berg died in 1904 of an abdominal operation.

In 1892 Trude Berg and Francis Weiss married. In the following year their son Franz, who later called himself Francis, was born.

Francis Weiss mother, born in Berlin, spent 70 years of her life in Hungary, where her husband ran his tobacco shop in Pest. She never really settled in her new Hungarian homeland. Despite the many years spent in the country, she did not learn Hungarian. She ran her household entirely in German, supported by housekeepers from Swabian regions of Hungary or from Austria. Every year in the summer she and her family visited the various spas in Germany, the hometowns of her relatives and of course Berlin and bought “mountains of things” because everything should come from home. The most important German journals came via weekly reading groups , daily news was received via the “Nachrichten-Telephon”, a predecessor of the radio and the “ Berliner Tageblatt ”, which was also subscribed to .

Father's family

Grandfather Max (Moritz) Weiss (* 1829 in Alt-Ofen near Budapest; † September 14, 1895) came from an old Jewish family in Burgenland , Austria. His father, Wolf Mattersdorf, was a "Kiesmer", a musician or singer, called "Wolf, son of Moses from Mattersdorf" before the Jewish family name was given. Mattersdorf (today Mattersburg ) was one of the seven old Jewish communities that were under the protection of the Esterházy . Francis' great-great-grandfather emigrated to Alt-Ofen, where he was registered as a synagogue singer under the name Weiss, he died in 1895.

His eldest son was Max Weiss, who founded the history of Max Weiss & Sohn as a fur trader.

Francis (Franz) Weiss

In 1895, when grandfather Max Weiss died, Francis lived at the Budapest Theresienring, where his sister and later wife Margit († approx. 1952) were born. The next apartment was on Königsgasse, where his future wife lived, this time directly across the street. In 1901, Francis father moved the business and residence to Karlsring 9, where it existed until 1922. In his youth he enthusiastically enjoyed rowing and canoeing and took part in various competitions, "although without sensational success".

When his father became seriously ill, Weiss went back to Budapest to support him. As a " one year old " he completed his military service with the Tyrolean Kaiserjäger . In 1914 he was called up for military service and served as an officer throughout the First World War . He received a minor gunshot wound on the Italian front.

After moving to London in 1930, Weiss received British citizenship in late 1936.

Walter Fellmann commented on the relationship between the Leipzig Fur Center and writers and artists: “Of the people at Brühl , it was actually only the furrier Francis Weiss who drew attention to himself as a writer . [...] He wrote his novels in English, probably not just for economic reasons. In any case, his works on the world of fur remained largely unknown in German-speaking countries. ”Francis-Weiss found recognition as an author through his membership in the PEN Club . In an obituary by his professional colleague Jürgen Thorer about his death, it is said about the last years of his life: “He felt like a shouter in the desert, and used every opportunity to present his thoughts on the world and the world of fur in writing and orally. The fact that this zeal has met with so little active response has steadily increased his inner loneliness since the death of his wife, whom he loved above all else. Francis Weiss was not just a preacher for fur and what he saw as good and useful for the industry; his lively mind seismically absorbed the waves of his time and processed them literarily. Anyone who only got to know him in his last - disappointed - years would hardly trust him to write the fine poetry that he dedicated to his wife ”.

In Leipzig, however, his tangible "lament of a commission agent" had already found approval and dissemination:

"After the auction I see the goods,

My neighbor's hair is on stand too,

What was blue yesterday is brown today.

How could I believe my eyes

The big males look like little ladies

The price is now completely out of the ordinary.

What will the finest customers say?

Or should one not ask at all ... "

The eldest son Robert Niels White (* 1923 in Leipzig, † 23 July 1983 in London) served as an English captain in World War II, but Niels had to change his surname to White . He first worked for a few months at Arne Holm in Oslo, then in Stockholm at Vik and then for two years at the Canadian Fur Auction Company in Montreal. In 1950 he finished his apprenticeship at the Hans Hessel company , and then, following the family tradition, he joined his parents' company as a partner. Niels married Catherine Glossup on September 11, 1978 in Sheffield .

Francis Weiss died peacefully in his sleep on March 25, 1982 in Beckenham, Kent, and was buried in the London borough of Croydon . He left behind the sons Niels and Francis.

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  Max Weiss - Willy Weiss - Francis (Franz) Weiss

Professional and company history

Advertisement Max Weiss & Son, London, in a Leipzig specialist newspaper (1933)

The company founder Max Weiss, grandfather of Francis Weiss, ran a fur trade in the Hungarian capital Budapest (then called Pest), in the Berlin fur industry he was known as "the black white".

In 1844 the eldest son, Max Weiss, began an apprenticeship as a furrier and "cap maker" with Karl Steiner in Buda (German: oven), a district of Budapest. In addition to hat-making, he learned how to manipulate the various Transylvanian sheep and lambskin types , which were processed in large quantities, especially in Eastern Europe. A bunda , a lambskin coat with the leather side facing outwards, often richly embroidered, was part of the clothing of the often wealthy Hungarian peasant class, and it was often worn into the summer. At that time Budapest, together with Vienna, was the fur trading center for the entire Balkans.

After Max Weiss had received his diploma on April 1, 1847, he went on the usual wanderings to various workshops in Austria and Hungary, heading for Paris. Before he reached Paris he had to return to his home country because of the outbreak of the revolution in 1848 . He started as a tobacco sorter at LW Heidelberg in Pest and became managing director after a relatively short time. At the age of 45 he gave up this secure position to start his own business. He opened his first shop on June 1, 1874 in the “Moroccan Court” building on the right, Elisabethplatz 8, where he also moved into an apartment. The other tobacco shops in Budapest also had their warehouses in this district. The raw fur industry was located in the area of ​​Karlsring and Königsgasse. After barely two years, he expanded his restaurant.

He visited the Leipzig trade fairs, in 1877 Francis Weiss's father “Willi” (* 1862; † 1915) drove for the first time at the age of 15. Until 1879 he volunteered with David Kölner , also a close friend known to his father from his apprenticeship with A. Goldstein. The company D. Kölner emerged from the Leipzig branch of the Goldstein company, which David Kölner ran . In 1888 Willi Weiss was granted power of attorney in his father's company, in 1891 he became a partner and the company was renamed Max Weiss und Sohn . On a trip abroad he met Francis' mother in Berlin, whom he married in 1892. When his father died in 1895, Willi became the owner of the company. Uncle Hugo Weiss joined the company for a short time, but soon left it again and founded his own company in Vienna, “only to leave the industry after some very unfortunate years”. In 1901 the Willi Weiss company moved to the Karlsring. It was here that the boy Franz had his first intensive contact with the fur trade.

From this time Francis Weiss reports in 1934:

Adolf and Wilhelm, house servants in the fur store Wilhelm Weiss (around 1911).

“[…] But I also learned a lot for my later career. Above all, I got to know a large number of suppliers and buyers, knowledge of human nature and many other things that you need to know as a commission agent. There were regulars in these markets who for years never missed a market, kings of individual articles whose appearance was enough to make them boom. When Max Salinger appeared, in a black skirt and half-cylinder, with the ribbon of the Iron Cross from the year 70, looking like a civilian peace general, then everything was excited that had anything to do with lambskin. Or when Jakob Hahn's command voice rang out, many a Bosnian heart trembled, with a bad conscience about the range. They all came, the older generation Rosenstock, Felsenstein, Rosenfelder, Kölner, the Königs, Schütz, Trollers and many others. There were very interesting types, Bosniaks in their picturesque costume. Old snow-white Ajan sold the Transylvanian lambskins in a tied skirt and smoked a meter-long pipe, buyers in black silk caftan, Hungarian farmers with white trousers like a woman's skirt and small stiff hats. Each newly emerging foreign buyer made the sellers prouder, knowing full well that the ring that the buyers tried again and again was not permanent and that there were always outsiders who spoiled the prices. Then there were angry eyes, the half-cylinders trembled nervously, and you could hear 'friendly' words falling in all the languages ​​of Europe, from the lovely 'Baliner' to the Lord's Bohemian German, of which the legend went that he was wearing a special suit for the Pest Own markets. I saw this beautiful roast skirt for over a decade and I still miss it a lot today. [..] The customers, extremely jealous of one another, had to be strictly separated from one another. A high degree of diplomacy was played, and situations often arose worthy of a French comedy. High school for a prospective commission agent! Therefore, I come today verzwicktesten situations like child's play before, when I think of the days when Maurice Burger from Paris, the hundreds of thousands Zickel negotiated, or when my father for Herskowitz & Roth, New York, with a Multipelorchester from Marmaros-Sziget a polecat Symphony conducted . One of my fondest memories is the suspicious Serbian supplier who asked to be locked in the cellar overnight because he didn't want to part with his bale of goods, but rather sleep on it, but whom my father put on the street with the valuable bale let. [...] "

In 1910, two months after graduating from school, Francis Weiss began studying lambskin at the then world-famous specialist Levy & Salinger on Georgen-Kirchplatz in Berlin . After a year he went to Leipzig, often visited by his father. There he volunteered at the tobacco company Eisenbach & Stern , owner Willi Eisenbach. During the war, employees continued to run the business until his return in 1918. The political situation in Hungary made him leave the country. In the autumn of 1921 Francis Weiss opened a branch in Leipzig, first at Arthur Kniesche and Heinz Littauer, Ritterstraße 38-40, but soon in their own rooms in the same building, in the fur center around the Brühl. The plan was actually a skinning shop with a tobacco shop, a tobacco shop was founded with skinning as an ancillary trade. On the Brühl he was known as "Feri", the son of the late Willy Weiss. He soon made Leipzig the headquarters of the company and quickly became one of the city's leading smoking goods commissioners. Privately, he lived in a country house on the outskirts. He repeatedly referred to this epoch in the world center of the fur trade as the happiest time of his life.

In 1930 he fulfilled an old wish and moved to London with his family, and the calamities of National Socialism were already emerging. As a Jewish company, the Leipzig headquarters was forcibly liquidated in 1939. From London he represented the Budapest company Pannonia , specialist in lambskin, until 1932 . Just one year later he went into business again under the founding name Max Weiss & Son , on the second floor of No. 1, Maiden Lane, the address that he later made the company's headquarters, not far from the Hudson's Bay Company and the fur auction house Lampson. The Welsh writer Leslie Thomas reported in a newspaper article in 1965 that Francis Weiss's grandfather's first day's earnings were framed on the wall: “A Hungarian guilder note, with silver and copper coins around it, and a yellowed note stating that this was the first profit of the old one Max was when he was selling raw skins on June 1st, 1874 ”.

At his request, the stretch of road was later renamed to today's name Skinners Lane (Gerbergasse). In the same year he was elected to the board of the “British Fur Trade Alliance” and vice-president of the “Furrier's Round Table”.

At the beginning of 1981, Francis Weiss handed the company over to his son Niels White at the age of 87. His last London company address was on the Gt. St. Thomas Apostle No. 13/14. Niels died in July 1983, well over a year after his father's death. He left a wife and two children.

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  Willi Weiss (1862–1915) taking over Lammfell

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  Francis Weiss, his debut in the fur industry (1910)

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  The young Francis with a ball of fur (1911)

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  Francis Weiss (left), together with industry colleague Richard Franke (1973)

• Advertisement of the last company owner, Niels White, in a German fur specialist publication (1982)
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Works

• Probably as early as the 1920s and from the 1930s Franz Weiss published reports on the current fur trade and the history of the fur trade in German specialist publications, always written in amusing ways.
• Insanity .... ........ abounding . Blandford Press, London (undated, before 1945).

Coming from a Jewish family, Francis Weiss was particularly affected by the political turmoil of his time, the Second World War and the Holocaust and was particularly interested in current events in Europe. Towards the end of the war he published his first book, Insanity .... ........ abounding ( something like "madness ... in abundance") with the subtitle Reply to a Prophet not quite at Home ("Reply to a Prophet not quite at home ”). Here he examines the collapse of the Austrian empire, the revolution in Hungary and the terror of the Horthy regime against socialists, communists and Jews. He describes how intolerance and brutal and artificially nourished nationalism spread like an infection from Hungary to Germany.

• From Adam to Madam. A History of Furs , Parts I and II.

From Adam to Madame, a story of fur from the early days of using fur to the present day. The work is divided into two parts, each of which comprises 150 typewriter pages, plus an extensive bibliography. Presumably only part of it has appeared in sequels to the English journal Fur Review . Excerpts were also printed in German fur magazines; with a few exceptions, these continuations, which were printed in German, were translated into German by Weiss himself; they mostly appeared here as individual articles on a special topic. The humorous style makes the work easy to read and entertaining even for those less interested in the fur industry.

• Waltzing Volcano . Hollis and Carter, London 1944

describes the history and fall of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy from Francis Weiss's personal point of view.

• For Man's Holiday . Blandford Press, London 1951

In 12 individual articles, Weiss describes personal memories in connection with his travels in the post-war period in connection with retrospectives on recent history, always keeping an eye on his profession, the fur trade. In May 1945 he returned for the first time from bombed London to Germany, which was still destroyed.

• Margit and Other Poems. GT Foulis and Co., London 1955. Collection of poems, largely about the death of his late wife Margit.

• Publications in various fur journals, for example

• Furs in Archeology. In: Marco information from the Fränkische Pelzindustrie Märkle & Co., 1968 (2 issues)
• Roman legions. In: Marco information from the Fränkische Pelzindustrie Märkle & Co., 32nd edition, 1973.
• The debut of the fur coat. In: Marco information from the Fränkische Pelzindustrie Märkle & Co., Messen 1974.
• Youth memories of an old fur man. In: Marco information from the Fränkische Pelzindustrie Märkle & Co., 1974 season.
• The Fur Trade a way of life! In: Marco information from the Fränkische Pelzindustrie Märkle & Co., 38th edition, 1975.
• The Abrogated Glass Slipper . In: Marco information from the Fränkische Pelzindustrie Märkle & Co., 40th edition 1976.
• How long have humans been pulling their fur over their ears? In: Around the Fur International, April 1977.
• The sheep aristocracy. In: Rund um den Pelz International, issue 9, September 1978.
• The flea fur - a ticklish thing. In: Rund um den Pelz International, No. 5, April 1979 - No. 6, June 1979.
• Furs in archeology. In: Pelz International, No. 10, October 1980.

Francis Weiss's historical collection was brought from London to its headquarters in Frankfurt am Main by the Association of the German Tobacco and Fur Industry. It was planned to exhibit the bundle of image documents and writings later in a fur museum (when asked in early 2014, nothing was known of their whereabouts). Weiss had previously proposed to include them in a "fur tour museum" that the International Tobacco Association should maintain. Some of the documents he handed in are in the G. & C. Franke collection . ^{(As of 2019)}

See also

Commons : Max Weiss & Son, London  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

supporting documents

1. ^ ^{A b c d e} Francis Weiss: Memories of the youth of an old fur man. In: Marco information from the Fränkische Pelzindustrie Märkle & Co., 1974 season.
2. ^ Burgenland.at, Shehva Kehillot: Mattersdorf / Mattersburg (from 1924) . ( Memento of March 5, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Retrieved August 7, 2015.
3. ↑ ^{a b c d} Johanna Kroll: June 1, 1974: 100 years of Max Weiss & Son, London . In: Pelz-International No. 6, June 1974, p. 47 ff.
4. ^ ^{A b c d e} Walter Fellmann : Francis Weiss (1893–1982) . In: Ephraim Carlebach Foundation (ed.): Judaica Lipsiensia. Edition Leipzig 1994, pp. 274-275. ISBN 3-361-00423-3 .
5. ^ Francis Weiss: Insanity .... ........ abounding. , P. 4.
6. ↑ Insanity .... ........ abounding. , P. 74.
7. ^ Walter Fellmann: The Leipziger Brühl . VEB Fachbuchverlag, Leipzig 1989, p. 10.
8. ↑ Editor: Jewish Interclude at the PEN ( Memento of March 5, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) In: AJR Information , Vol. V No. 10, London, October 1950 p. 4 (English).
9. ↑ Jürgen Thorer: Ferry Weiss is dead! In: Winckelmann Pelzmarkt , No. 637, Frankfurt am Main, April 2, 1982, p. 1.
10. ^ Ephraim Carlebach Foundation (eds.): Judaica Lipsiensa , Edition Leipzig, ISBN 3-361-00423-3 , p. 275.
11. ↑ ^{a b} Without naming the author: Niels White died . In: Winckelmann Pelzmarkt No. 705, July 29, 1983, p. 14.
12. ↑ If the author is not stated: Wedding in England . In: Winckelmann Pelzmarkt No. 354, September 17, 1976, p. 12.
13. ^ Editing: Late Francis Weiss . In: Fur Report Supplement , April 2, 1982, p. VI.
14. ^ ^{A b c d} Franz [Francis] Weiss: A chapter in the history of the tobacco trade - 50 years of Max Weiss & Son. In: Der Rauchwarenmarkt No. 42, Leipzig, May 30, 1934, pp. 5-6.
15. ^ Francis Weiss: Insanity .... ........ abounding , p. 51.
16. ^ Editing: Max Weiss & Son . In: Der Rauchwarenmarkt No. 122, Berlin, October 19, 1932, p. 7.
17. ↑ Leslie Thomas: Street of Mink . In: Evening News , undated newspaper clipping, dating (1965) and assignment based on the enclosed German translation and a letter to the editor from Jury Fränkel dated November 19, 1965 ( C. & G. Franke collection) (English).
18. ↑ Editing: start-ups and commercial court registrations. In: Die Pelzkonfektion No. 14 of July 9, 1932, p. 9, supplement to Der Rauchwarenmarkt No. 78/79, Berlin.
19. ^ Editing: Francis Weiss Resigns . In: Fur Review , London, February 1981 (English).
20. ^ According to Fur Review , London, May 1982. Complete version of the work (copy) Collection G. & C. Franke, Murrhardt.
21. ↑ Without an author's name: Historical collection came to Frankfurt . In: Pelz International , No. 11, November 1981.
22. ^ Francis Weiss: Correspondence . In Winckelmann Pelzmarkt No. 604, August 7, 1981, pp. 5-6.