Moses Flechtheim

The Flechtheim Speicher around 1900

Moses Flechtheim (* 1814 in Brakel ; † 1886 in Münster ) was a German wholesaler .

Life

He grew up as the sixth of seven children of the Brakel merchant Soistmann Alexander David Flechtheim and his wife Wegge, b. Dalberg. in Brakel and founded the grain and wool business M. Flechtheim & Comp. On June 5, 1845, he married Henriette Feibes from Lengerich and had three daughters and two sons, Alex Flechtheim (1846-1919) and Emil Flechtheim (1850-1933). In 1870 the family moved to Münster and lived at Ludgeristraße 20–22. The outbreak of the Franco-German War made them an important and extremely successfully expanding grain supplier for the Prussian Army Corps based there. The family used the good local conditions to develop the company into one of the largest grain trading companies in the German Empire . With branches in Rotterdam , Antwerp and Duisburg , she developed extensive trade relationships, particularly with Russia , Romania and America . He died in Münster on June 4, 1886. His wife Henriette then moved to Berlin, where she died on November 21, 1910.

Aftermath

Even after the founder's death, the sons of the company founder and leading employees of the company played a respected role in the Münster merchants as well as in the German Trading Day . You sat on the city council and were among the initiators of technical innovations such as the first telephone company founded in 1887 . They played a key role in the construction of the Dortmund-Ems Canal , which made the inland cities of Dortmund and Münster important transshipment points for the German grain trade, as well as in the expansion of the rail and road network. In 1888 M. Flechtheim & Comp. In the Duisburg Inner Harbor, a plot of land to the east of the Schwanentor was used for the construction of granaries and thus contributed to the fact that the Inner Harbor was then also called the “Bread Basket of the Ruhr Area”. In 1894 the still existing subsidiary Rheinisch-Westfälische Speditions-Gesellschaft was founded there. In 1895 M. Flechtheim & Comp. its headquarters in Düsseldorf . In 1899, it had the five-storey Flechtheim warehouse built on the recently constructed port of Münster .

Moses Flechtheim was the grandfather of the art dealer Alfred Flechtheim and great-grandfather of the professorologist Ossip K. Flechtheim .

literature

• Gisela Möllenhoff, Rita Schlautmann-Overmeyer: Jewish families in Münster 1918–1945, Vol. 2: Treatises and documents, Part 1: 1918–1935. Westfälisches Dampfboot Verlag, Münster 1998, ISBN 3-89691-445-6 .

Web links

• http://alfredflechtheim.com/alfred-flechtheim/herkunft/ (accessed on February 8, 2018)