Brody Fur Trade Center

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The Brody fur trading center was an important trading center for fur and bristles in the 18th and 19th centuries, as well as a focus of furring . The city of Brody was at this time, along with Lemberg (now Lviv ) and Lissa (now Leszno ), the most important commercial city in Galicia . The merchants from Brody, now part of the Ukraine , played a decisive role in the creation of the former world center of the tobacco trade , the Leipziger Brühl .

General

Market square in Brody (1901)

Brody, located in Austria-Hungary near the eastern border of Poland for 150 years , was an important trading center for the countries between the Black Sea and the North Sea with the trading and port cities of Odessa and Hamburg . After Galicia fell to Austria in 1772, Brody was declared a free trading city with its own duty-free area in 1779 with a surrounding area of ​​264 square kilometers, modeled on the Adriatic ports of Trieste and Fiume (today Rijeka ). Hamburg and Milan companies settled in the city, which then had 15,000 inhabitants, and this influx gave the city a western feel. Two thirds of the population was Jewish, and German became the official and colloquial language.

The Christian traders took care of the transit trade between Poland and the Austrian hereditary lands , the port of Trieste and Italy. The Jewish merchants, who also mastered the fur trade, on the other hand, specialized more in the trade route from Leipzig or Frankfurt (Oder) to Brody and then further to central Ukraine or the Black Sea. On the trips to the markets, they were subject to "exorbitant" so-called "protection fees" from the various states they had to cross, as well as even higher special contributions for Saxony.

In 1869 Brody was connected to the railway network. The generally denser railway network meant that the collection and production areas for goods, which were closer to the accumulation, were quicker and easier to reach, which meant that the city lost its importance as a storage and trading center despite the better transport connections. In contrast, Leipzig owed part of its economic and, associated with it, cultural rise to the railway.

Tobacco shop in Brody

At the beginning of the 19th century, Poland's close ties to Odessa and its free port opened trade routes deep into the Caucasus and Persia . The business with fur from the Urals and Siberia grew considerably. At the same time, Brody became a center of the tobacco trade, also benefiting from a new fur fashion emerging at the time, in which the fur was worn with the hair facing outwards.

After Napoleon's continental blockade (1806–1813), Brody experienced a particular boom through the trade in goods affected by the blockade. It had also established "a large industry that dealt only with smuggling banned furs" and supplied Leipzig with furs. But even after the end of the continental blockade it was said: “The fact that Leipzig was able to rise again to the center of the international tobacco trade after the end of the severe crisis may not have at least been due to the tenacity of the Polish Jews, who even under the most difficult circumstances and often with their own losses of property but with lesser goods, mainly hare skins , squirrels and marten pelts , although in a very limited way, they kept in touch with the place. "

Statistics from 1820 recorded 118 furriers and 8 fur traders in Brody. However, no mention is made of the number of independent fur and hide dealers, commission agents and retailers. In 1836, of the 50 bales of sable skins sold at the trade fair in Nizhny Novgorod , 30 bales went via Radyvyliw to Brody, from where they were traded on to Leipzig. Around 1846, 300,000 processed hides were turned over annually.

Brody's traders regularly visited the southern Russian markets of Kharkov and Poltava in the mid-19th century . However, the 1840s were a difficult time for the Brody trade. Jewish traders from the Habsburg Empire who traveled to Russia were subjected to the same strict restrictions as their Jewish counterparts who lived permanently in the Russian settlement area. In 1840, for example, a Jewish trader from Brody complained that they had been excluded from the country's more important fairs and markets, in this particular case the Berdychiv market . Before they had time to conduct their business, they had even been expelled, even though they had legitimate Austrian government passports. Due to the severe restrictions on the Russian border, increasing competition from Russian producers on the markets of southern Russia, but also due to new, direct shipping connections between Odessa and overseas countries, trade via Brody continued to decline.

Nachman Fein was already a regular visitor to the Leipzig trade fairs when he moved to Anhalt-Dessau around 1840 after Dessau, which was more liberal in many ways than Leipzig, before he registered his trade in Leipzig in 1942 with the necessary permission from the Saxon Ministry of the Interior. The tobacco shop Solms Rosenstock also reported that his father lived in Dessau in order to be able to run the business in Leipzig. The resettlement of Jewish fur traders to Germany was all the easier because they, like Nachman, usually spoke the German language and had had business relations with Leipzig for years.

The “very rich” muskrat dealer Marcus Harmelin, whose descendant Wilhelm Harmelin researched in detail the connections between the Leipzig fur trade and Brody, had his company headquarters and apartment in “a handsome building” in Lesznower Gasse. Taking advantage of the free trade zone, he ran a trade in Brody with his own fur production. In the early 1850s, Josef Ehrlich, a student at the Brodyer Jewish theological training institute " Yeshiva ", left an impressive description of life in the Marcus Harmelin (1796–1873) house. The Harmelin company, like others, regularly attended the Nizhny Novgorod Fair. With the decline in the importance of the Novgorod Fair, Harmelin maintained its own commercial agencies in various places in Siberia and Bukhara .

A Brody business directory from 1897 only mentions the M. Kohn fur branch and the J. Abraham Donner tannery.

Brody and Leipzig

The negative development in Brody, but on the other hand an economic success in the business relationship with Leipzig, led to the fact that tobacco merchants moved to the fur trade center in Leipzig. Up until then, Brody represented an extremely important point of intersection in the trade with the skins of Eastern Europe. As far as Moscow traders did not have their own business relationships with Leipzig, the tobacco products that arrived there in large quantities also went to the trade fair city via Brody. In the Leipzig trade fair statistics, Jewish traders from Brody appear for the first time in 1728, and within ten years their number rose to over ten.

If Leipzig calculated 40 wagons from Frankfurt am Main for the trade fair, that was up to 200 from Brody. The freight forwarders carried the goods bought in Leipzig and those exchanged for " Rauchwerk " to Brody, the main stacking area, in large trains . From there they were transported to the September fair in Berdychiv and Warsaw . At the New Year's Fair in 1781, Polish Jews, especially the Lissauers and Brodyers, are said to have “loaded about 4,000 centners”. In the last two decades of the 18th century and the first two decades of the 19th century, the presence of Brody's Jewish traders was a factor that determined the success or failure of the three annual fairs. There were hardly any resident fur traders in Leipzig. Before the settlement of the tobacco shop began on the “Bruel”, later called Brühl, almost only Jewish merchants had their mess camps on the street that was temporarily assigned to them.

For a good 250 years, Jews were forbidden to live permanently in Leipzig. The Leipzig merchants tried to prevent the settlement of Jews in the city. They were only tolerated as guests. However, her participation in the fairs can be traced back to 1490. Various discriminatory regulations stipulated the exact requirements that Jewish merchants had to meet at the fairs. Additional duties, taxes and special Jewish customs tariffs had to be paid. Paragraph 6 of the Jewish Code of 1682 stipulated, for example, that every Jew had to carry the "yellow spot" with him at all times and to show it to council servants and city servants on request. Despite these extensive restrictions, the fairs remained extremely attractive to Jewish traders and craftsmen. For example, between 1675 and 1764, 81,937 Jewish trade fair visitors were registered in Leipzig, 59,264 of whom were independent merchants.

The first change seems to have occurred in 1664. After a request from the Jewish traders, the city council asked the elector to give the Jews equal treatment for the taxes to be paid. This was granted with restrictions by the elector in 1665. The disputes between Jewish and Christian trade fair providers and discrimination against Jewish traders continued, however. In 1710, the first Jew was granted the right to live in the city as a “ protective Jew ”. He and his family were under the direct control and protection of the elector. Just six months later, six families and ten individuals enjoyed the status of protected Jews. In 1747 the city council permitted the settlement of Polish and Russian Jews without paying taxes “in recognition of their contribution to the import of raw materials for the skin and fur industry”. In 1838, Jews born in Saxony were granted unrestricted residency rights. The last exceptional laws against the Jews came into force after Saxony joined the North German Confederation in 1866; The residence restrictions for Jews in Leipzig were no longer applicable and the restrictions that had previously been in force for Jews in trade and industry were eliminated by the new trade regulations of 1869.

In 1811 the Brody merchant Joel Schlesinger offered "a few hundred thalers" for the establishment of an Israelite cemetery, the costs of which should have been paid for by the Leipzig council. The contract for a site outside the city limits in the Johannistal was not offered to the private citizen Schlesinger, but to the whole “Brody Jewry”. She accepted, and in return for a payment of 200 thalers, she was given the management of “a burial place for both local and foreign Jews dying in Leipzig at a properly chosen location”. At 90 by 40 yards, the square was only the size of a home garden and only accessible through private property. The cemetery wasn't really enough. But in order to legalize their stay, the Jews living in Leipzig wanted to have a contract with the council and manage the cemetery themselves. "In addition to the cost, it created a lot of annoyance for Brody." The concession was held until 1849, the cemetery was closed in 1864, and in the same year the “New Jewish Cemetery” was built on Berliner Straße.

On April 4, 1815, five months after the cemetery concession was signed, the council hired the first Jewish mess brokers, initially for a trial year. The objection of the Kramerinnung was rejected by the state government on February 23, 1815 as unfounded. All four brokers were tobacco shops, three from Brody, one from neighboring Lissa. Four weeks later the council hired 23 more Jewish brokers. Although other Jewish industries were also taken into account, the predominance of the tobacco trade remained, with Brody and Lissa making up every second broker.

Although freedom of trade was introduced in Prussia in 1810, the furriers still complained in 1834:

“It is namely very noticeable that a lot of people brawl from one fair to another. and Brodyer Jews hang around here, and the question has often been raised, what are these people on? […] Now it is more than too well known that these people use every conceivable way just to achieve their end goal; so they animate z. For example, foreign furriers and smokers who have asked about this or that article during the fair, to turn to them in writing if the need arises and to expect certain and prompt service; of a lot of evidence on what has just been said, we give only two examples; I have: 1. a certain Jacob Roßlin from Brody and 2. the clerk d. Hn. Heilbern u. Frenkel from Brody, with the name Joseph Heilbern, very recently Astrachanfelle udg to Frankfurt a./M. and sent elsewhere from here pp - The second class of these Israelites have taken on the name of brokers and are usurping them, as they are never recognized by the stock exchange administrators! These now drift up and down the streets and especially in the Brühl, scout out every furrier who is here and who has come here from the surrounding area, and take him to those commissionaires in order to earn a flaw; Another part of their occupation consists in jointly with those Commissionairs their Brodyer Commitents with the here. To make the course of business known through diligent correspondence. "

By 1868 at the latest, the tobacco merchant Nathan Haendler (1817–1887) from Brody found himself in Leipzig as the owner of the house "Zum Heilbrunnen" (now Brühl 33). As the importance of the Brody trading center declined - partly as early as 1848 and finally in 1879 - Brody lost its privileges as a free trading town. Several Brody families lost their ties to their old homeland. In 1879, the Marcus Harmelin company liquidated its branch there. The first Jewish companies in Leipzig whose names could be found were Marcus Harmelin (1830), JB Oppenheimer & Comp. (1834) and Theodor Wolf (around 1835). With the lifting of the settlement ban, the tobacco trade experienced an unexpected boom, the small companies became large trading houses and attracted more and more people to the Brühl.

Brühl 69, company headquarters Nachman Fein and other fur traders (1870)

In October 1869, shortly after Chancellor von Bismarck's ruling that Jews should have complete legal equality within the confederation, the tobacco retailer Nachman Fein submitted an application to the Leipzig city council:

“After having worked as a commission representative in this city for more than 20 years and from 1862 onwards I established permanent residence here with my family, that is, with my wife Feige, née Patyn, Chaim Leib, 24, and Reisel and Heni [e], 15 , I want to start a wholesale company and ask for citizenship in the long term. However, I do not want to give up my Austrian citizenship. ”In November 1869, tobacco merchant Nachman Fein renewed his application and applied not only for citizenship but also for acceptance as a Saxon subject. The Leipzig Foreign Office subsequently confirmed that “the trader Nachman Fein from Brody [...] with occasional interruptions [...] has been a commission representative for foreign trading houses since 1848, in 1862 together with his family, his wife Feige, née Patyn , and their children Chaim Leib, born in 1845, and Reisel and Heni, born in 1854. “In addition, Nachman presented a medical certificate from Livius Fürst . He attested that Nachman was free of "the kind of illness or susceptibility that could have a lasting impact on his ability to earn a living or his life span". Nachman also explains that he has earned "cash totaling 4,000 thalers" and that this sum is "a personal debt-free good": "I inherited 1000 thalers and gradually earned the rest through my daily business activities." He explains further that he had goods worth several thousand thalers and a well-equipped household worth 2000 thalers. Below is a detailed list of his stock holdings. In total, these assets amounted to 4,000 thalers. In December, he and his family were accepted as temporary members of the ward. In order to obtain permanent admission, he ultimately had to prove that he had given up his Austrian citizenship. In March 1870 he officially became a citizen of the Kingdom of Saxony.

The Jewish mess brokers were usually given the coveted privilege of permanent residence in the city. Of the 28 Jewish messengers sworn in in 1818, half came from Brody. In the last decades of the 19th century, most of the firms founded by Jewish messengers had disappeared, but other firms founded by later immigrants from Brody had been added. Wilhelm Harmelin mentioned of the Jewish, formerly Brodyer families of the tobacco industry that still existed in the 20th century, who still maintained relationships with Leipzig tobacco companies:

(In brackets: duration of business operations)
  • Barrasch - Isaack Barrasch (1869-1905)
  • Fein - Nachman Fein (1842 to around 1880); Leon Fein (around 1880 to 1901); Fein & Co (1902–1938), Willy Fein and his brother Siegmund Fein, responsible for the trade in animal hair and tailors for hat manufacture
  • Finkelstein - Joseph Finkelstein & Co. (1877–1938); Joseph (Josef) Finkelstein (born 1847; died 1935). The company held the first Leipzig auction for Russian tobacco products.
  • Haendler - N. Haendler (around 1850–1874); N. Haendler & Sohn (1874–1919), Allgemeine Rauchwaren-Aktiengesellschaft, formerly Haendler & Sohn (1919–1929). In 1875, he was the first tobacco industry in Leipzig to set up a branch at Garlick Hill, London's world marketplace for tobacco products .
  • Halberstam - Dr. Hermann Halberstam (1864–1941) from Brody, cousin of the Viennese chief rabbi Dr. Chajes was a partner in the Julius Ariowitsch company (1877–1941) from 1904 to 1941
  • Harmelin - Jacob Harmelin (1818–1830), was sworn in as a mess broker in 1818; Marcus Harmelin (1830-1939)
In a newspaper advertisement his successor Marcus Harmelin announced before the beginning of Michaelmas Mass: “After a noble and very wise magistrate signed me at the request of the trade deputies and Kramer masters, I do not refrain from doing this Publicum hereby to announce and to recommend me highly. Leipzig, September 24, 1830. Marcus Harmelin from Brody. ”He had his camp in his apartment in the“ Blauen Harnisch ”. The Harmelins did not give up their branch in Brody until 1879.
  • Heilpern - Heilpern brothers (1919–1938), Adolf and Anselm Heilpern brothers
  • Kremnitzer - Gerhardt Kremnitzer (1907–1935)
  • Rapaport - M. Rapaport & Son (1861–1931)
Munisch Rapaport moved from Brody to Leipzig in 1860. Together with his son Abraham Rapaport (around 1835-1910) he set up the tobacco company M. Rapaport & Son. Other shareholders were Abraham Rapaport's son David (1856–1896) and Munisch's sons-in-law David Rosen (1853–1928) and Michael Duglatsch (1854–1913) and the grandsons Isidor Leon Rosen (born 1897; deported from Leipzig; died 1943), Eugen Rosen (born 1879; deported from Belgium; died 1943) and Max Dlugatsch (1894–1956). The company was liquidated in 1931. The company Michael Dlugatsch in Moscow and Nizhny Novgorod was associated. Their business operations ended in 1915.

The Leipzig trade fairs became increasingly less important for the fur trade, the trade on the Brühl was instead spread over the whole year, with the seasonal fluctuations caused by the industry. The permanent fur stores with sorted goods became a necessity in order to do business with furriers. Some of the companies that came from Brody now owned a considerable amount of land in Leipzig's smoking area.

Brody Jews played a prominent role in the revitalization of a Jewish community in Leipzig and the creation of a tobacco shop based in the city. Some distinguished themselves through charitable and educational foundations. The oldest of the small synagogues (“prayer schools”) set up by Jewish visitors to the fair, of which certain knowledge exists, was the “Brody School”, which was established after the Seven Years' War and which was long in the house “Zum Blauen Harnisch” (now Brühl 71). In 1903/1904 Oscar Schade delivered the drafts for a successor building, the Brody Synagogue , designed in the "neo-Moorish style" , its interior ( Torah shrine , Bima ) in the pogrom night of 9/10. November 1938 was demolished.

Any Jewish business activity ended very quickly with the expulsion or murder of the Jewish traders after the Nazis came to power in 1933.

Web links

Commons : Brody  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i Wilhelm Harmelin: Brody, the old fur town in Galicia . In: Das Pelzgewerbe No. 4, 1966, Hermelin-Verlag Dr. Paul Schöps, Berlin et al., Pp. 179-183
  2. ↑ Börries Kuzmany: A Galician border town in the long 19th century. Brody. Primary source: ÖStA / HKA, Cammerale, No. 218, Fasc. 7 gal., 169 ex jan. 1785, product no. 6th
  3. ^ Francis Weiss : From Adam to Madam . From the original manuscript part 1 (of 2), (approx. 1980 / 1990s), in the manuscript p. 182 [186] (English).
  4. ^ A b Hundred Years of Marcus Harmelin - Smoking Goods and Bristle Commission - 1830–1930. Corporate publication.
  5. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k Rico Langeheine: Inter-generational diachronic study of the German-Jewish Fine family from Leipzig . Dissertation, University of Sussex, May 2013 (PDF, English). Retrieved June 3, 2020.
  6. ↑ Emil Brass : From the realm of fur . 2nd improved edition. Publishing house of the "Neue Pelzwaren-Zeitung and Kürschner-Zeitung", Berlin 1925, p. 278 .
  7. ↑ Karl Buddëus: Leipzig's tobacco trade and industry. Inaugural dissertation, University of Leipzig, 1891, p. 34.
  8. ↑ The sable (conclusion) . In: Abroad. A daily newspaper for the knowledge of the intellectual and moral life of the peoples, with special consideration for related phenomena in Germany. P. 112. Retrieved May 29, 2020.
  9. ↑ Börries Kuzmany: A Galician border town in the long 19th century. Brody. Böhlau-Verlag, Vienna, Cologne, Weimar, p. 46. Primary source Barącz: Wolne miasto . ISBN 978-3-205-78763-1 .
  10. ^ A b Philipp Manes : The German fur industry and its associations 1900-1940, attempt at a story . Berlin 1941 Volume 1. Copy of the original manuscript, p. 165 ( G. & C. Franke collection ).
  11. ↑ Josef R. Ehrlich: The way of my life - memories of a former Hasid . Rosner, 1874 . P. 97ff. Last accessed May 29, 2020.
  12. ^ 1897 Galician Business Directory Brody Portion . Lemberg, Galicia ( Ksiega Adresowa Galicyjska Jana Bergera 1897, Lwow, Galicyi ) . Retrieved June 7, 2020.
  13. ↑ Friedrich Wilhelm von Reden: The Russian Empire. Statistical-historical representation of its cultural relations, especially in agricultural, industrial and commercial relation . Ernst Siegfried Mittler, Berlin, Posen, Bromberg, 1843, p. 415. Retrieved on May 29, 2020.
  14. ↑ Börries Kuzmany: A Galician border town in the long 19th century. Brody. Böhlau-Verlag, Vienna, Cologne, Weimar, 2011. ISBN 978-3-205-78763-1 .
  15. ^ A b c d Wilhelm Harmelin: Jews in the Leipziger Rauchwarenwirtschaft . In: Tradition - magazine for company history and entrepreneurial biography , 6th issue, December 1966, Verlag P. Bruckmann, Munich, pp. 249–282.
  16. ↑ a b c d Walter Fellmann: The Leipziger Brühl . VEB Fachbuchverlag, Leipzig 1989, pp. 60–63.
  17. ^ Josef Reinhold: The belated emancipation of the Jews in Saxony as a legislative framework. The constitution of the Israelite religious community in Leipzig and the first decades of its development . In: JJIS - Jews In Saxony - April 2010 . German-Russian Center Saxony V., Leipzig (eds.). ISSN  1866-5853 . Retrieved June 4, 2020.
  18. ^ Richard Markgraf: The influence of the Jews on the Leipzig fairs in earlier times . Archive for Cultural History, Volume 5, Issue 2, 1903 (PDF). Retrieved June 8, 2020.
  19. ^ Robrecht Declercq: The Leipzig Fur Industry as an Industrial -District Collective Action, Lead Firms and World Market Transformation (1870-1939) . European University Institute, Department of History and Civilization, 2015, p. 57 (English). Retrieved May 7, 2020.
  20. ^ Jean Heinrich Heiderich: The Leipziger Kürschnergewerbe . Inaugural dissertation to obtain a doctorate from the high philosophical faculty of the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität zu Heidelberg, Heidelberg 1897, pp. 28-29.
  21. ^ A b 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. 339, 342 ( → table of contents ).
  22. ^ Philipp Manes : The German fur industry and its associations 1900-1940, attempt at a story . Berlin 1941 Volume 3. Copy of the original manuscript, p. 159 ( → table of contents ).
  23. ^ Advertisement, Leipziger Tageblatt , September 24, 1830 .