Michael Kahn (manufacturer)

Michael Kahn

Michael Kahn (May 1798 - July 19, 1861 in Mannheim ) was the founder of a bed spring factory, which developed into a large production company in Mannheim.

Life

Michael Kahn came from a poor rural Jewish family. His father Benedikt Kahn died before 1813, and his mother (died March 24, 1852 / Jüdischer Friedhof Eppingen, grave no. 23) is described as poor in the Stebbach community account book. In July 1826 he married Franziska Bär (died March 9, 1892 in Mannheim), the daughter of the wealthy Jewish cattle dealer and owner of the Stebbacher Gasthaus Zum Löwen .

In the same year he started his business, buying feathers, drying, sorting and reselling them. Since more and more people were buying feather beds and down pillows , Michael Kahn had to buy feathers from other regions. So his business grew steadily. The transport to and from Stebbach became more and more of a problem. The city of Heilbronn , where he wanted to move his business, did not allow him to buy into the city's civil rights.

In August 1851 he received the promise of the city of Mannheim to settle there. In 1854 the company and the family of seven moved to Mannheim. According to the tax assessment, his assets amounted to 47,000 guilders during this time. After part of Kahn's residential and commercial building in S 1.9 burned down in 1858 , Kahn acquired a larger property in J 6.1, where, in addition to buying, selling and sorting feathers, he will also continue to process and refine products recorded. With the enlargement of the company, new sources of supply came along, in addition to the previous domestic products, feathers from Bohemia and Hungary were added. The company was expanded several times. Kahn took his three eldest sons Hermann, Emil and Bernhard Kahn into the management. Due to political troubles, son Bernhard had to spend some time in the USA and initiated important business connections there.

In February 1861, Kahn went to Düsseldorf for an operation on a painful corn . During this operation, Kahn contracted a wound infection, due to which a foot had to be amputated a little later and which he finally succumbed on July 19, 1861.

His company was initially continued by his sons under the name of M. Kahn Sons . When the latter concentrated on the banking business in the following years, the Mannheim bed spring factory came into the possession of the Straus family, who moved the business to the Mannheim industrial port in 1904/05 due to a lack of further inner-city expansion options. The company suffered from the scarcity of raw materials during the First World War and the subsequent French occupation of the Mannheim port area. In 1937, M. Kahn Söhne GmbH was forcibly renamed to Mannheimer Bettfedernfabrik . In 1938 the factory was “ Aryanized ” and came into the possession of the Kauffmann family , who managed the company until the 1980s. The Danish company Nordisk Fjerfabrik was a partner in the company from 1972 to 1990, and since 1990 the Mannheim bed spring factory has been part of Nord Feder GmbH in Stuttgart-Untertürkheim. About 40 employees in Mannheim processed 250 tons of fluff annually, the company's products were mainly sold under the brand name Centa-Star . After three years of short-time work, the company closed in 2004. The historic production facilities in Mannheim's industrial port are still partially used for production by a successor company, while some of the buildings are now also used as a port park for the creative industry.

Michael Kahn'sche School Foundation

With the Michael Kahn'schen School Foundation , the sons erected a monument to their father. The foundation was set up in 1870 and served in Stebbach to finance the school library, for general school needs and to procure learning materials for poor students. Since the foundation's capital was almost exhausted, the Stebbach town council decided in 1953 to dissolve the foundation.

literature

• Wolfram Angerbauer , Hans Georg Frank: Jewish communities in the district and city of Heilbronn. History, fates, documents . Heilbronn district, Heilbronn 1986 ( series of publications by the Heilbronn district . Volume 1), pp. 221–224 and 282–288.
• Ralf Bischoff and Reinhard Hauke ​​(eds.): The Jewish cemetery in Eppingen. A documentation . 2nd Edition. Heimatfreunde Eppingen , Eppingen 1996 ( Around the Ottilienberg. Contributions to the history of the city of Eppingen and its surroundings . Volume 5).
• Wolfgang Ehret: The Jewish Kahn family from Stebbach - manufacturers, revolutionaries, bankers . In: Kraichgau. Contributions to landscape and local research , volume 17, Heimatverein Kraichgau 2002, pp. 231–256.

Web links

• Former Mannheim bed spring factory at rhein-neckar-industriekultur.de

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Ehret 2002, pp. 234/235.
2. ↑ Ehret 2002, pp. 235/236.
3. ↑ Ehret 2002, pp. 236/237.
4. ↑ Information from rhein-neckar-industriekultur.de, cf. Web links.