Georg Manasse

Georg Manasse (born May 28, 1893 in Margonin , formerly Posen Province , † December 28, 1980 in Westchester County , New York ) was a German businessman , entrepreneur , social democrat and pacifist .

Life

The businessman Georg Manasse worked for the department store group Schocken in Zwickau for more than twenty years . As a long-time general manager, he was one of the closest confidants of the brothers Simon and Salman Schocken .

The publicist Kurt Richard Grossmann , once general secretary of the German League for Human Rights , congratulated Georg Manasse on his 70th birthday in May 1963 with the words: “Georg Manasse is a man who belongs to the group of independent people who over the many decades of theirs in their professional life have always felt obliged to work for the ideas of humanity, peace and Judaism and, if necessary, to make sacrifices. "

Professional career

Manasse was born the son of the business owner Mannheim Manasse in Margonin, the birthplace of the Schocken brothers. He attended a private boys' school there until 1906, after which he switched to the Sophien-Gymnasium in the Spandauer Vorstadt in Berlin-Mitte . From 1909 to 1912 he completed an apprenticeship at the Leopold Königsberger company, a weaving and knitting mill, in Berlin. He then began a commercial activity that first took him to Bremerhaven , where he met Joseph ("Julius") Schocken . From October 1912 to the end of January 1913 he worked in the Adolf Karseboom department store in Wismar . This was a follow-up business from I. Schocken Sons in Zwickau. When Simon Schocken was visiting Wismar, he was able to convince himself of the commercial skills of Manasseh and then brought him to the head office in Zwickau as a buyer. In the following years, Georg Manasse was initially managing director of the group branches in Frankenberg and Cottbus. During this time he became one of the most important employees of the Schocken brothers, so that from 1921 he worked in the head office in Zwickau. The logical consequence was that on the occasion of his 10-year service anniversary in November 1922 he was appointed "managing director of the limited partnership". Associated with this was the granting of the individual power of attorney, which was also entered in the commercial register of the Zwickau District Court on July 4, 1923. As general director, Manasse was henceforth significantly involved in the further successful development of the Saxon department store group, the fourth largest in Germany with 6500 employees and most recently 19 branches. Until the beginning of the 1930s he accompanied the opening of further branches in Saxony (including in Crimmitschau and Chemnitz). Many innovations within the company can be attributed to him. At the end of 1928 he was appointed to the board of the “Liga”, a stock corporation for commercial insurance, which is important for the group. In March 1930 he also became managing director of the I. Schocken Söhne purchasing center in Zwickau.

In addition, Manasse became the founder and sole owner of the Manasse department store in Mühlhausen (Thuringia) in 1927 , which was built on the model of the branches of the Schocken Group.

Political commitment

As a staunch social democrat and pacifist, Georg Manasse joined the German League for Human Rights, founded in 1914, in the early 1920s . From 1923 onwards, he demonstrably played a leading role in Saxony and was temporarily its deputy district chairman. He also took part in the general meetings of the league in Berlin and often participated in their general debates with great verbosity. During this time he made close contacts with the Zwickau physician and author Karl Eskuchen (1885–1955), with whom he had a lifelong friendship. His closest friends also included the siblings Anna and Hans Siemsen and the Münster rabbi Fritz Leopold Steinthal . He was also in contact with the editor and later Saxon Prime Minister Max Seydewitz , the rabbi Leo Baeck , the writer and painter Joachim Ringelnatz , the sculptor Renée Sintenis as well as the architect Hermann Münchhausen and the art historian and museum director Hildebrand Gurlitt . Since December 1927 Georg Manasse was married to the merchant's daughter Anne-Marie Simon. Their marriage had two children. As a citizen of the city of Zwickau, Georg Manasse was also committed to the interests of the Jews there. As a member of the board of the Israelite Religious Community, he was responsible for budget and tax issues. After the unexpected death of Simon Schocken in the autumn of 1929, he became the second chairman of the community council. It is also recorded that he became the first chairman of the community council - at a previously unknown point in time - which was due either to Salman Schocken's long absence or to his emigration to Palestine. A few weeks after the National Socialist seizure of power , Georg Manasse was temporarily taken into "protective custody" in Zwickau at the end of March 1933. In the months that followed, he worked skillfully to maintain the group. Nevertheless, in June 1934 he resigned from all his offices in the company and in the Jewish community and moved from Niederhohndorf near Zwickau to Berlin. Numerous greetings that he received from former business partners and employees on leaving the company testify to their solidarity and great gratitude for the work he has done. The previous political activities, his commitment to Judaism and his critical attitude towards the Nazi regime, which culminated in the rejection of a meeting with Reich Minister of Economics Hjalmar Schacht , ultimately made it almost impossible for Georg Manasse to remain in his country of birth. In July 1935 he emigrated with his wife and children, who were still underage, to Stockholm (Sweden), where he founded a textile goods factory. In August 1939, he and his family were stripped of their German citizenship.

emigration

After the occupation of Norway and Denmark by Hitler's Wehrmacht in April 1940, Manasseh feared that Sweden would soon suffer the same fate. Therefore, the couple decided to offer their help to the Swedish authorities. Georg Manasse intended to join the armed forces, his wife the Red Cross. The children, on the other hand, should be evacuated. The state authorities were unable or unwilling to accept this offer. Therefore, from then on, Manasseh increasingly tried to emigrate overseas.

Gunnar Josephson (1889–1972), then President of the Jewish Congregation in Stockholm, gave him the following testimony on May 24, 1940: “I know that Mr. Manasse has an extremely respected position in Germany, especially in the economic field Life, and that his name had the best sound beyond Germany's borders. I also know that Mr. Manasse helped build up the Schocken Group in Germany over the course of 22 years and was a member of the board and general manager of this company for a long time. ”In June 1940, the Manasse couple and their children were able to leave Sweden and via Russia first travel to Japan. Since Annemarie Manasse and her children already had the coveted entry visa for the USA, they were able to continue their journey to the country of destination without interruption. On the other hand, Georg Manasse was not allowed to enter the USA until December 1940. The family was finally reunited and they were able to celebrate Hanukkah , the festival of lights so popular with German Jews.

Until 1955, the entrepreneur continued to hold shares in Swedish companies. In the following years he ran a shirt factory and an import and export business in Scarsdale (New York). Even in exile, Georg Manasse was not just an entrepreneur. He became a member of the Leo Baeck Institute in New York at an early stage and followed its publication plans closely. Until the end of his life he was interested in questions of “world events” and sought contact with its protagonists. Kurt Richard Grossmann mentioned at the beginning, who was close friends with Georg Manasse since the late 1920s, continued to emphasize his “inexhaustible thirst for the printed word” and emphasized that “it can often happen to a friend that he is his , at the same time whether here or in Europe receives an exposé with suggestions for an action that he considers necessary ”. Georg Manasse died after a long and serious illness on December 28, 1980 in Scarsdale (Westchester). His wife had died five years earlier. Their final resting place is at Mount Pleasant Cemetery in Hawthorne, New York.

literature

• Jürgen Nitsche: Georg Manasse. Shocking General Manager. Entrepreneur - Social Democrat - Pacifist. Hentrich & Hentrich Verlag, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-942271-95-0 .
• Jürgen Nitsche: Georg Manasse. Schocken's Chief Executive Officer. Businessman - Social Democrat - Pacifist. Hentrich & Hentrich Verlag Berlin, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-95565-020-9 .
• Anthony David: The patron. A life of Salman Schocken. 1877-1959. Metropolitan Book, New York 2003, ISBN 0-8050-6630-6 .
• Alfred Diamant: On the Chronicle of the Jews in Zwickau. The memory of a small Jewish community in Saxony. Self-published, Frankfurt am Main 1971, OCLC 850286 .
• Michael Düsing : The Freiberg department store Schocken. A search for clues. ed. v. University town Freiberg, The Lord Mayoress. Freiberg 2007, OCLC 162475283 .
• Konrad Fuchs: A company in Saxony. The Schocken department store as a reflection of German economy and politics from 1901 to 1953. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1990, ISBN 3-421-06581-0 .
• Renata Manasse-Schwebel: Stories. Self-published, New York 2003, OCLC 723652640 .
• Tilo Richter: Erich Mendelsohn's Schocken department store: Jewish cultural history in Chemnitz. ed. v. Evangelical Forum Chemnitz. Passage Verlag, Leipzig 1998, ISBN 3-9805299-5-9 .
• Tilo Richter: Tietz and Schocken. On the architecture of the Jewish department stores in Chemnitz. In: Jews in Chemnitz. The history of the community and its members. Sandstein, Dresden 2002, ISBN 3-930382-66-0 , pp. 90-95.
• Lars Scharnhorst: Department Store Schocken Cottbus. Dieckmann, Leipzig 2000, ISBN 3-9807225-0-3 .

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b} Kurt R. Grossmann: Georg Manasse. 70 years. In: Structure. New York, May 31, 1963.