Chamber of Commerce and Industry Memel
The Memel Chamber of Commerce and Industry ( IHK Memel ) (until 1919 board member of the merchant class , from 1919 Chamber of Commerce of the Memelland or Memel Chamber of Commerce , since 1928 Memel Chamber of Commerce and Industry) was the Chamber of Industry and Commerce based in Memel .
history
Merchants in Memel
The business community in Memel was established as an institution in 1776. In that year the business community decided to levy a voluntary export tax on the most important commercial products. The Memel Stock Exchange was built from the proceeds in 1777 . This tax was initially disapproved by the Prussian government, but in the course of the 1790s an agreement was reached in which the merchants' right was confirmed to own land. It was thus recognized as a corporation.
At the beginning of the 1820s, commercial corporations were formed in the cities of Berlin, Stettin, Danzig, Memel, Tilsit, Königsberg, Elbing and Magdeburg based on the model of the commercial corporation formed in Königsberg in 1810.
This commercial corporation was founded in Memel with the royal approval of the Memel Merchants' Statute on May 21, 1822.
In 1861 the merchant corporation in Memel had 276 members.
With the Prussian Chamber of Commerce Act of February 24, 1870, this commercial corporation remained in existence and was treated as equivalent to the chambers of commerce. As a result, the number of members of the Chamber fell, since the possession of commercial rights no longer depended on membership.
In 1872 the statute of merchants was revised. The merchants lost the task of managing the port. This was directly subordinate to the Prussian state since 1870.
In 1911 the statutes were changed again. Now the corporation was responsible for the entire Memel district and the Heydekrug district.
At the end of the empire the merchants in Memel had extensive wealth. She was the administrator of five foundations and the owner of the “commercial plantation”, a piece of forest that had been created to protect the port from silting up. A major source of income were the fees paid by the Tilsit wood measuring office.
In 1907 the number of members was 105 and in 1913 146.
Chamber of Commerce of the Memel region
The Memel commercial corporation was transformed into a chamber of commerce in 1919. This was preceded by discussions to concentrate the Chambers of Commerce in East Prussia on two (Königsberg and Allenstein). A memorandum of the Memel commercial corporation was directed against this and was ultimately successful. On September 24, 1919, the head office of the merchants unanimously decided to convert it into a chamber of commerce, and on October 11, 1919 the new statute was approved by the Prussian Minister of Commerce. According to the new statutes, administration is one of the tasks
- the Memel Stock Exchange
- of the weighing and measuring office in Memel
- the commercial plantation
- the sea pilot, widow's and education fund
The chamber was made up of five industry associations:
- the employers' association for trade, industry and commerce
- the association of timber industry
- the Association of Wholesalers and Importers
- the retail association
- the grocer's association
The Chamber of Commerce had 20 members, 18 of them from Memel Stadt / Land and 2 from the Heydekrug district.
After the First World War , parts of East Prussia were separated from the Reich under international law as the Memel area in 1919/20 . The Memel Chamber of Commerce was now responsible for the Memel area as a chamber of commerce. Accordingly, the Chamber of Commerce was expanded to 24 members. Now 18 came from Memel, 4 from the Heydekrug district and 2 from the Pogegen district.
A quarter of the members each went to the four electoral groups industry, transport, banks, wholesalers and retailers.
After the occupation by Lithuania, the chamber was enlarged again on September 12, 1923. Now there were 28 members. The four new members came from the Association of Lithuanian Merchants.
The President of the Chamber of Commerce was a member of the Board of Directors of the Memel region.
In 1922 the Chamber of Commerce of the Memel region issued emergency notes for 50 pfennigs and 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, 75 and 100 marks with the approval of the Inter-Allied Commission headed by France . On the back of the notes, colored city and landscape views from the Memel area can be seen. The notes were printed by the Parcus Brothers printing company in Munich. The volume of the issue of notes up to 50 marks was initially 10.25 million marks. After the value of the notes had fallen due to inflation, the notes were printed for 75 and 100 marks. The volume rose to 21.175 million marks.
50 Pfennig front
50 Pfennig back
1 mark front
1 mark back
2 Mark obverse
2 Mark back
5 Mark obverse
5 Mark back
10 Mark obverse
10 Mark back
20 Mark obverse
20 Mark back
50 Mark obverse
50 Mark back
75 Mark obverse
75 Mark back
100 Mark obverse
100 Mark back
From 1921 onwards, the Chamber of Commerce was the official organ of the Memel Chamber of Commerce and published the magazine "Nachrichten der Handelskammer des Memelgebiets".
In 1927 the Kaunas Chamber of Commerce was established. The cooperation between the two chambers is described as technically cooperative. In 1928 the Memel Chamber of Commerce was renamed the Chamber of Commerce and Industry, based on the Prussian model.
On March 22, 1939, the Lithuanian government concluded a transfer agreement (German-Lithuanian State Treaty) with the German Reich and the Memelland returned to Germany. On May 1, 1939, German imperial law came into force. The Chamber of Industry and Commerce thus received the status of a German Chamber of Industry and Commerce. At the same time the alignment and the elimination of self-administration of the economy took place. The president of the chamber was appointed, the chamber organized according to the leader principle .
In 1942, the IHK Memel was integrated into the East Prussia Gauwirtschaftskammer. With the conquest of East Prussia by the Red Army in 1844, the history of the IHK Memel finally ended. The documents from the years 1776 to 1921 were housed in the Memel city archive. These holdings are lost, as are the Chamber's documents themselves.
The Memel region and Lithuania were annexed by the Soviet Union . During the time of the Soviet occupation there was no Chamber of Commerce in Memel.
After Lithuania's independence, a chamber of commerce was set up again in Memel.
people
Head of the merchant class
- Johann Adolph Klempow (1822–1828, 1829–1831, 1833–1836)
- Friedrich Scheidler
- Henry Frentzel-Beyme (1872-1884)
- Heinrich Gerlach (1885–1912)
- Curt Immisch (1912-1919)
President of the Chamber of Commerce
- Henry Schmäling (1919–1920)
- Joseph Kraus (1920–1927)
- Louis Jahn (1927-1932)
- Arno Jahn (1932-1936)
- Kurt Scharffetter (1936–1939)
Other
- Ottomar Schreiber Syndic of the Chamber from 1922
literature
- Gerhard Willoweit: The economic history of the Memel area, vol. 1, pp. 360–384
- Gerhard Willoweit: The economic history of the Memel area, vol. 2, p. 471, 485–486, 581–583
- "The self-administration of the merchants in Memel". Commemorative publication by the Chamber of Commerce and Industry for the Memel region, 1929
Individual evidence
- ^ Clemens Wischermann, Anne Nieberding: The institutional revolution: an introduction to the German economic history of the 19th and early 20th centuries . In: Fundamentals of modern economic history . tape 5 . Franz Steiner Verlag, 2004, ISBN 3-515-08477-0 , ISSN 1616-041X , p. 132 (309 p., Limited preview in Google Book search).
- ↑ Statute of the Merchants' Association in Memel of May 21, 1822, printed in: Law Collection for the Royal Prussian States 1822, No. 725, p. 256 ff., Digitized
- ^ Prussian law on the Chamber of Commerce 1870, § 44, digitized version
- ↑ dhm.de
- ↑ econbiz
- ↑ RGBl. 1939, I, No. 54 of March 23, 1939, p. 559 ff.
- ^ Rainer Täubrich: Archives in East Prussia before and after the Second World War, 1990, ISBN 3-88557-078-5 , p. 70
- ^ Website of today's Chamber of Commerce in Memel
- ↑ History of the Chamber of Commerce of the Memel Region ( Memento of the original from May 13, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
