Maier & Louis Hess

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1920s: company name
1920s: Factory 2
1920s: newspaper advertisement
1927: Contemporary advertising poster
Berlin office at Gertraudtenstrasse 1–3 near Spittelmarkt
1920s: company name
Shares in Schuhfabrik Hess AG

Maier & Louis Hess or M. & L. Hess was a German company in Erfurt , Thuringia , which had specialized in the factory production of shoes. The company was Aryanized during the Nazi era , then transferred to public ownership in the Soviet zone of occupation and, after several mergers, traded as VEB Schuhfabrik Paul Schäfer in 1952 .

Development phase

The shoe factory was named after the brothers Maier (1849–1915) and Louis Hess , who founded the company in 1878 in Erfurt. They began in a small company building on the Löbergera (branch of the Gera , possibly today's Gera-Flutgraben?) With initially 25 employees. Business flourished and the company expanded rapidly. In 1896 there were already two factories of the company in Erfurter Leipziger Strasse and Moltkestrasse (today: Thälmannstrasse). With the steep rise of their company, the two founders came into the social leadership class of their city and accordingly to considerable influence that brought envious people with it.

After the death of his father Maier Hess in 1915, the 36-year-old Alfred Hess became a managing partner and subsequently expanded the company. During the First World War , the factories produced military boots through the compulsory economy . After the war, the range was quickly expanded to include civilian products. In 1922 the company employed around 1,800 workers and 125 employees. This made it the second largest company in this branch in the city.

Alfred Hess' nephew, Kurt Ludwig Hess , the son of his brother Adolf and his wife Elsbeth, also worked for the company after completing his studies, sometimes as a regional representative in the field.

Great Depression

The global economic crisis at the end of October 1929 caused the shoe factory to experience turbulence and at the end of 1930 it went bankrupt .

In December 1931, Alfred Hess died unexpectedly at the age of only 52 during or after an operation. His widow Thekla and his son Hans, as heirs, managed to completely discharge the company within the next two and a half years by the summer of 1933 and to bring the shoe factory back into profitability. Both were able to fall back on real estate, the art collection of around 4,000 works by Alfred Hess and the above-average income of his son Hans as a journalist.

time of the nationalsocialism

Soon after the political handover of power to the National Socialists , however, Hans Hess saw himself threatened and was no longer able to carry out his actual work at the (Jewish) Ullstein publishing house in Berlin. His accommodation with the writer Elisabeth Hauptmann was demolished and looted by an SA troop. He went to London via Paris.

His nephew Kurt Ludwig Hess fled abroad on April 1, 1933 after calling for a boycott of Jewish shops . He finally made it to the Dominican Republic via stops in Barcelona, ​​Ibiza, Naples, Munich, Libau and Paris.

The company was " Aryanized " by the National Socialists and converted into a stock corporation. The company name changed from M. & L. Hess to Schuhfabrik Hess Aktiengesellschaft. The National Socialists did not want to change anything about the good name that the Jewish founders and their heirs had acquired for their products.

Alfred Hess' widow left Germany in 1939 and followed her son Hans to Great Britain.

During the Second World War , the shoe factories once again became an armaments factory that was important to the war effort and manufactured for the Wehrmacht . From 1943 onwards, the Louisenhall brine bath in the nearby northeastern suburb of Stotternheim was requisitioned as an additional production site.

post war period

A few years after the end of the war, the Hess shoe factories in the Soviet occupation zone were expropriated and became public property . Through a merger with Eduard Lingel Schuhfabrik Aktiengesellschaft , VEB Schuhfabrik Thuringia was created in 1948 , and after further mergers within the GDR, which was founded in the meantime , VEB Schuhfabrik Paul Schäfer, named in 1952 after a former employee . It had a total of 12 plants with 28 production sites and 6000 employees. The main factory in Erfurt was considered the largest producer of women's shoes in Europe until the fall of the Berlin Wall .

literature

  • Franz Sailer, Max Wittenberg and others: The golden book of the German shoe and leather industry. Edited as a celebratory gift on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the publishing house, Verlag Schuh und Leder, Berlin 1932.
  • Hans Hess: Thanks in colors. From Alfred and Thekla Hess' guest book. Piper Verlag, Munich 1957. (New edition ISBN 3-492-10606-4 )
  • Edwin Redslob : From Weimar to Europe. Experienced and well thought-out. Haude & Spener, Berlin 1972, ISBN 3-7759-0144-2 .
  • Mechtild Lucke: The Erfurt patron and collector Alfred Hess. In: Henrike Junge: Avant-garde and audience. Reception of avant-garde art in Germany 1905–1933. Böhlau Verlag, Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 1992, ISBN 3-412-02792-8 .
  • Christina Feilchenfeld, Peter Romilly: The Alfred Hess Collection. In: Weltkunst. Journal of art and antiques. Volume 70, October 2000, ISSN 0043-261X.
  • Jewish Museum Berlin, House of the History of the Federal Republic of Germany (Hrsg.): Home and Exile: Emigration of German Jews after 1933. Jüdischer Verlag im Suhrkamp Verlag, Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-633-54222-1 .
  • Steffen Raßloff: Civil War and the Roaring Twenties. Erfurt in the Weimar Republic. Sutton Publ., Erfurt 2008, ISBN 978-3-86680-338-1 .
  • Ruth Menzel, Eberhard Menzel: Alfred Hess: shoe manufacturer, art collector and patron. Edition Tempus. Sutton Publishers, Erfurt 2008, ISBN 978-3-86680-288-9 .
  • Hans-Ulrich Dillmann, Susanne Heim: Vanishing Point Caribbean. Jewish emigrants in the Dominican Republic. Ch. Links Verlag, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-86153-551-5 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Photo: Maier Hess (1849-1915) tomb, Amalie Hess, b. Nordheimer (1851–1927), Alfred Hess (1879–1931) , from: alemannia-judaica.de, accessed on April 23, 2017.
  2. ↑ Anti-Semitism in Thuringia , on: erfurt-web.de, accessed on April 23, 2017.
  3. ↑ Ruth Menzel, Eberhard Menzel: Alfred Hess: shoe manufacturer, art collector and patron. Edition Tempus. Sutton, Erfurt 2008, ISBN 978-3-86680-288-9 , p. 84.
  4. ^ Jewish companies , at: juedisches-leben-erfurt.de, accessed on April 23, 2017.
  5. ↑ Hess, Kurt Luis & Ana Julia , on: sosuamuseum.org, accessed on April 23, 2017.
  6. ^ Franz Sailer, Max Wittenberg et al.: The golden book of the German shoe and leather industry. Edited as a celebratory gift on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the publishing house, Verlag Schuh und Leder, Berlin 1932, pp. 122–123.
  7. ↑ Press release on the return of the painting by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner "Berlin Street Scene" ( memento of the original from August 20, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . Lawyer David J. Rowland / Lawyers Schink & Studzinski (Rowland & Associates, New York / Berlin), May 25, 2007, from: nazi-looted-art.de, accessed on April 23, 2017. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.nazi-looted-art.de
  8. ↑ Jewish Museum Berlin, House of the History of the Federal Republic of Germany (ed.): Home and Exile: Emigration of German Jews after 1933. Jüdischer Verlag im Suhrkamp Verlag, Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-633-54222-1 , page 172.
  9. ↑ Hans-Ulrich Dillmann, Susanne Heim: Vanishing Point Caribbean. Jewish emigrants in the Dominican Republic. Ch. Links Verlag, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-86153-551-5 .
  10. ↑ Died: Luis Hess. In: Der Spiegel. 7/2010, February 13, 2010, from: spiegel.de, accessed on April 23, 2017.
  11. ^ Theo Bruns: Exile in the Dominican Republic , from: ila-web.de, accessed on April 23, 2017.
  12. ↑ Andreas Hüneke : Claims for return from the Alfred Hess collection. State of knowledge, overview and opinion. Free University of Berlin, Institute of Art History, Research Center Degenerate Art (Ed.), From: fu-berlin.de, accessed on April 23, 2017.
  13. ↑ The history of the salt pans of Stotternheim. From: heimatverein-stotternheim.de, accessed on April 23, 2017.
  14. ^ Wolfgang Huschke: Lingel, Eduard. In: New German Biography. (NDB). Volume 14, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1985, ISBN 3-428-00195-8 , p. 620 f.
  15. ↑ Gurkenpaule is alive - Paul Schäfer's shoe makers meet at: meinanzeiger.de, March 19, 2016.