G. Gaudig & Blum

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G. Gaudig & Blum

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legal form one-man business
founding 1831
Seat Elberfeld , Leipzig
Branch Tobacco shop

The G. Gaudig & Blum company was “not only one of the first in Leipzig, but also one of the most outstanding tobacco shops in the world”. Considerable quantities of fur were stored under the headquarters in Brühl 34-40, of the most common types at times over a million each.

Company history

Street front and courtyard G. Gaudig & Blum in 1872

Founding years

In 1831, the from established Burgwerben originating furrier Gottlieb Gaudig († May 25, 1851) and his son, the merchant (Philipp) Henry Blum († 1878) from Kemel in the located in Eastern Rhineland city Elberfeld the Skinning G. Gaudig & Blum . The business developed well from the beginning, so that the trade in wild goods soon began, and finally also in fur goods. Furthermore, a rabbit hairdressing shop and a hat fabric manufacture were set up and the bristle trade with brush production started. Since the fashion of the 1850s and 1860s was extremely beneficial for business, the small craft business soon developed into a factory. In 1851 the co-founder Gottlieb Gaudig died.

Transition to the tobacco shop

Stock book of the Leipzig tobacconist Dedo for G. Gaudig & Blum (entries 1876–1884)

On July 1, 1852, the company relocated to the world trade center for tobacco products, the Leipziger Brühl , by taking over the then well-known fur goods company Georg Schacht . Various other fur trading companies later operated under the address Brühl 34–40 until the Second World War (1939–1945). The new owners gave up their previous production of hats and brushes in 1856, and in 1860 also the rabbit hair shear, and now devoted themselves entirely to the tobacco trade. The entire global range of different types of fur was traded for own and third-party accounts, as the company soon grew to be, in contrast to most of the companies established at Brühl, which specialized in a few items. The skins were, as now, still common in wholesale as well as, raw skins , trimmed and finished stocked. As one of the first tobacco goods trading companies, a finishing company for dyeing Persians was incorporated in the premises of the former Haendels factories in Rötha . A fur refinement can, partly combined, consist of shearing, plucking (of the upper hair) and dyeing. Twenty years after the business was founded, in February 1851, Blum's son-in-law, Wilhelm Dodel († 1895), joined the company, who had previously been a co-owner of the Lodde brothers drug dealership in Leipzig. Finally Heinrich Dodel , Wilhelm Dodel's eldest son, was accepted into the company. Heinrich Dodel had learned in his grandfather's business and later received power of attorney . In 1877 he went to the London auction company Lomer, Dodel & Cie. As a representative of G. Gaudig & Blum . which served to represent the companies G. Gaudig & Blum, Heinrich Lomer and the London company Blattspiel, Stamp & Hiecock . When this English auction company dissolved, Heinrich Dodel officially joined G. Gaudig & Blum as a partner.

Friedr. W. Dodel

In 1877 or 1878 an auction company, Lomer, Dodel & Co., was founded for Leipzig in order to compete with the world-dominant London tobacco auction houses . There were already one or two unsuccessful attempts to hold such auctions in Leipzig. It was believed that his predecessor Joseph Ullmann , who came from New York and was originally from Alsace , only failed four auction attempts because he was considered a stranger. They supplemented their range of American fur to reduce the risk of German goods, especially red fox fur , which the city council did not allow Ullmann to do. Everything was prepared like at a London auction, the technical terms were English, which incidentally contributed to the spread of English as an auction language. There was a prospectus and an auction catalog for the goods spread out in the warehouse. Apparently nothing was missed, but the expected success at the auction that took place in 1878 did not materialize and the auction company was dissolved again.

After the co-founder Heinrich Blum died, Friedrich Wilhelm Dodel (* 1861, † 1933) joined the company on April 18, 1879 . He was granted power of attorney as early as 1885 and became a co-owner a year later. Friedrich Wilhelm Dodel was president of the Leipzig Chamber of Commerce, commercial judge at the Royal Commercial Court and consul of Austria. In 1896 he bought a plot of land in the Leipzig suburb of Dölitz, on which he had a villa with a park built.

The tobacco trade exported about two thirds of the imported goods to other countries after they had mostly been refined and sorted in Germany. That is why the Association of German Smoke Goods Dealers and Industrialists was founded in 1878 due to impending customs restrictions, chaired by the co-owner and senior of G. Gaudig and Blum, Wilhelm Dodel, which successfully campaigned for the maintenance of complete customs exemption.

The fur camp

In 1887 the range of fur, apparently overwhelming for the author, is described. G. Gaudig & Blum stored Siberian sable skins valued at 20 to 400 marks each, the American sable , which was neglected by fashion at the time, cost an average of 10 marks, ten years earlier it was 30 marks. The mink was already once, but dropped the most popular fur ladies around the time already on the eighth of the year 1872/1873. Muskrats were dyed and sheared, no longer offered as an imitation mink due to the lower price for mink, but as a substitute for beaver and seal . Muskrat was not infrequently stocked with a million skins. American raccoon skins , then still called “scales”, and skunks skins were originally kept for men's furs , but now at increased prices for women's trimmings and trimmings. Seals were present in very large numbers, they served as "luggage dogs" for school bags, shoes and wallets. The furriers supplied were used to make hussar hats from bluebacks , the skins of one-year-old seals; in Russia, bluebacks were used to cover sheepskins . At that time the modern fur fashion began, in which the fur was no longer just used as inner lining, trimmings and trimmings, but was worn with the hair facing outwards. The first part of this type was a jacket made in England from black-dyed, plucked seal fur. Therefore this article was kept in stock in very large numbers, already colored. This new fashion of outer fur and the fur sewing machine developed at the time caused a rapid rise in the entire fur industry.

Court of G. Gaudig & Blum, Brühl 34–40 (before 1914)

A special room was used to store Feh , the fur of the Russian squirrel and the semi-finished products made from it , the Fehfood. These were exported to France, England and America for further processing into fur linings . They were made by six to eight masters in nearby Weißenfels , where a whole homework industry had been created for them. Another line of business of the company were boas made from twisted frog tails , which enjoyed great popularity. For this product, which was mainly exported to England, a brand of its own had been registered.

In addition to rabbit skins , Siberian white hares were also a particular source of sales . Like the white fox skins, they are well suited for imitating the fur types that were particularly valuable at the time, such as silver and black fox , blue fox , chinchilla fur and others. A whole industry in and around Leipzig dealt with the dyeing and other finishing of fur skins until after the Second World War.

As a further, important for the company trade items were listed: the skins of sea and river otters , beaver pelts , bearskins , fox skins in all colors, North American lynx fur , Chinchilla furs and Nutriafelle from South America, Opossumfelle from Australia, fire marten furs , ermine skins , wolverine furs , wolf furs from Siberia , precious sheepskins and lambskins from Persia, Bukhari and Crimea and the many semi-finished products from Germany, France and Holland.

Establishment of foreign branches

In the meantime G. Gaudig & Blum belonged to the leading companies of the Leipziger Brühl and thus also of the world fur market. Heinrich Dodel had established and strengthened the company's international contacts at an early stage, also through annual trips to the United States. At his instigation, an office was set up in the New York Fur District in May 1880 . Branches in Berlin, London and Paris followed.

On October 1, 1892, Adolf Lodde's only son, Alfred Lodde († 1931) joined the business as a clerk . Above all, he visited the London tobacco auctions and the Russian tobacco markets in Nizhny Novgorod and Irbit every year . After temporary work in the branches in London, New York and Paris, he became an authorized signatory in 1855 and a partner in the company on January 1, 1904.

Friedrich W. Dodel was primarily responsible for purchasing the company in the United States and Canada. Together with Charles F. Wagner , who had toured the western states of the USA for G. Gaudig & Blum until the outbreak of the First World War (1914), he was president of the auction company G. Gaudig & Blum Corporation in New York and Chicago. A son-in-law of Friedrich W. Dodel, Albert Osterrieth , also worked as an authorized signatory in the company from January 1, 1904.

When there were preliminary talks in 1911 about the construction of a Russian chapel to honor the soldiers who fell in the Battle of Leipzig in 1813, a Russian committee was formed for this purpose, Friedrich W. Dodel and his Russian business partner Johann (Iwan) Pavlovich Lelianoff belonged to. The "St. Alexej Memorial Church for the Russian Honor ”was then completed within a short time on the site provided free of charge by the city, in the area where the battle took place. In 1903 Fritz E. Leipoldt, a nephew of Adolf Lodde, was accepted into the business. He traveled extensively to the countries of origin of the skins in order to get to know the companies first hand. In 1914 he received the power of attorney. He mainly operated the Russian business, which he knew particularly well from his apprenticeship years in Russia.

After the First World War

Commercial building

During the war, the then owner of the company, Friedrich W. Dodel, got to know the young Richard König, whom he hired after the end of the war and trained as a smoker's merchant. Richard König later took over the important Leipzig tobacco shop Adolph Schlesinger & Sons , which he renamed Adolph Schlesinger Successor .

The First World War (1914 to 1918) interrupted all international business. Only slowly could international connections be re-established afterwards. In 1923 business relations with the United States were resumed. In the following years the business expanded particularly to South America, which was also an important supplier of tobacco products. It also had representations in Paris, London, Turin and Madrid.

The Berlin branch was assumed to be “a rare exception” to Franz Köppe. Philipp Manes , tobacco merchant murdered by the National Socialists and chronicler of the fur industry, wrote about Köppe: “[...] one of the most correct men we knew in Berlin. Anyone who heard the stocky, blond man with his sharp glasses and his slightly Saxon way of speaking knew that he was dealing with a representative of a global company ”.

Ludwig Heinrich Dodel, “boss” of G. Gaudig & Blum, got into trouble because of alleged breaches of duty through incorrect representations in his capacity as chairman of the supervisory board of a bank. An arrest warrant was issued against him because he was initially considered fugitive, in fact he was on his way back from the USA. After the first interrogation, however, the arrest warrant was confirmed; on bail of 250,000 marks he was spared from detention until the start of the trial. He lost his post as a city councilor and the title of Austrian honorary consul.

In 1922, after the senior citizens' death, Fritz E. Leipoldt became a co-owner of the company. In 1931 the co-owner Alfred Lodde died.

The tobacco shop G. Gaudig & Blum, Brühl 34-40, is still mentioned in the fur index of 1938, five years after the Nazis came to power. In 1941 Philipp Manes wrote: “Fritz E. Leipoldt, owner of Gaudig & Blum. When these names are mentioned, the heart is always wistful, because none of those who once belonged to the company - founded in Elberfeld in 1881 - are no longer alive ”. - "In the circle of the Brühlherren Leipold [t] enjoyed great syppathy, and his too early death was a painful loss for his company and Leipzig".

After the Second World War

In the Leipzig address book of 1946, the tobacco shop G. Gaudig & Blum with the owners Heinrich Lodde and Max Gräfe is listed at the new address Nikolaistraße 47, 51, most of the houses in Brühl were destroyed in the great air raid on Leipzig on February 27, 1945, the warehouse has been destroyed.

According to the entry in the commercial register of September 6, 2012, the company G. Gaudig & Blum, with the now West German address Ölmühlweg 35 b, 61462 Königstein im Taunus, ceased to exist on this day.

After actually all of Leipzig's major tobacco retailers had relocated their headquarters to the Federal Republic, most of them to Hamburg, but most of them to the newly created fur trade center in Frankfurt am Main, Niddastrasse , Lodde, the last name of one of the last two owners of G. Gaudig and Blum, became in 1953 under the company name Lodde & Hermsdorf also listed in Frankfurt. The address was: "Taunusstraße 42, soon Niddastraße 56". In the 2005 directory, Lodde & Hermsdorf is still listed at Niddastraße 56. The tobacco trade was probably given up in 2006.

On November 23, 2014, a silver bowl by Orest Fedorovich Kurlykov (1884–1916) was auctioned off as a friendship gift from Paul Sorokoumowsky & Sons (Moscow) to G. Gaudig & Blum on the occasion of 50 years of successful business relationships in 1902 was presented. The hammer price was 11,000 euros.

Web links

Commons : G. Gaudig & Blum  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f Paul Hirschfeld: The smoke goods trade and the company G, Gaudig & Blum . In: Leipzig's large-scale industry and wholesaling in their cultural significance . Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1887, pp. 67-68.
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h i Without indication of the author: 100 years of Gaudig & Blum, Leipzig . In: Der Rauchwarenmarkt , Leipzig, August 4, 1931 pp. 5, 7.
  3. ↑ a b Without naming the author: Gaudig & Blum, Leipzig, Brühl 34–40 . In: Biographical review of the German fur industry , Arthur Heber & Co (eds.), Leipzig, approx. Between 1924 and 1930.
  4. ^ Richard Maria Franke: 25 years - 250 years - 2500 years. From the beginnings of finishing to the key industry of the tobacco industry In: Felle Farben Fantasy. A portrait of the German fur processing industry. Rifra Verlag, Murrhardt, 1973, pp. 7-25.
  5. ↑ IPA - international fur exhibition, international hunting exhibition Leipzig 1930 - official catalog. P. 252.
  6. ^ Walter Fellmann: The Leipziger Brühl . VEB Fachbuchverlag, Leipzig 1989, pp. 80–81.
  7. ↑ a b Horst Riedel (eds.): Leipziger Biographie. Dodel, Friedrich Wilhelm, a German businessman Stadtlexikon Leipzig from A to Z . Pro Leipzig, Leipzig 2005, 2013–2017 André Loh-Kliesch, ISBN 3-936508-03-8 , p. 111. Accessed January 27, 2017.
  8. ↑ Erhard Hexelschneider: The St. Alexej Memorial Church for Russian honor in Leipzig . February 17, 2013. Retrieved January 27, 2017.
  9. ^ A b c Philipp Manes : The German fur industry and its associations 1900-1940, attempt at a story . Berlin 1941 Volume 4. Copy of the original manuscript, p. 352 ( → table of contents ).
  10. ^ Philipp Manes : The German fur industry and its associations 1900-1940, attempt at a story . Berlin 1941 Volume 4. Copy of the original manuscript, pp. 165–166 ( → table of contents ).
  11. ^ Philipp Manes : The German fur industry and its associations 1900-1940, attempt at a story . Berlin 1941 Volume 3. Copy of the original manuscript, p. 208. ( → table of contents ).
  12. ^ Henner Kotte: Visitation of Leipzig and four other crimes . Verlag Bild und Heimat, October 20, 2016. Accessed January 27, 2017.
  13. ↑ Guide through the Brühl and the Berlin fur industry . Werner Kuhwald Verlag, Leipzig 1938, p. 42.
  14. ^ Verein für Computergenealogie (Hsgr,): Historical address books, entries from Leipzig address book 1949 . Retrieved January 27, 2017
  15. ↑ Online-handelsregister.de , accessed on January 27, 2017.
  16. ^ Winckelmann Germany. Specialist address book for smoking goods and The fur industry and the furrier trade , 61st edition, 1953, Ralf Winckelmann (ed.) London, p. 20.
  17. ^ Winckelmann 2nd table, 2005, Winckelmann Verlag, Frankfurt am Main.
  18. ^ Winckelmann 2nd table, 2007, Winckelmann Verlag, Frankfurt am Main (no longer listed here).
  19. ^ Auction house Arnold: Review: Art and Antiques November 22, 2014 . Retrieved January 27, 2017