Julie Manheimer
Julie Manheimer (born January 13, 1856 in Berlin ; † June 10, 1929 there ) was the widow of the wealthy German-Jewish industrialist Isidor Loewe through an arranged second marriage with the Reich Count Wilhelm von und zu Arco and became the subject of an anti-Semitic smear campaign in the German Empire .
Life
Julie Manheimer was the eldest daughter of the German-Jewish Kommerzienrat Valentin Manheimer , one of the leading representatives of the Prussian clothing industry. Up to 8,000 workers worked for the manufacture of the industrially manufactured articles of the Manheimer fashion house in Oberwallstrasse 6–7 / Jägerstrasse 33, which has been preserved to this day. At the age of 24 years Julie was married in 1879 with the Berlin industrialist Isidor Loewe, who since 1878 shareholder and after the death of his brother Ludwig Loewe in 1886 the sole director of the company Ludwig Loewe & Co. was. On the occasion of Valentin Manheimer's 70th birthday in 1887, Anton von Werner was commissioned with a family portrait, which is now on display in the German Historical Museum. Julie and Isidor Loewe are shown on the left side of the picture.
1891-1892 Isidor Loewe settled in Bellevuestr. 11a - across from the Villa Manheimer (Bellevuestr. 8) designed by Friedrich Hitzig - built by the architects Cremer & Wolffenstein, who are known for their synagogue buildings, a pompous house in the style of the French Renaissance, which impressively presented the wealth of the family and was published in the German construction newspaper of 1893 was presented in detail.
"Jewish shotgun" trial in 1892
The family-owned company conglomerate, whose factories were located in different locations in Berlin, also included the "Rifle Factory Ludwig Loewe & Co.", which in 1892 gave rise to the first anti-Semitic agitation against the family: In May 1892, the title "New Revelations, Jewish Shotguns" was published. a brochure by the anti-Semitic member of the Reichstag, Hermann Ahlwardt , in which u. a. It was alleged that Isidor Lowe deliberately produced unsuitable rifles for the German army: The "Alliance israelite universelle" had the greatest interest "that Germany would be defeated in the next war, since only on the ruins of the German Reich could it achieve the Jewish it strived for Can build world domination. ”In the so-called“ Jewish rifle trial ”, in which Isidor Loewe appeared as a joint plaintiff, the company was completely exonerated and Ahlwardt was convicted of insulting. In 1896, Isidor Loewe transferred all interests in arms production to the Deutsche Waffen- und Munitionsfabriken AG (DWM) group he had founded, to the works in Berlin and Karlsruhe, as well as interests in the Mauser, Fabrique Nationale d'Armes de Guerre (FN) in arms factory Belgium as well as the arms and ammunition factory AG in Budapest. Isidor Loewe thus rose to become the second largest arms manufacturer in the empire after Krupp.
The subject of the anti-Semitic gossip press
After Isidor Loewe died in 1910, the widow Julie Loewe's search for a new husband became a topic of the anti-Semitic gossip press. With a private fortune of 3 million gold marks and a generous annual income from company investments, she was counted among the best games in the country in the yearbook of millionaires for 1912. Philipp Stauff devoted a great deal of space to the process in his “Semi-Kürschner” published in 1913, quoting the reporting in the Berlin gossip newspaper “The Truth”, “according to which Mrs. Löwe had officially commissioned matchmakers to bring them under the hood again, and that it has been on the Berlin marriage market for months like sour beer ". The anti-Semitic press was appalled when in 1912 the Jewish heiress of millions married the ten years younger Reich Count Wilhelm von und zu Arco (1865–1944) - a notorious bankrupt who had previously entered into a brief marriage with the Jewish heiress Rosemarie Wolff. The Loewe family was also not interested in a dowry hunter from the aristocracy: allegedly, the son-in-law Oskar Oliven even wanted to initiate legal proceedings to prevent his mother-in-law from taking this step. The arranged marriage lasted less than two years and was divorced in 1914.
As Countess Arco, Julie Manheimer lived in Berlin until 1929 and gathered artists and entrepreneurs at her various residences, as her nephew Georg Witkowski described in his memoirs. Here she also emerged as an art collector. The picture “Münchner Biergarten” by Max Liebermann from 1884 - today in the Munich Neue Pinakothek - was in her possession from 1907 to 1929.
She kept in particularly close contact with her sisters Cäcilie and Clara Friedländer, Helene Valentin and Natalie Lantz, as well as with her brothers Ferdinand, Gustav and Alfred Manheimer, who jointly continued their father’s company until 1930. Ferdinand's eldest son, the Germanist Victor Manheimer - in the picture Anton von Werner is shown as a ten-year-old - committed suicide by jumping out of the window in Amsterdam in 1942 in order to avoid being arrested by the Gestapo. By spring 1937, in the course of the "Aryanization", all Jewish members of the board of directors and supervisory board of Loewe had to leave their offices in the family-owned company under pressure from the National Socialists. The descendants of Ludwig and Isidor Loewe were forced out of the company and left Germany. In 1941 the family's assets were confiscated in the German Reich. The company Ludwig Loewe & Co. was finally merged with AEG in 1942/1943. Julie v. Arco's daughter Sofie Alice emigrated to Switzerland with her son-in-law Oskar Oliven, since 1910 General Director of Ludwig Loewe & Co. AG, in 1935 to Switzerland and died in Zurich in 1944. The sons Ludwig, Erich and Egon Loewe also survived in exile in the USA. Julie Countess v. Arco was buried in 1929 as "Julie Loewe, nee Manheimer" next to her first husband Isidor Loewe in the Jewish cemetery in Schönhauser Allee (grave field F4).
Left
literature
- Hans Jaeger: M anheimer, Valentin . In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 16, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-428-00197-4 , p. 34 f. (Digitized version).
- Yearbook of the wealth and income of the millionaires in the province of Brandenburg: including Charlottenburg, Wilmersdorf and all other suburbs of Berlin , foreword on p. VIII (Mrs. Verw. Geh. Kommerzienrath I. Loewe, née Manheimer, Berlin W 9, Bellevuestr. 11a).
- Philipp Stauff: Semi - furrier or literary lexicon of writers, poets, bankers, moneyers, doctors, actors, artists, musicians, officers, lawyers, revolutionaries, women's rights activists, social democrats, etc., of Jewish race and ethnic group, who worked in Germany from 1813 to 1913 or were known , Berlin 1913, p. 275.
- Georg Witkowski: Of people and books. Memories 1863–1933 , Leipzig 2003, ISBN 978-3937146089 .
- Thomas Irmer: "The time will come when everything has to be paid back". The AEG and anti-Semitism. Court ruling from 2004 on the reimbursement procedure Gesellschaft für Elektrounternehmen Ludwig Loewe & Co. AG In: Christof Biggeleben, Beate Schreiber, Kilian JL Steiner (ed.): "Aryanization" in Berlin. Metropol, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-938690-55-0 , pp. 121–149 (online [PDF; 56 kB]).
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Manheimer, Julie |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German industrialist wife, victim of anti-Semitism |
| DATE OF BIRTH | January 13, 1856 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Berlin |
| DATE OF DEATH | June 10, 1929 |
| Place of death | Berlin |