James Cloppenburg Jr.

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James Cloppenburg Jr. (Born August 31, 1902 in Berlin ; † 1986 ) was a German entrepreneur. For an unusually long period of 60 years he directed the family business Peek & Cloppenburg (Düsseldorf) . His predecessor was his father James Cloppenburg sen. (1877–1926), his successor his son Harro Uwe Cloppenburg (* 1940). James Cloppenburg Jr. lived very withdrawn and shied away from the public, little was known about him.

origin

His two grandfathers Heinrich Anton Adolph Cloppenburg (1844–1922) and Johann Theodor Peek (1845–1907) jointly founded the textile trading company Peek & Cloppenburg in the Netherlands in 1869 , and in 1901 in Germany as well. His father James Sr. also founded an initially independent textile trading company of the same name in Berlin in 1901. Soon afterwards (before 1911) the two companies were merged under the management of his father as Peek & Cloppenburg (Düsseldorf) . Only then did his uncle Anton Cloppenburg (1886–1967) found the company Peek & Cloppenburg (Hamburg), which is still independent today .

Through the marriage of his father James Cloppenburg sen. In 1901. (1877–1926) with Peek's daughter Maria Bernardina Johanna Theodora Peek (1879–1937) the two families grew together.

Entrepreneur

Due to the early death of his father, who did not live to see his 50th birthday, James jr. founded the company in 1926 at the age of 23 or 24. He apparently survived both the beginning and the end of the Nazi era politically unscathed. During the Second World War, he u. a. Winter uniforms for the war in Russia developed and produced in cooperation with the central warehouse community for clothing (ZLG) by Josef Neckermann .

At the end of the war in May, all of the company's buildings in Germany were destroyed, but in 1945 the first provisional sales rooms were reopened. In a few years, at the latest in 1952, all four pre-war branches were rebuilt.

Marriages and descendants

  • From the marriage of James Jr. with Vera Cloppenburg, b. Wentzel, came the three daughters Vera, Karin and Ingrid, who stayed with their mother after the divorce and grew up in Berlin and Kiel . She married again in 1936, the dentist and SS man Rolf Hinrichsen (1910-1941), with whom she had a daughter and two sons. After his death in the sinking of the "Bismarck" in 1942 she married his older brother, SS-Untersturmführer Kurt-Hans Hinrichsen (1907–?) And had three children with him, a total of nine children.
  • He remarried in the 1930s, details about this are not known, at least afterwards he became the father of his two sons Ulf Cloppenburg (* 1939) and Harro Uwe Cloppenburg (* October 28, 1940).
  • His last wife and later widow was Elisabeth Cloppenburg (1925–2015). Until the end of her life, she ran an upper-class household in a property in Ratingen with about a dozen employees, some of whom were not covered by social insurance and were paid in cash without the responsible tax office knowing about it. According to information from "Spiegel", she is said to have said in this context: "It was always like this in the Cloppenburg house."

Relationship to son Ulf

His son Ulf, according to James Jr. "The only opponent in our family", was the successor in the company management. Even as a young man, he was also active in entrepreneurship, buying up and breaking up ailing textile producers as the leader of an anonymous Swiss financial group in order to sell the healthy parts of the company at a high profit for himself and his financiers. This business model was not in the spirit of his father, who feared for the good reputation of his company. He wanted to dismiss Ulf from the family finance association, but negotiations about buying the shares failed because of the son's asking price.

The former textile manufacturer Hans Keilholz commissioned a lawyer to investigate Ulf's business more closely, allegedly to prevent the “speculator” Ulf Cloppenburg from further “discrediting” German entrepreneurs. James Cloppenburg denies having anything to do with it: “That I should hire someone against my son is simply absurd.” Apparently, his son did not see it that way, in 1974 he sued both Keilholz and his father for five million marks in damages.

Relationship to son Harro Uwe

The other son, Harro Uwe Cloppenburg , on the other hand, developed according to his father's ideas. He joined the company in 1968 and has been running it since his father's death until today.

death

James Cloppenburg died in 1986 at the age of 84. Details such as date of death, place of death and place of burial were not made public.

Differentiation from other people named James Cloppenburg

Except for James Sr. and james jr. there is a third person of this name still alive today. This James Cloppenburg headed the other company Peek & Cloppenburg (Hamburg) from the late 1970s to around 2015 . He is the grandson of its founder Anton Cloppenburg (1886–1967), the younger brother of James sen. and thus belongs to a different branch of the family.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Sometimes opinionated. Der Spiegel 12/1974, March 18, 1974.
  2. ↑ Peek & Cloppenburg KG History at www.fundinguniverse.com
  3. ↑ The history of the Peek restaurant in Grönheim
  4. ↑ Johannes Peek on geneagraphie.com
  5. ^ Alfred Etzold: The Dorotheenstädtische Friedhof: the burial places on Berlin's Chausseestrasse, p. 110, excerpt from books.google.de
  6. ↑ Military, Technical Achievements - Opanol on Schweiegenegeschichtedrittesreich.wordpress.com , accessed on December 19, 2018
  7. ↑ a b Jens Westemeier: Himmler's Warriors - Joachim Peiper and the Waffen-SS in War and Post-War Era , p. 129 Extract from books.google.de
  8. ^ Elisabeth Cloppenburg obituary notice 2015
  9. ↑ Cooking while the paint dries Badische Zeitung March 17, 2011
  10. ↑ The fine lady's cash. Der Spiegel 37/2017 from September 9, 2017
personal data
SURNAME Cloppenburg, James Jr.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Cloppenburg, James
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German entrepreneur
DATE OF BIRTH August 31, 1902
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH 1986