Joseph Wertheim (manufacturer)

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Joseph Wertheim, around 1870

Joseph Wertheim (born March 20, 1834 in Rotenburg an der Fulda , Electorate of Hesse ; died March 18, 1899 in Nice ) was a German industrialist and founder of the German sewing machine factory .

Youth and apprenticeship years

Joseph Wertheim was born on March 20, 1834 as the fifth child of Leiser Wertheim and his wife Merle. Hess was born in Rotenburg an der Fulda. From April 1851 he learned the mechanic's trade with the production of mathematical, physical and optical instruments at FW Breithaupt & Sohn in Kassel . After his apprenticeship until April 1854, he worked in his father's linen and yarn factory. In May 1854 he emigrated to New York , where he worked as an apprentice in the Singer sewing machine factory .

In 1858 he returned to Rotenburg. After the death of his father in 1859, he moved to Frankfurt am Main in 1861 . Here, at the end of 1861, he presented the sewing machine he had brought with him to the Frankfurt public for the first time. At the same time he was entered in the Frankfurt address book as a commercial agent for linen goods.

On March 22, 1862, he submitted an application to the Senate of the Free City of Frankfurt with the request to be granted civil rights as a trader due to the impending marriage to his fiancee, the Frankfurt resident Rosalie Ballin . He was granted civil rights as a trader in the Free City of Frankfurt with his wedding on May 15, 1862. On May 5, 1862, Joseph Wertheim became general agent of the American sewing machine company Wheeler & Wilson for southern Germany. As early as December 14, 1862, he opened his own sales rooms at Zeil 26, opposite the Konstablerwache .

German sewing machine factory

At the end of 1863 he set up his own sewing machine factory in the house of the gold worker and dance teacher Karl Runkel at Schloßgasse No.7, in the old town of Hanau. This is where the Wheeler & Wilson sewing machines were manufactured in-house. This was not without consequence on the sales figures of Wheeler & Wilson sewing machines, which fell considerably. In August 1864 Joseph Wertheim lost the General Agency of Wheeler & Wilson.

On August 8, 1864, he sold the hundredth self-made sewing machine. On October 4, 1865, the intelligence newspaper in the Frankfurter Nachrichten reported that Joseph Wertheim was celebrating the 1000th sewing machine completed with 90 workers in the Gerlach'schen Hof in Frankfurt that past Saturday. In order to do justice to the increased sales figures, new sales rooms were opened on Zeil No. 15 rented across from the former Roman Emperor.

Wertheim factory in Frankfurt am Main in 1900

At the end of 1867 he bought a piece of land in Bornheim north of the Bornheimer Heide and built a factory there, which began producing sewing machines in 1868 and expanded rapidly. Joseph Wertheim had started with 80 workers, three years later he was already employing around three hundred. In 1883 around six hundred workers produced 35,000 sewing machines, most of which were exported to Australia and South America. In order to make the manufacturing facilities independent of suppliers at an early stage, Wertheim built his own iron foundry as early as 1868 .

On May 6, 1873, Wertheim converted his sewing machine factory into the joint stock company of the German sewing machine factory of Jos. Wertheim , whose shares were only issued to employees.

In 1873 he had a villa built in the classicist style in Bornheim on Arnsburgerstrasse and the corner of Habsburgerallee . In 1875 Joseph Wertheim appointed two managing directors, Samuel Guckenheimer and Carl Wettach . In 1890 his eldest son Ernst Wertheim joined the management.

Political and social engagement

Joseph Wertheim was a member of the German Progressive Party and one of the first three city councilors to move into the city council when Bornheim was incorporated into Frankfurt. He was a city councilor from July 27, 1877 to the end of 1882 and from November 27, 1884 to 1890. After thirteen years as a member of the city council, he declined to run again for health reasons.

In June 1868, Wertheim financed a company health insurance fund in order to ensure that its employees are cared for in the event of illness. Joseph Wertheim was thus one of the pioneers in matters of health insurance, even if it was only about ensuring care in the local hospital.

With the deed of gift dated July 2, 1896, Joseph Wertheim made 100,000 marks available to the “ Aktienbaugesellschaft for small apartments ”. The Frankfurters received 70,000 marks as a mortgage loan with the condition that they would pay 500 marks annually from the interest income to the Association for Holiday Colonies and 1,775 Marks to the Association for Convalescent Institutions.

Furthermore, on March 16, 1891, Wertheim bought the old Hillebrand girls' institute in Neuenhain near Bad Soden am Taunus and rented it to the "Frankfurt Association for Convalescent Homes"; Thus a retirement and convalescent home for workers and employees was built on September 27, 1891, which was known as an important social institution until the outbreak of World War I.

Death & offspring

Villa Wertheim on Arnsburgerstrasse

Joseph Wertheim had withdrawn since 1890 because of a thyroid disease and lived in southern countries. On Saturday, March 18, 1899, Joseph Wertheim died in Nice at the age of 65.

On March 30, 1899, the ashes of Joseph Wertheim, whose body had been cremated in a crematorium in Paris, was buried in the Bornheim cemetery with the participation of numerous mourners. On June 28, 1898, Joseph Wertheim had his 45-page will registered with the Royal District Court, in which all relatives and children were considered. Ultimately, his son Karl remained the sole heir in Catalonia.

Joseph Wertheim's marriage to Rosalie (née Ballin) had ten children:

  1. Ernst Ludwig, b. February 2, 1863, killed in World War I
  2. Sophie, b. February 1, 1864, d. November 12, 1953
  3. Martha, b. February 10, 1866, d. February 24, 1924
  4. Paul Jakob, b. June 13, 1867, died July 4, 1938
  5. Karl Gustav (later Carlos Vallin i Ballin ), b. April 24, 1868, d. August 20, 1945
  6. Lily, born June 3, 1869, d. October 28, 1909
  7. Richard, b. April 29, 1871, d. January 26, 1929
  8. Emmi, born June 21, 1872, d. March 7, 1909
  9. Franz, born January 15, 1874, died March 19, 1941
  10. Elsa, b. December 3, 1876, d. Nov. 1953

In 1875 Joseph Wertheim sent his second nephew and ward Hugo Wertheim, who had married his eldest daughter Sophie on August 30, 1885, to Australia as an agent. There Hugo Wertheim built one of the largest sales networks in Australia for pianos and bicycles in Melbourne . In 1908 he built a factory that employed around 400 people. He also sold sewing machines from Germany all over the Wertheim continent. When Hugo Wertheim died in 1919, his son managed the company until it was sold in 1935.

In December 1899, Joseph Wertheim's son Karl Gustav went to Barcelona to take over the branch in Spain that was founded around 1870. Karl Wertheim (who later renamed himself Carlos Vallin) later managed the entire Wertheim company in the spirit of his parents. He founded Rapida SA in 1920, which was sold to the Spanish company Olivetti in 1943 .

Wertheim's son Paul was one of the first carnival princes in Bornheim in 1891 or 1897. Unlike most members of his family, he stayed in Frankfurt during the Nazi era . He committed suicide on July 4, 1938 for being sent to a labor camp. His house, the Villa Wertheim, was forcibly sold in 1942 due to the ordinance on the use of Jewish assets . On June 21, 2013, the Stolpersteine ​​initiative in Frankfurt e. V. a stumbling block for Paul Wertheim.

literature

  • Josef Wertheim's German sewing machine factory, NaeMaSchmiede.de
  • Carlos Guilliard: The lost legacy of the Wertheims. The story of my German-Jewish family . Bastei Lübbe AG, Cologne 2018. ISBN 978-3-7857-2633-4 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Boris Schlepper: Bornheimer Wertheim Villa should stay. In: FR.de. April 2, 2018, accessed December 10, 2018 .
  2. ↑ Paul Wertheim at par.frankfurt.de , the former website of the city of Frankfurt am Main, see also: Initiative Stolper Steine ​​Frankfurt (Ed.), 11. Documentation 2013 , pp. 7 and 29–30 (PDF)
personal data
SURNAME Wertheim, Joseph
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wertheim, Josef
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German industrialist and sewing machine manufacturer
DATE OF BIRTH March 20, 1834
PLACE OF BIRTH Rotenburg on the Fulda
DATE OF DEATH March 18, 1899
Place of death Nice