Nachman Daitsch

N. Daitsch
legal form	one-man business
founding	1924
resolution	1983
Reason for dissolution	insolvency
Seat	Frankfurt am Main
management	Nachman Daitsch
Branch	Tobacco shops, fur clothing

Nachman Daitsch (born July 15, 1907 in Schaulen in Lithuania ; † September 10, 1983 in Frankfurt am Main ) was one of the most important tobacco merchants and fur manufacturers in the Niddastraße fur trade center in Frankfurt am Main, one of the three largest fur trade markets in the world in the second half of the 20th century. Century. As spectacular as its rise was, the N. Daitsch company unexpectedly went bankrupt.

Company history

Born in Lithuania, Nachman Daitsch came into the tobacco industry at a young age. He started his own business for the first time at the age of 17. After what was called a "war-related" new beginning (a belittling paraphrase, Daitsch was of a Jewish denomination and came from Schaulen, where over 500 Jewish children, among others, were deported to an extermination camp in 1943) in Munich, he moved to the Frankfurt fur center. If you follow a report in the newspaper Die Zeit , the Frankfurt fur traders said that Nachmann earned his pocket money in the tannery at the age of seven and traded raw hides at the age of eleven. Even after many years in Frankfurt, he still preferred to speak Yiddish and Russian.

The company address in the specialist address book for 1953 was N. Daitsch KG , Friedrich-Ebertstraße 73, already marked with the comment, "soon Niddastraße 56". In 1973 the address was Niddastraße 44-46.

In Frankfurt, too, he initially traded in so-called raw materials, such as marten and muskrat fur . Then the mink and Persian fur types typical for the company were added. In these two articles he was later considered the greatest trader in the world. Its market share in foxes and other game products also became significant.

Probably his most lucrative transaction was a purchase in the Sojuzpushnina fur auction house in Saint Petersburg in the early 1960s . He bought a lot of 100,000 at an auction of unsold mink skins at a very low price and had coats made from them in the Greek fur-working town of Kastoria at the cheapest price . He was the first to make it possible for a department store to offer mink coats at a price of only 1,395 marks - at a time when coats made from Scandinavian or American mink skins usually cost more than 10,000 marks for furriers .

A dealer colleague also based on Niddastraße wrote in an obituary: “With an astonishing instinct he immediately recognized the possibilities that were available at the time and used them with his own willingness to take risks and determination. Within a few years he developed his company into one of the leading companies in the world of fur. His name was called with respect in all five continents, although he was also not lacking in critics, who are always the companions of the successful. Daitsch was always extremely friendly and helpful towards all of his colleagues. [...] He set new milestones, he was one of the first large-scale manufacturers to place extensive contract orders in Kastoria, he was [...] a symbolic figure for the rapid upward development of our profession in the sixties and seventies, he gave that epoch along with other personalities Embossed [...]. "

In the mid-1970s, after a “meteoric rise”, it had reached 100 million sales, “a size that was not known up to then”. For several years, his authorized signatories were Sigrid Drechsler and Helmut Dürrstein, who in 1979 and after the end of the company N. Daitsch as Dürrstein-Drechsler KG. , also at the address Niddastraße 44-46 (1979: Niddastraße 52 / III), with the trade in tobacco goods and fur clothing were entered in the address book. In the early 1980s, when most fur trading companies were still doing good business, a number of wholesalers in the industry got into financial difficulties. The fur fashion had turned almost entirely away from the Persian and towards the mink. Since the Persian price was low, Daitsch had stocked up on the supposedly cheap material on a large scale, his main article alongside mink. Fur is a seasonal business and the speculative purchase is mostly financed with bank loans, including the finishing and possible packaging costs, until resale from late summer - and with payment terms to retailers beyond that. At that time the trade remained on its Persian skins, and even worse, on the Persian clothing. Within two years the Persian pelts were only worth half. The big department stores also bought fox skins for trimmings and rabbit skins more cheaply directly in Asia, albeit in mostly lower quality. In the face of the fur boom, the banks had carelessly granted large loans to the industry. In particular, the main lender of the Frankfurt Pelzzentrum, Schröder, Münchmeyer, Hengst & Co. (SMH) , had got into trouble because of another large loan. The demands on the fur wholesalers have now been generally checked and, if necessary, reclaimed. In 1983 Nachman Daitsch also had to file for bankruptcy, unexpectedly in the industry. In Niddastrasse circles it was said that Nachmann Daitsch had been with his competitors the day before his bankruptcy and had paid his goods debts there. The business closure is said to have brought the SMH-Bank an additional loss of 40 million marks.

In an amendment to the articles of association of June 28, 1983, the company LUC Rauchwaren GmbH, Frankfurt am Main, was entered in the Frankfurt Commercial Register on August 11, 1983 . The object of the company was the import and export as well as the wholesale and retail trade with all kinds of tobacco products. The managing director was Nachman Daitsch's wife, Luisa Daitsch. A year later, on June 18, 1984, the company was dissolved again.

Two weeks after the bankruptcy of the N. Daitsch company in September 1983, Nachman Daitsch at the age of 76 was hit by a car and fatally injured while crossing Taunusstrasse in Frankfurt. His grave is in the New Jewish Cemetery on Eckenheimer Landstrasse .

Web links

Commons : Nachman Daitsch  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Without naming the author: Nachman Daitsch is celebrating his 70th birthday . In Winckelmann Pelzmarkt No. 395, July 9, 1983, Frankfurt am Main, p. 16.
2. ↑ ^{a b c d} Without naming the author: Nachman Daitsch died . In Winckelmann Pelzmarkt No. 713, September 23, 1977, Frankfurt am Main, p. 11.
3. ^ ^{A b c d} Irene Mayer-List: Bad luck with the funeral gown - risky loans to fur traders brought the SMH bank additional losses . Zeit-Online, November 18, 1983. Last accessed June 28, 2018
4. ↑ Winckelmann. Specialist address book for smoking goods and Fur industry and the furrier trade for Germany 1953 , 61st edition, Ralf Winckelmann (ed.), London, p. 12.
5. ↑ ^{a b} Winckelmann. Specialist address book for smoking goods and Fur industry and the furrier trade Germany 1979 , 87th edition, Winckelmann Verlag Frankfurt am Main, p. 32, 112.
6. ↑ Rudolf Sonntag: A symbolic figure passed from us - to the death of Mr. Daitsch . In: Winckelmann Pelzmarkt No. 713, September 23, 1983, p. 5.
7. ↑ Without indication of the author: Nachmann Daitsch † . In: Die Pelzwirtschaft No. 9, September 1983, p. 50.
8. ↑ In: Winckelmann International Fur Bulletin No. 2176, Hsgr. Winckelmann Publications LTD., London September 26, 1983 (English).
9. ↑ Winckelmann. Specialist address book for smoking goods and Fur industry and the furrier trade Germany 1989 , 87th edition, Winckelmann Verlag Frankfurt am Main, pp. 20, 54.
10. ↑ Herbert Uniewski: Banks - haired shops . In: Stern , CT 70/1984, p. 218.
11. ↑ News from the commercial register - new entries . In: Winckelmann Pelzmarkt No. 718, Frankfurt am Main October 28, 1983, p. 15.
12. ↑ News from the commercial register - changes . In: Winckelmann Pelzmarkt No. 765, Frankfurt am Main, September 28, 1984, p. 13.
13. ↑ Without indication of the author: Stone setting for Nachman Daitsch. In: Winckelmann Pelzmarkt No. 763, Frankfurt am Main, September 14, 1984, p. 14.