Julius Fromm

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Stolperstein , Friedrichshagener Strasse 38, in Berlin-Köpenick

Julius Fromm (born March 4, 1883 in Konin ; † May 12, 1945 in London , maiden name: Israel Fromm ) was a rubber manufacturer in the German Empire . In 1916 he launched the world's first condom without annoying seams, called Fromms , under the company name Fromms Act .

Life

Julius Fromm was the second child of a poor Eastern Jewish family from the part of Poland that was then part of the Russian Empire . His parents lived in the shtetl , the Jewish poor district that belonged to the small town of Konin , 120 kilometers east of Poznan . Because of the poverty and lack of prospects, the family emigrated to the German capital Berlin in 1893 , lived in the Scheunenviertel in Berlin-Mitte near Alexanderplatz and earned their living by working from home by producing and selling cigarettes . In addition to his work as a cigarette seller, Julius studied chemistry in evening classes . In 1906 he married his fiancée, who was already pregnant. The couple had three sons in total.

After the early death of his parents in 1912, Fromm took on responsibility for his six younger siblings and went into business for himself. In 1914, he founded his manufacturing and sales business for perfumery and rubber goods in a backyard workshop in the Berlin district of Prenzlauer Berg . Fromm experimented with rubber and invented the transparent and seamless condom made from natural rubber , in which a glass flask was dipped in a raw rubber solution. As a one-man company, he initially manufactured it and, as was customary at the time, sold it through drugstores. In 1916 he launched his first branded condom under the name Fromms Act ( trademark ) with his company, now called Fromms Act Gummiwerke GmbH .

The types of condoms in use at the time, mostly made from animal intestines, fish bladders or rubber products, were unpopular, but were used to protect against the dreaded syphilis and other sexually transmitted diseases. Fromm's modern product became the market leader in condom manufacturing. In addition, he also sold other rubber products.

Spread in the First World War

During the First World War the condom became widespread. In most soldier brothels , unprotected sexual intercourse was not allowed in order to protect soldiers from sexually transmitted diseases. As a result, millions of men got to know the condom, which not only served to protect health, but could also prevent unwanted pregnancies.

Expansion in the 1920s

The demand for contraceptives had risen sharply at the beginning of the 20th century , in line with the need for family planning , and was also promoted by the sexually more permissive culture of the 1920s. Popular slogans such as "If you get it, take Fromm's Act" made the company name a synonym for condoms. As early as 1919, 150,000 "Frommser" were produced every day. At that time a three-pack cost 72 Reichspfennige . In 1922, Fromm built a condom factory on Rahnsdorfer Straße in the Berlin-Friedrichshagen district ( Köpenick district ) (parts of the building that still existed were demolished in June / July 2007), which had already reached the limits of its capacity in 1928. In order to expand production capacity, Fromm bought a 16,000 m² site on Friedrichshagener Strasse in Berlin-Köpenick in 1929 and built a modern factory building there by 1930 according to plans by architects Arthur Korn and Siegfried Weitzmann, who were among the avant-garde of New Building at the time , which received national and international attention. With the strictly emphasized objectivity and the predominant building materials steel, concrete and glass, they created a kind of prototype of modern factory architecture.

As early as 1926, the company also had branches abroad and produced 24 million condoms.

"Aryanization" of the company and exile

Under the National Socialist rule , Fromm tried to continue his business, placed advertisements, hung a swastika flag in the works canteen and distributed an ambiguous "local transport plan" to international guests at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin. Fromm experimented together with IG Farben AG in Leverkusen on the invention of a suitable synthetic rubber in order to make himself independent of the increasingly scarce and expensive natural rubber. At the same time, Fromm improved the lubricity of the condoms and, by adding talc , mica and other powders, prevented the previously annoying sticking of the rolled up condoms.

Although he after the seizure of power of the Nazis in 1933 because of the stronger anti-Semitism brought in Germany his sons abroad, he did not feel the Nazi regime as a personal threat and believed that the NSDAP -Herrschaft was a temporary matter that you as a successful entrepreneur in Land can "sit out". In 1934, however, the Nazi authorities initiated a business process in order to be able to revoke Fromm's German citizenship . However, the report came to the conclusion that Fromm, as an entrepreneur, is exemplary in promoting the working conditions and social concerns of his employees. The authorities found no way of dealing with Fromm in this way.

After the Olympic Games in 1936, the anti-Semitic newspaper Der Stürmer began a smear campaign against Julius Fromm and other Jewish businessmen. In the course of the campaign, Fromm had to realize that it was not possible to remain as a Jew in Germany without endangering life and limb. He commissioned his bank, Reichs-Kredit-Gesellschaft AG , to sell his company, which was worth around 8 million Reichsmarks (around 120 million euros based on today's purchasing power ). The sale was delayed for political reasons, and Fromm was forced to reduce the purchase price by 50%. Finally, the Reich Ministry of Economics rejected the sale to a buyer at the seller's free choice, and the Fromm company was sold to his godmother Elisabeth on August 4, 1938 as part of the so-called Aryanization at the ridiculous price of 200,000 Swiss Francs (118,000 Reichsmarks) at the behest of Hermann Göring Noble from Epenstein-Mauternburg forcibly sold. For this deal, Göring received the Veldenstein and Mauterndorf castles from the baroness . Julius Fromm was able to leave Germany after the forced sale of his company and emigrated with his family to London , where he died at the age of 62, just a few days after the end of the war in Europe.

After 1945

Logo of the registered word and image trademark

The joy at the end of the war is said to have caused Fromm's death. He had evidently intended to return to Germany and take over his property again, as he would have been entitled to as a victim of the Nazi dictatorship. After the end of the war, his brother Siegmund tried to get the company back from the Soviet military administration . Since the Fromm factories (the Köpenick factory had been destroyed in air raids in 1943 and 1945) were located in the Soviet sector of Berlin , the reinstatement of the old shareholders and the return to private property were thwarted by the ruling German communists in the Berlin city administration. Fromm was presented, among other things, as a "capitalist type of exploiter". In addition, he was placed under active support of National Socialist propaganda . Eventually it was alleged that Fromm voluntarily sold his company to the Nazis as a good foreign exchange deal.

Four years after Fromm's death, on December 2, 1949, Frommsche Gummiwerke GmbH was transferred to public ownership by the Magistrate of Greater Berlin . The basis was the "Law on the Confiscation of Assets of War Criminals and Nazi Activists of February 8, 1949". An application by the Fromm heirs for transfer back was rejected in 1951.

In 1947 Julius Fromm's second son Herbert bought back the rights to the brand name from a cousin of Göring's and two years later concluded a license agreement with the Bremen-based Hanseatische Gummiwarenfabrik. Since then, condoms have been manufactured under the brand name "Fromms" at the production site in Zeven ( Lower Saxony ). The company was taken over in 1967 by Mapa GmbH , which now belongs to the French Hutchinson group .

The term “Fromms” or “Frommser” for condoms was still used colloquially in Germany for decades, but has slowly been replaced by new slang terms for condoms.

Quotes

  • Write: The competition is bursting. Julius Fromm as his head of advertising, given an already 90 percent market share.
  • Our special brands Fromms Act not only call themselves transparent, they are actually transparent. Advertising statement from the Fromms company from 1932

literature

Web links

Commons : Julius Fromm  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ condome.de
  2. ↑ Oliver Pfohlmann: The great condom steal. In: Frankfurter Rundschau , February 24, 2007
  3. ↑ ABC of German inventions . Report by Dorothee Ott and Kristine von Soden. Hessischer Rundfunk , December 23, 2010
  4. ↑ welt.de
  5. ↑ zdf.de ( Memento of the original from February 25, 2007 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.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.zdf.de
  6. ↑ Daniel Wiese: Still the classic . In: taz Nord, March 2, 2007, p. 23
personal data
SURNAME Fromm, Julius
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Fromm, Israel (birth name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-Jewish inventor who, as a manufacturer of convincing quality condoms, became the market leader
DATE OF BIRTH March 4, 1883
PLACE OF BIRTH Konin
DATE OF DEATH May 12, 1945
Place of death London