Mercury, hoarding & Co.
The Merkur department store chain was given this name in 1938 after the Aryanization of the Schocken Group , whose headquarters were originally in Zwickau (Saxony). Until 1945 the company was called Merkur AG. In 1949 it passed back into the hands of the company founder Salman Schocken .
After its consolidation sold Schocken the consolidated 1953 Helmut Horten , of the name to Mercury Horten & Co changed. The headquarters were relocated from Nuremberg to Düsseldorf in 1961. In 1969, Horten converted the company into a stock corporation .
After the takeover, Helmut Horten GmbH opened a few additional branches under the name "Merkur", e.g. B. in Neuss (Rhineland) near Düsseldorf and in Osnabrück. These branches still had the hydrangea tiles known from Horten as a facade . However, the formation of secondary brands did not last long; a few years after opening, the branch was renamed "Horten".
The northernmost branch of Merkur was in Kiel; it existed until 1988.
Merkur branches
Helmut Horten GmbH operated up to 22 Merkur branches at the same time. In the mid-1960s, Horten and Merkur had a strange situation from today's perspective: on the one hand, Merkur branches in Moers , Duisburg and Gevelsberg (the only new building of this time with a different honeycomb facade) were converted into hoarding houses, on the other hand, in other cities new Merkur department stores are still being built, for example in Erlangen and Neuss . The Erlanger house was opened on November 11, 1965 as the 50th branch of the Horten group; a little later, Horten branches opened in Duisburg-Hamborn and in Viersen. In addition, the Merkur branch in Nuremberg was celebrated, the largest department store in southern Germany, and the building was expanded to include a parking garage with a gas station. Thus the Helmut Horten GmbH operated three own gas stations in Germany, which also appeared under the department store names Horten in Duisburg-Hamborn and Merkur in Neuss and Nuremberg . The price was uniform, which was described as low for gasoline at 45 pfennigs and for super at 50 pfennigs in the employee magazine.
As of November 11, 1965, there were Merkur department stores in these cities:
- Augsburg (from 1966 plans for total conversion to hoarding)
- Bremerhaven-Lehe
- Bremerhaven-Geestemünde
- Erlangen (last new Merkur building, also already with Horten honeycombs)
- Gevelsberg (house was under renovation, April 8, 1954– September 14, 1966 Merkur, hoarding until 1995, then J.Gg. Rupprecht / Kaufring)
- Heidenheim (later Horten-extra, from 1995 J.Gg. Rupprecht / Kaufring )
- Heilbronn (around 1970 demolished and replaced by a new Horten building)
- Hildesheim (Merkur house with honeycomb hoardings)
- Ingolstadt (later Horten, now Kaufhof)
- Kiel (the last Merkur branch to be closed in 1988)
- Cologne (was extensively rebuilt in 1963 and was a test operation for the gastro experiment "Kupferspiess", which was then found in many houses)
- Ludwigshafen (later hoarding, 2004–2010 as Kaufhof)
- Neuss (with Horten honeycomb and Merkur petrol station, renamed Horten a little later without conversion, closed February 6, 1999 with the completion of the Galeria Kaufhof)
- Nuremberg (after renovation in 1963 with over 17,500 m² largest branch until the opening of the Düsseldorf store (18,000 m²), until 2012 Kaufhof)
- Pforzheim (Merkur house with honeycomb hoardings)
- Pirmasens (later Horten-extra, from 1995 J.Gg. Rupprecht / Kaufring)
- Regensburg (today Galeria Kaufhof)
- Reutlingen (Merkur house with honeycombs, today Galeria Kaufhof)
- Schwäbisch Gmünd (Merkur House with hoarding combs, closed in 2001, demolished in 2011)
- Stuttgart (today Galeria Kaufhof)
- Wattenscheid (replaced by the new Horten building from 1966, J.Gg. Rupprecht / Kaufring from 1995)
- Ulm (built in 1953, already demolished in 1966, until 1967 Merkur in a low-rise building as a temporary solution, then hoarding, today Galeria Kaufhof)
Although a new Merkur store opened on November 11, 1965 with the Erlangen branch, the employee newspaper "Der Insight" announced in the first issue of 1967 (11th year):
“ Obsolete DeFaKa department stores are being replaced by department stores with a full range; outdated Merkur houses are being expanded, rebuilt and modernized. At the end of this restructuring phase, our company will only have state-of-the-art hoarding wholesalers [...] "
The end of the second brands DeFaKa and Merkur was thus publicly sealed. The only branch called “KÖSTER” (Wiesbaden, sub-grouped by DeFaKa) gave way to a new hoarding building in 1966/1967. Later houses, such as the recently opened branches in Erlangen and Neuss, which had already received the Horten honeycomb when they were built, were renamed Horten without extensive renovations.
Four relatively small Mercury houses became Horten-extra houses. They were sold together to Kaufring AG in 1995; the J.Gg. The department store chain called Rupprecht now had ten branches. Of the 22 branches that Kaufhof von Horten bought, Kaufhof only operated nine in mid-2010.
List of former Merkur stores that are still in operation today as Galeria Kaufhof:
- augsburg
- gain
- Hildesheim
- Ingolstadt
- Osnabrück
- Pforzheim (hoarding combs were removed in 2014)
- regensburg
- Reutlingen
- Stuttgart
- Ulm
Also:
- Duisburg (the house was only about half the size in Mercury times)
The Augsburg house was closed in 1987. Wöhrl moved into the former Merkur house in 1988 and can still be found in it today. The Galeria-KAUFHOF branch was opened in 2000 and replaced the privately run Zentral-Kaufhaus in Augsburg, which is about 30 meters away from the former Merkur-Haus.
The Nuremberg house on Aufseßplatz was one of the last branches to be converted to Kaufhof in 2004 . In its time the house was called Schocken, Merkur, Horten and Kaufhof. The Nuremberg location on Aufseßplatz with 17,000 m² of sales area was the largest branch of the Kaufhof Group that had not been redesigned to the Galeria concept. The branch was closed in 2012. The building including the parking garage has been empty since summer 2012. The head office of Merkur, Horten & Co was located at Kirschgartenstrasse 3 in Nuremberg until April 1961.
The houses in Gevelsberg and Ludwigshafen are still there, but are no longer used as department stores. The house in Neuss was heavily rebuilt immediately after its closure and is no longer recognizable as a Merkur house.
Mercury trademark
Mercury had a relatively simple logo. All letters of the name were in capital letters in a smooth, playful font, a similar font was also used by Hertie . At the Neuss branch, the white letters of the lettering were also attached to a dark plate, which was then attached to the hydrangea tiles. The original Merkur logo was a green, stylized M in a circle. This logo disappeared with the conversion of Merkur, Horten & Co. into Horten AG. Some of the department stores were called "Kaufstätte Merkur", then (from the beginning of the 1950s) "Kaufhaus Merkur"
Merkur purchasing company Horten-Kaufring mbH
A few years after the end of the "Merkur" department store brand, the name was revived in 1989 by Horten and their cooperation partner Kaufring , but not as a department store or retail specialty store, but as a purchasing community with the aim of obtaining better conditions on the market through larger purchases. The two cooperation partners each held 50 percent of the shares.
Merkur Purchasing Company Ltd.
In 1994, the company was renamed "Merkurkaufgesellschaft mbH" because Horten AG had been taken over by Kaufhof AG and the German Woolworth then took over the Horten share. When Kaufring AG went bankrupt in 2002, the purchasing community also disappeared.
Individual evidence
- ↑ br.de October 14, 2019: New life for department store on "Nürnberger Aufseßplatz"