Julius Bamberger

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Julius Bamberger (born March 17, 1880 in Schmallenberg , † January 16, 1951 in Los Angeles ) was a Jewish German department store owner .

biography

The restored Bamberg house in Bremen

Bamberger grew up in simple circumstances with his older sister Selma and younger brother Curt. His parents' house stood next to the former Schmallenberg synagogue, which had been built by his grandfather Mendel Bamberger. The parents lived from agriculture and a small business.

After training in his uncle's company and working as an employee in various department stores in Germany, Julius Bamberger founded his own department store Julius Bamberger in Bremen on Doventorstrasse in 1907 , initially selling haberdashery . Before the outbreak of the First World War, Bamberger married Frieda Rau in Oslo . Later they both adopted the two-year-old twins Anneliese and Egon. In the 1920s, Bamberger expanded his business to Faulenstrasse and in December 1929 opened the first large, modern department store based on the plans of Carl Heinrich Behrens-Nicolai , which the Bremen residents soon called "Bambüdel". It was the first skyscraper in the city with nine stories and had the first automatic escalator.

As a result of economic problems and, from 1933 onwards, calls by the NSDAP to boycott Jewish shops, sales fell sharply in the early 1930s. Bamberger was imprisoned for several weeks on April 1, 1933 in the prison at the Ostertor. Finally the company was dissolved in 1937 and the building was foreclosed in 1939 . In 1945 the Bamberger department store was bombed out.

Bamberger himself fled to Switzerland in 1937 , where his two children were housed, and from there to France.

“Bamberger had received a tip from the Gestapo . He may not have realized then that the situation could become life-threatening. But he realized that his financial basis was being destroyed. "

- Günther Rohdenburg : Weser-Kurier, November 2, 2012, p. 11

After opening a successful sportswear shop with his brother in Paris, he was arrested after the occupation of France, but after his release from prison he was able to emigrate with his family to the USA via Spain and Portugal in 1941. After the war, Julius Bamberger tried in vain to get his department store back. In a settlement he received a sum of 50,000 DM as a severance payment. From 1944 to 1950, Bamberger ran a small jewelry store in San Francisco. Julius Bamberger died a year later at the age of 71.

Honors

  • The Bremen Adult Education Center opened  its new administration and event center in September 2007 in the restored Bamberg department store on the corner of Faulenstrasse and Doventorstrasse. The two demolished floors were rebuilt and the “BAMBERGER” logo was reinstalled on the roof. A permanent exhibition on the life of Julius Bamberger has been set up in the stairwell.
  • In Bremen- habenhausen the Julius-Bamberger-Strasse is named after him.
  • A stumbling block was laid in front of his last home in Bremen in 2013 .

literature

  • Max Plaut : Bamberger, Julius. In: Historical Society Bremen, State Archive Bremen (Ed.): Bremische Biographie 1912–1962. Hauschild Verlag , Bremen 1969, p. 24, (Sp. 1-2).
  • Günther Rohdenburg: "That was the new life". Life and work of the Jewish department store owner Julius Bamberger and his family. Edition Temmen , Bremen 2000, ISBN 3-86108-657-3 .

Movies

  • Eike Besuden , giving up? - No way! - The story of the Bamberger family, 65-minute documentary drama, Pinguin Studios, 2012

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ VHS-Bremen: Julius Bamberger - Traces of an eventful life , accessed on October 12, 2011.
  2. Günther Rohdenburg: "That was the new life". Life and work of the Jewish department store owner Julius Bamberger and his family. P. 13.
  3. Günther Rohdenburg: "That was the new life". Life and work of the Jewish department store owner Julius Bamberger and his family. P. 38.
  4. Günther Rohdenburg: "That was the new life". Life and work of the Jewish department store owner Julius Bamberger and his family. P. 74.
  5. Julius Bamberger at stolpersteine-bremen.de