Loeser & Wolff
Loeser & Wolff was a German tobacco factory and retailer in Berlin. In particular, cigars were manufactured, imported and distributed . At times it was the largest cigar factory in Europe and a Jewish company until Aryanization in 1937.
History and meaning
Beginnings
On July 1, 1865, Bernhard Loeser (born April 17, 1835 in Quedlinburg ) and Carl Wolff (born 1825) founded a tobacco shop; it is documented in 1866 with its registered office at Alexanderstraße 3. The head office had been at Alexanderstraße 1 since 1867. Wolff was responsible for the Berlin retail stores, Loeser was also responsible for wholesale.
Beginning expansion
In order to be able to satisfy the growing demand and to be closer to the important sales region in the east of what was then Prussia , Loeser acquired shares in the cigar factory Jean Kohlweck & Co. in Elbing (West Prussia, today Elbląg in Poland) on January 20, 1874 , whereupon they renamed Kohlweck & Loeser . In 1878 he took it over completely and changed its name to the Loeser & Wolff cigar factory . When he joined the company in 1874, around 40 exclusively female employees were used to produce 26,700 cigars by hand from the imported raw tobacco. Due to rapidly growing demand, the company expanded in the same year as well as in 1880, 1881 and 1882.
Model company
The largest company in Elbing was the shipyard and machine works Schichau-Werke . The cigar factory offered the families an important additional income through the women's jobs with well above-average social benefits. For example, in 1884 a pension fund was founded without employee contributions. The legal age insurance was introduced in 1891, the company also took over there the overall contribution. The company health insurance fund provided support for up to a year, and the workers were free to choose among several company doctors. In addition to the employers' liability insurance association, there was a company's own accident insurance, a death benefit, a further training facility, a factory kitchen and its own company savings bank, which paid high interest on assets. The Prussian Minister of State Karl Heinrich von Boetticher said in 1886, after visiting the factory in Elbing in 1886, that “such an industrial model plant” would hardly exist anywhere else in Germany and Europe.
The share of wholesaling and exports to Europe, Africa, Asia and Japan quickly exceeded the importance of the retail business. In 1881 Loeser presented the company at the Melbourne International Exhibition in Melbourne / Australia, where it received 1st prize, while the high quality of the cigars was awarded at exhibitions in Königsberg , Bromberg and Berlin.
Further expansion
In 1885 Loeser had a second factory built in the nearby district town of Braunsberg (East Prussia, today Braniewo / Poland), on December 1, 1911 another production facility in Marienburg (West Prussia, today Malbork / Poland) and in 1911 another one was opened in Prussian Stargard (West Prussia, today Starogard Gdański / Poland) in operation. All factories were run from Elbing, where the largest factory was, by director Franz Wilhelm Pamperin. Pamperin was herself the son of a small tobacco manufacturer in Elbing. In 1896 a small production company was added in Bremen . In the same year the company was the supplier for tobacco products at the Berlin trade fair . Loeser and Wolff had their own pavilion with a tobacco museum and trade exhibition on the south bank of the New Lake. Here there were demonstrations of cigar box production and cigar making. LuW commissioned the Manoli cigarette factory in Berlin to produce a cigarette , which produced an exhibition cigarette with the hammer fist emblem, which was sold on the premises via LuW.
In 1890, on the occasion of the company's 25th anniversary , Kaiser Wilhelm II appointed Loeser an honorary member of the National Thanks for Veterans . On January 29, 1895, Loeser was given the honorary title of Royal Prussian Commerzienrat . At the end of the 19th century Loeser & Wolff was awarded the Royal Prussian State Medal in gold several times . To mark the 25th anniversary of the factory in Elbling, a street on the company's premises was renamed Loeserstraße in 1899.
Loeser died on May 2, 1901 in Berlin. He is buried in the Jewish cemetery in Berlin-Weißensee . In the same year there were already 66 stores in Berlin, 2,000 predominantly female employees worked in the Elbing and Braunsberg factories, and around 100 million cigars were produced.
On November 13, 1902, co-founder Carl Wolff also died. His widow Cäcilie and Loeser's son-in-law, the senior government and building officer Alfred Sommerguth, continued to run the company, which subsequently reached its peak.
Heyday
In 1907 almost 3900 people were employed, 3280 of them in Elbing. In 1914 a company advertisement indicated 120 sales outlets. A total of 194,500,000 cigars were produced in the 1915/16 financial year, i.e. during the First World War , shortly before the establishment of the German Tobacco Trading Company and the war-related government enforcement of tobacco. The highest weekly production was 4,000,000 pieces. In 1916 Loeser & Wolff employed almost 5,000 people, 3,740 of them in Elbing alone.
Decline and end
After the end of the war, the branch in Prussian Stargard became Polish. In 1920, the two heirs combined the remaining and previously legally independent sub-operations in a GmbH . In the following year, a smoking tobacco factory was installed. The company ran into difficulties during the economic crisis, had to stop production for months in 1922/23, but recovered after a while. At the end of the 1920s, the daughter Lucia Sommerguth-Loeser took over the management.
1928-1930 she was in Berlin designed by architect Albert Biebendt at the corner of Schöneberger Ufer 47 / Potsdamer Straße 58 (the district of Tiergarten , Mitte district ) on a 1,445 sqm plot a new administrative center in the style of the early New Objectivity establish that the Architects was one of the first skyscrapers in Berlin to have been designed. Due to the outbreak of the economic crisis, the steel frame building , the facade of which is clad with sandstone slabs and structured like a ribbon with a narrow sequence of windows and continuous cornices, was then realized with seven staggered storeys and 30 m lower than planned, so that the Shell on the other side of the Landwehr Canal -House Emil Fahrenkamps , whose pupil Biebendt had been, overtook him. In particular the entrance area and the stairwells are furnished with style elements of the Art Deco . White clinker bricks were used in the inner courtyard. The "Loeser & Wolff" building, which protrudes over the Landwehr Canal like the bow of a ship , was nicknamed "Loeser-Burg" by the people of Berlin , today it is neutrally called "Haus Loeser & Wolff". When Lucia Sommerguth-Loeser died in 1937, the long-time Berlin director Walter E. Beyer took over the company on April 1, 1937 as part of the aryanization process. A short UfA advertising film from 1942 by the “Walter E. Beyer cigar factories” with Rudolf Platte and Eduard Wenck has survived . After the end of the Second World War , however, the company could no longer recover. The company ran under Beyer's name until 1952, after which 80% went into the hands of the Lucia Loeser Foundation (Beyer remained managing director until December 31, 1963). The Elbing branch no longer existed in 1952 at the latest, after 1945 the "Truso" textile factory (which also no longer exists today) was set up there. The iron curtain separated the other plants from supplying the distribution center in Berlin.
The architects Hans Scharoun and Edgar Wisniewski moved into an office in 1964 on the top floor (attic floor) of the Berlin “Loeser & Wolff” building, which was built in the 1920s and listed in 1955 , after they won the “Capital Berlin” competition in 1958 to build the not far away cultural forum (with the Philharmonie, State Library and Chamber Music Hall). The office existed there for forty years until the renovation. In 1972 one of the first Greek restaurants in Berlin opened on the ground floor; it no longer exists today. A physiotherapy practice has established itself here.
On June 30, 1983 the company "Loeser & Wolff" was dissolved.
Around the year 2000, “Polis AG”, a real estate holding company of Bank Delbrück , acquired the “Loeser & Wolff” house. In cooperation with the project development company Beos, it was completely renovated and rebuilt between 2002 and 2004 for 22.5 million euros. According to plans by the architects Gerkan, Marg und Partner , it was given two additional glazed saddle floors. The initially controversial increase is based on the rediscovered original plans of Scharoun, who provided for a three-story staggered glass tower. The "40 Seconds Lounge", a party club, was located on the new floors until 2017, and today the Golvet restaurant is on the 8th floor. The other floors are used by Deutsche Entertainment AG, the Berlin State Association of Company Health Insurance Funds, the DfV company (service for insurance companies), an art gallery, asset consultants, architects and lawyers' offices, among others.
Reception in literature
The cigar factory has found its way into important works of literature several times:
- Alfred Döblin mentions them in his Berlin city novel Berlin Alexanderplatz - The Story of Franz Biberkopf :
“Loeser and Wolff with the mosaic sign tore it off, 20 meters further he is getting up again, and over in front of the station he is standing again. Loeser and Wolff, Berlin-Elbing, first-class qualities in all flavors, Brazil, Havana, Mexico, Little Comforter, Liliput, cigar No. 8, the piece 25 Pfennig, cigarillos No. 10, unsorted, Sumatra blanket, a special service in this price range, in boxes of a hundred, 10 pfennigs. I hit everything, you hit everything, he hits everything with boxes of 50 pieces and cardboard packaging of 10 pieces, shipping to all countries in the world, Boyero 25 pfennigs, this news brought us many friends, I hit everything, you hit it for a long time. "
- The title of Walter Kempowski's novel Tadellöser & Wolff is derived from the company name: Kempowski's father, who often bought at Loeser & Wolff, used this idiom when he wanted to praise something.
" " Blameless & Wolff? What is that supposed to mean? ”Well, well, that's all. That's what people talk about in the city. “Gutmannsdörfer”, that is also such a joke. If you think something is good, just say “Gutmannsdörfer”. Or “Schlechtmannsdörfer”, or “Miesnitz & Jenssen”. "
literature
- Hans-Jürgen Schuch: Loeser and Wolff. From the history of a global company . In: Udo Arnold (Hrsg.): Preußische Landesgeschichte . Festschrift for Bernhart Jähnig on his 60th birthday (= individual publications of the Historical Commission for East and West Prussian State Research . Volume 22 ). Elwert, Marburg 2001, ISBN 3-7708-1177-1 , p. 405-423 .
Web links
- Hans-Jürgen Schuch: Loeser, Bernhard . In: Ostdeutsche Biographie (Kulturportal West-Ost) - with further literature
- West Prussian entrepreneurs , u. a. on the history of Loeser & Wolff, by Christa Mühleisen, with historical views and other literature
- Peter Schubert: House Loeser & Wolff. In: Welt Online . December 19, 2004.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Photo of the pack on a private collector's website
- ^ Office building Loeser & Wolff GmbH. In: Berliner Bezirkslexikon: Mitte. Edition Luisenstadt, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-89542-111-1 .
- ↑ The week. In: The Israelit - A Central Organ for Orthodox Judaism. Number 16, Frankfurt am Main, April 22, 1937, p. 6. (PDF; 9.17 MB, accessed on April 5, 2013)
- ↑ Title: “From first source” ( Memento from February 19, 2007 in the Internet Archive ), Fritz Bauer Institute - Cinematography of the Holocaust, copy in the film archive of the Federal Archives .
- ^ Alfred Döblin: Berlin Alexanderplatz. 11th edition. Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich 1972, pp. 144f.