Machwitz coffee

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Headquarters in Hanover

Machwitz Kaffee is a coffee brand and traditional coffee roasting company in Hanover . It was founded in Gdansk in 1883 as a consumer goods store and in 1919 settled in Hanover as a specialty coffee shop.

Foundation and development

Logo at the company headquarters

Wilhelm Machwitz founded the company in 1883 as the first consumer shop in Gdansk that also sold roasted coffee. After the First World War , the company expanded to Hanover, where it opened a specialty coffee shop in 1919 as a branch on Georgstrasse near the Kröpcke . The trademark of the business was three moors . The business soon gained a good reputation. The shop was destroyed in the air raids on Hanover during the Second World War in 1943.

After the war, the merchant Walter Koch (1911–1998) took over the shop and the brand in 1948. He initially opened a grocery store in today's Straße Am Marstall . When green coffee could be freely imported after the currency reform in 1948, Walter Koch received permission to buy green coffee. He then set up the roastery again in 1950. In 1951 the Machwitz Kaffee company acquired the traditional FJ Seeger tea company in Hanover, in 1968 the large roasting company Eichhorn Kaffee from Hanover and in 1971 the Hanoverian roastery Ernst Grote Kaffee. Machwitz coffee was one of the most famous types of coffee in Germany until the 1970s.

Walter Koch was from 1952 to 1956 a member of the German Party in the City Council of Hanover and also long-term Honorary Consul of Mexico for Lower Saxony. In 1958 he bought and restored the moated castle Hehlen , which was built in the 16th century in the style of the Weser Renaissance .

today

Mug from Machwitz
Machwitz Café in Hanover

The focus in the 1960s on a few dominant large roasters with sales channels via supermarkets and chain stores made coffee a mass commodity. Many roasting plants had to give way to this competitive pressure. As a result, Machwitz Kaffee gave up its well-developed sales network through retailers in the 1970s and switched to direct sales to cafes , offices , canteens and similar facilities. In addition to six types of coffee, the product range also includes tea, chocolate, pastries and other accessories. Jörg Walter Koch has been the managing director since 1998, and from 2010 together with his son Maximilian Koch. Since 1999 Machwitz Kaffee has been involved in the coffee house chain World Coffee and its successor, the Balzac Coffee Company, as a home roastery. Machwitz Kaffee has been running its own café in downtown Hanover since the end of 2010.

In 2017 the media reported on a public discussion as to whether the “Machwitz- Mohren ” on the company logo had a racist connotation after the African umbrella association North Germany e. V. described the three dark-skinned figures in the logo as “degrading”. According to Machwitz Kaffee, the company has kept the logo since it was founded in 1883; it is a relic from the German colonial era, when coffee was still exotic. Local politicians reacted differently to the discussion.

literature

Web links

Commons : Machwitz Kaffee  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Waldemar R. Röhrbein : Koch, Walter. In: Dirk Böttcher , Klaus Mlynek, Waldemar R. Röhrbein, Hugo Thielen : Hannoversches Biographisches Lexikon . From the beginning to the present. Schlütersche, Hannover 2002, ISBN 3-87706-706-9 , pp. 203 f .; limited preview in Google Book search
  2. ↑ Wolfgang D. Brylla: Crime as a time machine. Reality effects in Marek Krajewski's Eberhard Mock novel “Fortress Breslau”. In: Matteo Colombi (Ed.): City - Mord - Order: urban topographies of crime in crime literature from Eastern and Central Europe. Transcript, Bielefeld 2012, ISBN 978-3-8376-1918-8 , pp. 219–232, here p. 224; limited preview in Google Book search
  3. ↑ Simon Benne : Is the Machwitz roastery logo racist? in Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung from December 28, 2017
  4. ↑ Juliane Kaune, Nils Oehlschläger: Racism or "Culture Police"? Debate about the Machwitz logo in the Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung on December 28, 2017

Coordinates: 52 ° 22  '26.4 " N , 9 ° 43' 50.4"  E