Krupp consumer institute
The Krupp retail store was in the second half of the 19th century part of a welfare program of the industrialist Alfred Krupp in Essen for its employees in his company that from 1903 under Friedrich Krupp AG changed its name. On the one hand, he offered the employees a discounted offer of everyday goods, but at the same time tied them to his company with the help of the branches in the workers' settlements close to the factory and the associated demands for high loyalty .
history
prehistory
The rapid increase in the immigration of workers, stimulated by an enormous expansion of mass production , triggered a considerable increase in the cost of living in Essen. This brought with it social problems, which Alfred Krupp tried to cushion with the help of in-house social benefits. In addition to a health and death benefit fund with compulsory membership (since 1853) and a pension fund (since 1855), these services also included an in-house bakery set up in 1858, from which the consumer institution emerged.
In 1865, citizens of Essen, mostly employees of the Krupp company, founded the Essen consumer association , a cooperative association of voluntary workers , due to the increased cost of living , in order to achieve lower purchase prices with the help of a bundling of consumer products. But ultimately the cooperative failed.
Exists between 1868 and 1973
On May 1, 1868, this failed cooperative was taken over by the family company Krupp , which reorganized it as a Krupp consumer goods company and thus expanded the existing customer base to include employees.
In 1863, Krupp built his first workers 'settlement with the Westend workers' colony . During this time the Krupp housing construction began, which on the one hand was part of the welfare program for the workforce, but which on the other hand tied the workers even more closely to their workplace. The consumer establishment that was later connected made a decisive contribution to this, which was also integrated with additional branches into the subsequent working-class colonies of Nordhof , Schederhof , Baumhof and Kronenberg . There was also a sales point in Bredeney as well as two outside Essen at the Hannover colliery in Bochum and one at the Johanneshütte in Duisburg - Hochfeld . Furthermore, in the left-bank city of Rheinhausen , a present-day city of Duisburg district, the seat of the steelworks Rheinhausen and in the Margaret settlement and the official settlement Bliersheim . Some sales outlets also served as official sales points for postage stamps . From around 1890, the shops of the Krupp Consumption were only accessible to factory employees.
Employees were able to buy everyday necessities at reduced prices. For this purpose, all purchases were noted in the employee's account book. At the end of the financial year, profits made by the consumer company on the basis of the balance sheet were paid out in the form of discounts. Particular emphasis was placed on the fact that the goods were offered unadulterated and checked for purity. The municipal investigation office could also be commissioned to do this. In return, Alfred Krupp expected strong loyalty from his workers and imposed a ban on involvement in the labor movement .
In 1874, the Kruppsche Konsumanstalt not only had sales outlets, but also its own bakery, tailoring and bottling of mineral water. This year, on July 1st, the building of the main sales point of the consumer establishment opened on the site of the Krupp cast steel factory on Ostfeldstrasse. This popularly known as the Kruppsche Bazar was located northeast of the 8th mechanical workshop, today's Colosseum Theater , where the Weststadt towers with the cinema complex are today. A slaughterhouse was added in 1875. In addition to food, they also offered colonial goods , clothing, hardware, coal and furniture. In 1888, a three-storey warehouse 62 meters long and 16 meters wide was added to the building of the Krupp bazaar.
In 1882 the consumer establishment took over the management of the Hügel restaurant , today's car park Hügel near the Hügelpark on the north bank of the Ruhr , on today's Baldeneysee . In 1902 around 450 widows and daughters of the Krupp workers worked for the consumer institute. In 1911/1912 Georg Metzendorf built a striking building for a branch of the Krupp consumer institute on Margarethenhöhe , where a grocery store is still located today. Other buildings that still exist are on Theodorstrasse in Essen's northern district, as well as one from 1930 in Bergeborbeck, which is under monument protection . In 1913, around 1,400 people were employed at the consumer establishment, with an annual turnover of around 40 million marks . In 1958 the Kruppsche Konsumanstalt opened its first self-service supermarket based on the American model on Rüttenscheider Strasse, where packaged goods could be taken from the shelves. In the same year, for the hundredth anniversary, an annual turnover of over 100 million DM is given in over one hundred branches. A Krupp department store was opened on Limbecker Platz in 1962 and sold again in 1969. The Quelle department store was later built on this area , after which SinnLeffers was located . This building finally gave way in 2006 to the construction of today's Limbecker Platz shopping center .
Sale of the consumer establishment in 1974
The first sales talks were initiated in the summer of 1973. An American company, Tengelmann , Kaisers and coop eG were named as negotiating partners . On November 8th of that year the managing director of Konsumanstalt Ekkehard Asbeck and the works council chairman Bernhard Jacket were from Krupp board member Dr. Reusch has been informed of the sale that has already been decided and has been sworn to secrecy. At the end of 1973 the Krupp Konsumanstalt operated 33 consumer markets and 54 DisKonta branches in Essen and the surrounding area, as well as a meat factory and a bakery, with annual sales of 165 million D-Marks . The sale was only about the shops and not about the meat factory and bakery. The Krupp board of directors named the reason for the sale that the consumer establishment no longer fit into the Krupp company concept. On January 1, 1974, the Krupp company parted with its consumer establishment. It was sold to Enro Nahrungsmittel GmbH, a subsidiary of coop Schleswig-Holstein eG , now coop eG. The press release from Krupp stated that all of the approximately 1200 employees of the consumer establishment will be taken over by the Enro company. In 1985/86 the Kruppsche Bazaar on Ostfeldstrasse was closed. A Cinemaxx cinema has been on the site since December 11, 1991.
literature
- KH Feuerstein: The consumer institution Fried. Croup . Consumption Institution Fried. Krupp, Essen 1953.
- Eugen Mündler: 100 years of Fried. Krupp consumer institute. 1858-1958. Krupp, Essen 1958.
- Ernst Schröder: The development of the Krupp consumer institution. A contribution to Essen's social and economic history . 2nd revised and supplemented edition. Schmidt-Verlag, Neustadt (Aisch) 1989, ISBN 3-87707-083-3 .
Web links
- Consum institution . (PDF) Digitalis Uni Köln, accessed on February 26, 2016
Individual evidence
- ↑ The “general regulatory” on company organization. ThyssenKrupp AG, accessed on February 25, 2016 .
- ^ Special publication by ThyssenKrupp AG: 200 years of Krupp (PDF file; 5.16 MB), page 14: 1868 - Der Konsum . Published November 20, 2011, last accessed February 25, 2016.
- ^ Daniel Stemmrich: The settlement as a program . Ed .: Johann Georg Olms Verlag. 1981, ISBN 978-3-487-07064-3 .
- ^ A b T. Kellen: The industrial city of Essen in words and pictures. History and description of the city of Essen. At the same time a guide through food and the surrounding area. Fredebeul & Koenen, Essen 1902.
- ↑ Excerpt from the list of monuments of the city of Essen (PDF; 540 kB); Retrieved January 5, 2017
- ↑ Uwe Spiekermann: Basis of the consumer society: Origin and development of the modern retail trade in Germany 1850-1914 . CH Beck, 1999, ISBN 3-406-44874-7 .
- ↑ 100 years of the Krupp consumer institution . In: Hamburger Abendblatt , May 6, 1958
- ↑ Works council wants to prevent the sale by all means . In: Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung (WAZ), November 20, 1973
- ↑ The Fried. On January 1, 1974, Krupp GmbH parted ways with its Krupp consumer institution . In: Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung (WAZ), December 21, 1973