Motty Eitingon

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Motty Eitingon as a young man

Matwey Isakowitsch "Motty" Eitingon (* 1885 in Orsha ; † July 28, 1956 in New York ) was an important fur wholesaler. He came to New York from Russia via Leipzig. His uncle Chaim Eitingon (1860–1934) had begun the wholesale business of fur. He moved from Schklou in Russia to Moscow and founded the tobacco trading company Ch. Eitingon , in which his nephews Max Eitingon and Motty Eitingon later joined as partners. Chaim returned to Moscow and Motty went to New York.

From the 1920s to the 1930s, Eitingon Schild & Co., Inc. New York was one of the world's largest fur wholesalers and the largest in the United States. In late 1925, American women were buying "more Siberian furs than the rest of the world combined" through imports by the company. Motty Eitingon has been described as the man who made millions and lost millions.

Biography, company history

The American branch operated from 1912 to 1946, successively as W. Eitingon & Co. , Eitingon Schild Inc. , Eitingon & Gregory (Georg Gregory, actually Gregory Josefowitz, Lithuania) and Gregory & Jaglon . Other companies associated with the company were: In London ( Moscow Fur Trading Company , around 1920) and in Paris ( Société Anonyme de Moscou , around 1920). All of these sister companies worked closely together.

Matwey Isakowitsch Eitingon, who called himself "Motty" less Russian-sounding, was the son of Itsak Leib Eitingon and the grandson of Mordecai Eitingon . He was the youngest of four brothers ( Max , Boris († 1932) and the twin brother of Boris, Naum († 1964)). He also had four sisters. Motty Eitingon, nephew of the company's founder Chaim, became Chaim's son-in-law after his cousin Fanny Eitingon married . He had two daughters with Fanny. The daughter Lee worked temporarily in Paris as a Time-Life correspondent. His second wife was Bess (née Tepfer, married Rockmore) , and they both had a son, Tommy .

Europe

In 1902 Motty Eitingon went to Leipzig. Although he had the right to live in Leipzig as a Russian Jew, he probably spent the years of World War I in Russia until October 1918. Together with his brother Boris and later partner Monya, he was imprisoned for six weeks in Moscow in Butyrka prison in 1918 "because he was a capitalist" , from which he is said to have ransomed for 85,000 US dollars.

In Leipzig, Motty and Chaim founded the Israelitische Krankenhaus-Eitingon-Stiftung , which from 1928 ran the Eitingonkrankenhaus in the Waldstrasse district . Motty paid for the inventory: "A medical interior of the highest quality".

At the world's largest self-presentation of the fur industry in the summer of 1930, the International Fur Exhibition (IPA) , the Americans showed disappointingly little commitment. Of the seven participating companies, only Eitingon Schild & Co. stood out with their own show. However, with the exception of the London company, Motty Eitingon's interest in the European branches had declined since the beginning of the economic crisis in the 1920s, again especially in the years 1930 to 1932. After the Nazis came to power in 1933, the Leipzig fur trading company became Eitingon dissolved, whose debts in the amount of 3 million marks were canceled by New York. As part of the later forced Aryanization of the Jewish businesses, the Eitingons were finally forced to stop all activities in Germany.

United States

After Waldemar Eitingon , the son of the company's founder, Chaim Eitingon, died in 1919 , Motty Eitingon took over his position in New York in 1920. When he entered the USA in 1919, he stated that he had first gone from his homeland to Kiev , where he spent six months, then to Poland, then to Germany and from there to Sweden. Much later, he told the FBI that he had moved directly to Minsk with his cousin Monya (Salomon) , which was then in German hands, and that they would have gone to Stockholm together. One can assume that her way led her via Leipzig. The family followed in September 1920.

As executor of Waldemar's legacy, Motty set the value of the furs stored in Europe at 922,246 dollars for the division of the estate. Four and a half years later, a representative of Waldemar's underage daughter (“ ad litem ”) initiated a lawsuit in which he accepted Waldemar's actual share of 2.4 million dollars.

Motty Eitingon was extremely successful in Leipzig and then in his New York business, with his move the center of the family empire shifted to New York. The London branch was taken over by his cousin Monya. Motty's success was largely based on its imports from the Soviet Union. For a few years it looked as if he had an almost monopoly on the western trade in Russian tobacco products. He knew how to get on well with the Soviet embassy and its visitors. Eitingon Schild Holding had good contacts with the London trading company ARCOS Export Agency, the broker in the fur trade between the Soviet Union and the western states.

The very first brokered contract had a volume of $ 1,750,000; this was the first million dollar contract between the Soviet Union and a company in the western world. Accordingly, the transaction was seen as a signal that larger trade relations with Russia could be expected again. When in 1923 an agreement between Eitingon Schild und Co. and ARCOS in the amount of 3 million dollars for the import of raw hides was concluded, the Deutsche Bank in Leipzig, a major financier of the fur industry, viewed this again as a sensation.

In the 1920s, clashes between fur workers and entrepreneurs rocked the American fur industry. They were carried out with tremendous severity and brutality on both sides, including the participation of criminal gangs and with many dead. Motty Eitingon, also seen as liberal by the trade unions, succeeded in mediating twice successfully in the negotiations between the trade union under the leadership of the communist Ben Gold and the employers.

Motty Eitingon was related to the Russian secret service officer Naum Isaakowitsch Eitingon . Motty stated that she had never had contact with him. At the time when many Russian Jews who worked for the Russian state power were threatened up to the point of murder, Naum Isaakowitsch Eitingon's mother and sister are said to have tried to establish contact with Motty in the Moscow Hotel National in the 1920s.

The American Federation of Labor indicted Motty Eitingon in 1926 as a Soviet agent with $ 8,000,000 in Soviet fur contracts. He was questioned by the FBI five times alone . The suspicion of illegal cooperation with the Soviets arose again and again, reinforced by his unusual trade deals with the USSR. Towards the end of the Second World War, this mistrust probably reached its climax, when, while apparently under constant surveillance, even a spy was flown on a business flight to Miami in order to elicit incriminating information from Motty. Motty was repeatedly monitored for up to two years after the end of the war.

In 1929, Eitingon Schild & Co. signed a contract with Russia for the supply of tobacco products worth $ 16 million. The following year, the company announced that it would take over all of the Russian sable hides on offer . In February 1931, agreement was reached on the purchase of $ 50 million for sale in America and Europe, the bulk of the Russian tobacco crop, "possibly the largest contract of its kind anybody has made".

The 1930s saw the company go up and down, but most of the time it went down. The Eitingon Company reported a net loss of $ 2,423,584 in 1929; $ 1,075,980 in 1930 and $ 1,149,345 in 1931 (The New York Times, March 8, 1930; March 19, 1931; April 24, 1932) . The New York Times of April 25, 1940 noted that the company suffered steady losses from $ 750,384 in 1934 to $ 140,750 in 1939, showing a profit for only 1936. In 1940 the Eitingon Schild company was no longer on the market and on August 5, 1940, the share was removed from the New York Stock Exchange due to lack of assets. A report on the company published in the New York Times on April 25, 1940 shows that the worst blow to the company was the start of World War II . The demand for luxury furs declined and the war severed the company's ties with the Polish textile subsidiary Eitingon, which was a big believer in the company. This also happened following the confiscation of the holdings in Germany in 1938 under the Nazi Aryanization Act and the sale of the properties in China. For reasons that are not quite apparent, the New York firm was punished in 1937 by the Joint Boycott Committee of the American Jewish Congress and the Jewish Labor Committee for shipping furs through Nazi Germany, although it was once again said to be "the luck of the Eitingons" stopped once: The Board's report partially apologized for the company's involvement in the transaction in question as a matter of simple negligence (The New York Times, November 10, 1937) .

Due to the war, New York, with the Fur District, had taken first place as the international fur center instead of London in 1943; the Leipziger Brühl had lost all importance since the takeover and the expulsion of the Jewish fur traders in 1933. Nevertheless, the big upswing hoped for by the American fur industry did not materialize for the time being. In that year Motty founded Motty Eitingon Inc. and bought through this newly formed syndicate together with the Canadian dealer "Holt Renfrew" Russian noble furs , starting with 7000 sables for almost a million dollars, "then almost a bargain". The intermediary was the Amtorg Trading Corporation , a representation of Russian foreign trade in New York. Through this commitment, the interest in exclusive furs was stimulated again in the fur and fashion houses in question.

In addition to the 1940, after closure of the Eitingon shield, founded Motty Eitingon Inc. (wholesalers and importers of fur, President Motty Eitingon), the commercial directory recorded from 1943 to Motty Eitingon & Co. and the Eitingon, Gregory and Jaglom Inc. The Eitingon Gregory and Jaglom Co. was formed in 1943 from the merger of Eitingon-Gregory and the Gregory-Eitingon Factory Corporation . In the spring of 1944, Motty became director of Goldfill Processing in New Jersey and management in Manhattan. The company was closed again in March 1945 after a fire in the factory.

Last big deal and final corporate exit

Woven label from a bonmouton coat

In 1946, Motty wanted to go back to full former size. This time not in the high-quality genre, but with a mass product of the fur industry, made of lambskin . Towards the end of the war he had already bought some lambskin, an item that was in great demand for military clothing. He and his partner Monya introduced the fur to the Americans, and above all to American women, under the new name “Bonmouton” (“Bonmouton - Eitingon dyed lamb”), “a lambskin that cannot be compared to any other”. The sheepskin, which was probably similar to or evenly refined to the previous beaver lamb , was advertised at half a million dollars and really got the positive press response that had been hoped for. After the collection was presented in New York's Waldorf Astoria , Fortune magazine wrote enthusiastically that Motty Eitingon had a new and mysterious process that made sheepskins and lamb look like the fur of rare animals.

The reason for the advertised new fur finishing was probably that Liftschütz & Zickerow had introduced ironing of sheared lambskins in Europe . The decisive step forward, however, was a subsequent fixation, which permanently prevents the ironed hair from curling up again when it is damp. The inventor, the Hungarian Fogl , had sold his process patent to the important lambskin trading company Pannonia in Budapest before the Second World War .

Overall, this was a tremendous undertaking. The sheepskin fur trimming and finishing plant on an area of ​​around 16 hectares was completed in February 1946 in Bristol, Pennsylvania. Motty told the press that he would process 60,000 skins a week, which is enough for half a million coats a year. The extent of the operation can be measured by the fact that a truckload of salt and 1,800 gallons of water per minute are required for production every day. It would take two charcoal cars to keep the steam engines going. At full capacity, 600 to 700 people would be employed. A high percentage of the hides had to be imported - Motty had therefore flown to Argentina - “American sheep farmers cannot yet supply the required quantities”. He had signed a contract with the Air Force for the purchase of the wool produced when shearing the skins, which was used for lining the pilot's jackets .

Motty intended to generate the greatest demand that any US industry had ever seen. He estimated that out of 40 million women who buy some kind of coat every year, 15 million would buy bonmoutons and other lambskins - 75 times as much as before. More or less this actually came true. After the positive press, and the New York Times was also impressed, production in Bristol got underway quickly. But it was not enough, especially not to repay the short-term loans on time, and at the end of 1946 Motty Eitingon Inc. was declared bankrupt. There had also been problems with the new fur finishing for the commissioned companies, not all parts of the fur achieved an acceptable quality. The establishment of its own manufacturing facilities and warehousing ultimately cost 2 million dollars. An inventory showed that there were 15,000 sorted or other skins in the warehouse or on order, 90,000 skins had been prepared and finished to date. As the first American company to get into financial difficulties after the war, this case received a lot of media attention.

American bankruptcy law allowed Motty Eitingon to continue, while the possibility of reorganization was considered by those concerned. The non-company assets were pledged as security for new loans.

In 1947 it became clear that reorganization would not be successful. Ongoing business was continued by a 13-person supervisory authority. The United Shearling Company (Shearling, the actual trade name for sheared sheepskins), a subsidiary but also a financier for Motty Eitingon Inc., again in the person of Motty Eitingon, took over the management of the considerably reduced continuation of the business. The debtor company, referred to as "deptor-in-possession" under American law, existed until after 1949.

Motty also suffered a setback in the luxury segment. The time began in which new fashion dictates were constantly coming from Paris, especially regarding coat and skirt lengths, sometimes mini , sometimes maxi. The fur producers were reluctant to buy, as it was not clear how large the required fur would ultimately be, and the capital urgently needed to repay the loans did not arrive on the usual dates.

At the time when the parent company got into trouble, there were still four company subsidiaries. The Bristol Processing Corporation was inactive in the early 1950s or earlier. The New Bristol Corporation , which had been taken over by the Processing Corporation , was also shut down; likewise the New Easton Corporation , an old tannery. The Gold Hill Trading has been inactive for several months after it was founded in the 1949th To buy warehouses in Philadelphia, Motty started the United Shearling Realty Company . When the warehouses were sold again, this daughter had no job either.

To a very small extent, Motty Eitingon finally devoted himself to the finishing and trading of lambskins. According to Motty's last correspondence, in 1956, the year of his death, he had practically no usable assets other than life insurance. The industry colleague M. Cohn-Grosz summed up in his 1960 memories of the Jews in the fur industry in the first half of the 20th century about the Eitingon company: “The owners Chaim and Motty were millionaires in the tobacco industry. Chaim gave the Jews in Leipzig a hospital and Motty the interior. The Eitingon company lost millions in a lamb business and they died poor people ”.

Associates outside of the US

Before 1940, the group of companies probably had ten branches in addition to the ailing Eitingon Schild Inc.: two in New York, five in St. Louis, one in Leipzig, the London company run by Monya and a remainder in Poland after the one in Lodz by Naum Eitigon-run company had been sold to the Fur Companies Syndicate .

In addition to the fur companies attributable to the Eitingons, there were properties in Palestine, Brazil (cotton plantations for the spinning mill in Lodz), in California, Connecticut and the first hotel at New York's LaGuardia Airport, which was built for Eitingons . The World Trade Fair Parking Lot next to it was probably the last of the possessions he had left at the end of his life, next to the piece of land in Palestine.

Private

Motty Eitingon and his wife Bess were very interested in art. They gathered many artists around them and supported young talents. Motty especially loved the theater. He was friends with the authors and writers Clifford Odets and Lee Strasberg and the German actress Luise Rainer . He was also more than familiar with the conductor Leopold Stokowski , the pianist Vladimir Horowitz and the violinist Nathan Milstein . In October 1927, for example, the New York Times wrote of the young violinist Benno Rabinof shortly before his Carnegie Hall debut : “Motti Eitingon, a New York merchant who was so confident of his future that he would put the financial worries off the shoulders of his family took". The Eitingons also took care of the journalist and writer Franz Hoellering who had emigrated from Germany to the USA . They support him and his wife financially and for the first time provided him with a stable on their property, from then on called a “studio”, from which the couple later moved to a neighboring house. This connection was one of the activities in which the FBI was also interested. Hoellering was suspected of being a Russian OGPU agent.

literature

Web links

Commons : Motty Eitingon  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Wilhelm Harmelin: Jews in the Leipziger Rauchwarenwirtschaft . In: Tradition - magazine for company history and entrepreneur biography , 6th issue, December 1966, Verlag P. Bruckmann, Munich, p. 275.
  2. ^ A b Philipp Manes : The German fur industry and its associations 1900-1940, attempt at a story . Berlin 1941 Volume 3. Copy of the original manuscript, pp. 13, 37, 126 ( → table of contents ).
  3. ^ A b Mary-Kay Wilmers: The Eitingons - A Twentierth-Century-Story , p. 76.
  4. ^ Archives of the New York Times: Motty Eitingon, Dealer Furs; Head of Wholesale Concern Here, Leader in Promoting Russian Broadtail, Dies Once Insured for $ 3,000,000 . New York Times, Aug 1, 1956, p. 23. Last accessed April 16, 2018.
  5. ^ A b Mary-Kay Wilmers: The Eitingons - A Twentierth-Century-Story , pp. 315-317.
  6. ↑ Mary Kay Wilmers: The Eitingons - A Twentierth Century Story . P. 319.
  7. ^ Howard Pollack: Marc Blitzstein: His Life, His Work, His World . Oxford University Press, September 5, 2012, p. 156. Retrieved April 26, 2018.
  8. ↑ Mary Kay Wilmers: The Eitingons - A Twentierth Century Story . S. XII.
  9. ^ Archie Brown: The Eitingons - A Twentieth-Century Story by Mary-Kay Wilmers . Books "The Observer" , pp. 316-317. Last accessed April 16, 2018.
  10. ↑ Mary Kay Wilmers: The Eitingons - A Twentierth Century Story . P.56.
  11. ↑ Mary Kay Wilmers: The Eitingons - A Twentierth Century Story . P. 28 (Testimony by Norvin Lindheim. Vice-President of Eitingon Schild), 57.
  12. ↑ Monika Gibas: "Aryanization" in Leipzig: Approaching a long-suppressed chapter of the city's history from 1933 to 1945 . Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 2007. Last accessed April 16, 2018.
  13. ^ Philipp Manes : The German fur industry and its associations 1900-1940, attempt at a story . Berlin 1941 Volume 4. Copy of the original manuscript, pp. 179–180 ( → table of contents ).
  14. ^ Robrecht Declercq: World Market Transformation: Inside the German Fur Capital Leipzig 1870 and 1939. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, New York and London, May 25. 2017. Last accessed April 20, 2018
  15. ^ Philip S. Foner: The Fur and Leather Workers Union . Nordan Press, Newark, 1950, pp. 102, 198-203, 239, 255 (English).
  16. ^ Mary-Kay Wilmers: The Eitingons - A Twentierth-Century-Story , p. 390.
  17. ↑ a b Stephen Schwartz, Vitaly Rapoport, Walter Laqueur: 'The Mystery of Max Eitingon': An Exchange . The New York Review of Books , June 16, 1988 (English). Last accessed April 17, 2018.
  18. ^ Mary-Kay Wilmers: The Eitingons - A Twentierth-Century-Story , pp. 318-320, 365.
  19. ^ Philipp Manes : The German fur industry and its associations 1900-1940, attempt at a story . Berlin 1941 Volume 2. Copy of the original manuscript, p. 205 ( G. & C. Franke collection ).
  20. ^ Hermann Groß: Leipzig's position on Russian export policy in refined tobacco products (4th episode). In: Der Rauchwarenmarkt No. 69, Leipzig 1931.
  21. ^ Mary-Kay Wilmers: The Eitingons - A Twentierth-Century-Story , pp. 202-203.
  22. ↑ Polska Niezwykla.pl: Była fabryka Eitingona ( Eitingon's factory , Polish) . Last accessed March 5, 2019.
  23. ^ A b c d Mary-Kay Wilmers: The Eitingons - A Twentierth-Century-Story , pp. 321–326.
  24. ↑ Paul Schöps: lambskins and sheepskins. In: The fur trade. 1957, No. 4, Volume VIII / New Series. Hermelin-Verlag, Leipzig / Berlin / Frankfurt am Main 1957, p. 132.
  25. ↑ P. Spahl: Beaver lamb and its refinement. In: The fur industry. Issue 2, Berlin, February 1964, pp. 26-29.
  26. ^ A b c d e Mary-Kay Wilmers: The Eitingons - A Twentierth-Century-Story . Pp. 366-371.
  27. ↑ Mary Kay Wilmers: The Eitingons - A Twentierth Century Story . P. 382.
  28. ^ M. Cohn-Grosz: fur trading company Leopold J. Cohn. Memories (New York 1960) . Original font owned by the Leo Baeck Institute , New York.
  29. ^ A b Mary-Kay Wilmers: The Eitingons - A Twentierth-Century-Story , p. 223.
  30. ^ Mary-Kay Wilmers: The Eitingons - A Twentierth-Century-Story , pp. 210-211.
  31. ↑ Mary Kay Wilmers: The Eitingons - A Twentierth Century Story . Pp. 212-216.