Niddastrasse fur trade center

Glance into the stitch of Niddastrasse, the main concentration of fur companies (1989)

Market helpers with skins on the Niddastraße passage to Düsseldorfer Straße (1970)

The fur trade center Niddastraße in Frankfurt was after the Second World War for several decades the main trading center for furs and fur wholesale clothing, some time before the two other world centers of the fur trade, London with the Beaver House and New York's fur district . Most of the larger German tobacco goods trading companies had their headquarters or at least a branch here, and a few fur processing companies had also set up shop in the greater Frankfurt area . All branches of the fur industry were represented here. The Niddastraßenviertel replaced the Leipziger Brühl , which had inevitably lost its prominent position in the fur trade due to the war and its location in the Soviet-occupied zone and the subsequent state economy of the GDR . Frankfurt received its supremacy over the smaller gatherings in Cologne, Hamburg, Munich and Berlin through the high concentration of tobacco companies in the square; this central function was not achieved by any other tobacco industry at the time. The Pelzviertel, with its branch-wide composition of its neighbors, also represented an absolute special case among German city districts.

The Pelzviertel can be differentiated into a core area, a large triangle that was created between 1946 and 1952, and two expansion zones, one to the south-west and one to the east, which had essentially developed by 1952. The densest concentration of companies was in front of the passage to Düsseldorfer Strasse, in the dead end part of Niddastrasse.

Recently, the tobacco trade, fur manufacture and fur finishing have shifted to a large extent to Asia and Russia, especially to China, where sales to end consumers have also increased enormously. The number of companies in the Pelzviertel has shrunk to a small fraction.

Historical development

Frankfurt fur trade in the Middle Ages

Coat of arms of the Frankfurt furriers

Medieval Frankfurt am Main, conveniently located, had a long tradition as an important trading center, and furs played a significant role in this. The furrier guild was respectable and Frankfurt had close ties to the international tobacco trade. At the end of the 13th century it is reported that the Frankfurt merchant Eckehard von Frauenrode was attacked and robbed in the county of Ziegenhain on the Lübeck trade route. The goods that were taken from him included two bales of tobacco products.

Some tariffs from the 13th and 17th centuries have sables , ermine pelts , marten skins , otter skins , beaver pelts , wolf skins and squirrel skins than commercial products. The seller had to bear the duty on these goods, a third of which went to the customs officer and two thirds to the city. A second time, the tobacco merchants had to pay a fee to the furriers when they sold, which, however, had to be borne by the buyers. As an official mediator, the "sub-buyer" pushed a, a professional, often a furrier who raised from the broker fee Rohfellen a quarter, could keep two-thirds for its efforts in furrier goods. He had "sworn in truwen globet unde to sanctify" to deliver the third pfennig of the tax revenue to the city every Saturday.

In connection with the lively fur trade, the furrier trade expanded. In the 14th century there were perhaps 25 to 35 masters with numerous journeymen and apprentices. Together with other trades, the furrier trade was given a guild role in 1355, i.e. recognition under public law. In the council of lay judges it was put on record: "Anyone who spends Eichhorn on colored work or old skins on new ones must pay the guild a fine". In 1377 the council demanded a share of this income and reserved the right to oversee it. Even after the settlement of guild riots, in which the craftsmen lost their previous independence and they came dependent on the city authorities, the furriers were among the thirteen recognized guilds in 1377. The guild rules stated, among other things, that no master was allowed to get special advantages when buying fur. With an offer of more than half a thousand skins, all guild colleagues had to be given the opportunity to bid.

The Frankfurt trade fair had its greatest significance at the end of the 14th century. When the Leipzig Fair gained importance around 1500 and at the same time fashion began to neglect fur, the fur trade in Frankfurt slackened considerably. Despite the meanwhile increased population, there were only 7 masters left in the 18th century.

Development of Niddastrasse into a world trade center for tobacco products

The "Am Brühl" sign reminds of the bygone Leipzig days at a dealer. On the wall there is also the Winckelmann table with the fur addresses.

Before the First World War, there were only three or four wholesalers in the Mainstadt, but some of them only got their goods on commission from Leipzig companies. In addition, some furriers were also involved in the fur trade. The extraordinary importance for the tobacco trade did not begin until June 1945. When it became known in Leipzig that the armed forces of the United States would hand over Leipzig, which they had occupied at the beginning of May, to the Red Army in accordance with the Yalta resolutions , the first companies began to migrate from there to the west. There was still a chance to transfer money, take tools, machines and goods with you. The latter often turned out to be the most important capital at the latest after the currency reform at the beginning of the German economic miracle . The Leipzig fur trade flourished primarily due to its formerly close ties to Russia and the dealers therefore knew the Soviet economic system from their own experience, which left no room for private companies. This is why far-sighted entrepreneurs did not invest in their largely destroyed businesses around and above all in Leipzig, but waited for the future from West Germany. The further political development with the division of Germany ultimately caused all exiles to stay in their new homeland and they were followed by numerous other company bosses in the fur industry, along with their staff. However, the majority only decided to move after the currency reform in 1948. Between 1946 and 1948, 35 companies came to Frankfurt, and between 1957 and 1958 there were another 240.

The fur companies were initially spread across western Germany. The cities were largely destroyed, relatives with whom one could find accommodation played a major role in the choice of location. Many went to Bavaria, some to Hamburg. Four or five companies came to Frankfurt, which quickly developed into the economic metropolis of the United Economic Area . In the west, they benefited from the fact that, due to the earlier concentration around Leipzig, there were hardly any tobacco products here. The branch owes its member Hermann Deninger to the fact that the focus was ultimately in Frankfurt . As early as May and then in June 1945, when the first Leipzig tobacco merchants arrived in the city, he negotiated with Fritz Mertens, then with Werner Hilpert from the Frankfurt Chamber of Commerce and Industry, about the possibility of locating these businesses in the Frankfurt area. Hilpert was born in Leipzig and worked there as an economist until 1939. He recognized the opportunities for Frankfurt - for some time the Leipzig-based companies in the tobacco industry generated the largest share of the city's tax revenue - and later on, as Minister of Finance, he advocated the interests of the industry. It is said that Otto Nauen from the Thorer & Hollender company met Hilpert by chance during a stay in the city and, after a short conversation, he said: “Now we are turning Frankfurt into a tobacco shop”. On October 1, 1945, the Chamber of Commerce opened a special section for tobacco products . Another sponsor was Walter Leiske , who was also familiar with the situation from his work as a city councilor in Leipzig. Through the advocacy of the two politicians and, from 1946 onwards, the Lord Mayor Walter Kolb , the Frankfurt authorities granted the searching fur companies easier immigration opportunities that they could not get in other cities. During the time of the Berlin Airlift , both campaigned to ensure that at least some of the Berlin furriers were given the opportunity to fly to the first Frankfurt fur fair in 1949, although "every sack of coal or potatoes was more important than a trip at the time". The relocation of the old fur processing and fur trading company Thorer & Co , which had only moved to Offenbach and in 1947 relocated its wholesale business to Mainzer Landstrasse, which is adjacent to Niddastrasse , also gave a strong impetus , where the other old traditional house with Thorer was one of the first in Leipzig in the company name, Thorer & Hollender.

In the beginning the companies were a bit scattered. There were business premises on Kaiserstrasse , Kirchnerstrasse, Taunusstrasse and Münchner Strasse . The first small focal points arose on Mainzer Landstrasse and in Niddastrasse in house numbers 70 to 76 as well as on the corner of Düsseldorf with Niddastrasse. Shortly afterwards, the opposite side of Niddastrasse was built; Representative business premises were built on plots 54 to 66/68 on the one hand and 57 to 63 on the other, into which tobacco companies moved. The first fur company to purchase a plot of land on Niddastraße (No. 63) was A. Fickenscher & Sons, from Hof in Upper Franconia. The first one-storey "Fickenscher-Haus" was extended in 1955, today it has six floors, it later housed companies from all branches of the industry, from raw fur to finished goods, including commissioners and sorters.

The next buildings were the Leipzig House (No. 66–68) and the Europahaus (No. 62). The property owner Adolf Heidinger describes his memory of the first post-war years on Niddastraße in 1990 under the heading “Europahaus”:

Europahaus (1989)

Europahaus (2015)

“During the air raid in March 1944 , all the houses on Niddastrasse from Karlsplatz to Düsseldorfer Strasse were burned to rubble and ashes by fire bombs. Apart from the house at Niddastrasse 61, which was spared, there were only burned-out facades, some of which were later knocked down due to the risk of collapse.

After the end of the war, self-help began to drive down the five-meter-high piles of rubble in the house at Niddastraße 61 using the Heidinger bakery's delivery truck in order to be able to use the parking spaces and courtyard again. As early as 1946, the Bosch plumber, the Krah joinery, the Adolf Müller white binder business and the Reinhard and Hirtes architecture firm were able to operate their businesses on a makeshift basis. With the help of these craft businesses, the rear building and the central building could be rebuilt, so that in September 1948, along with many other businesses, the ADAC was able to set up its first office after the war.

In April 1950 the first tobacco merchants appeared, the Doktor und Temmler company, the Gebr. Hentschel company and the Meister u. Co (today Volkert), who found accommodation for their existence in the central building. Through these companies I was induced to set up the front building as quickly as possible, as there was a strong demand from the fur industry. On October 1st, 1950 the time had come: The EUROPA-HAUS was completed on time.

In addition to the companies already mentioned, Arthur Lohschütz, Georg Schäfer, Berlinski and Funke, Wiesner u. Co, Fritz Kleemann, Dauter, Brücke, Interfur-Lobacher, Gieles and Churtopulos move in. Over the years, the demand from the tobacco industry has increased, so that today there are a total of 20 fur industry companies at Niddastr. 64 are active. "

American tobacco shop in his Niddastrasse branch inspecting raw hides (1960)

In 1951 the construction of the commercial buildings, the establishment of the warehouse and also the procurement of housing for the considerable number of employees were largely completed. The new, large and functional commercial buildings on Niddastraße, together with the adjoining parts of Düsseldorfer Straße and Mainzer Landstraße, now formed the big triangle of the fur industry.

According to a survey carried out by the Smoking Goods Association at the time, the cost of setting up the Frankfurt fur company was 8 million marks until 1951. The important renewed internationalization of the German fur trade began in 1950 with the Marshall Plan and the subsequent gradual liberalization of imports.

From 1952 the fur center expanded from the triangle to the east and west. It advanced in an easterly direction with the businesses in Elbe, Moselle and Taunusstrasse and the eastern part of Niddastrasse as far as the entertainment district. In the west it reached residential areas that were heavily populated by foreigners, in particular with Otto and Ludwigstrasse and partly also in the western part of Mainzer Landstrasse. The main train station stood in the way of further expansion in the south, and in the north-west the here very wide Mainzer Landstrasse formed a kind of “natural” border with the Westend-Süd district. In the north, the fur industry was approaching the banking district. Within the big triangle, the tobacco merchants were largely among themselves. In 1982, the tobacco shop Rudolf Sonntag recognized a “magical square” instead of the triangle, in which a few years earlier it was virtually impossible to find a decent restaurant, bounded by Düsseldorfer Strasse, Mainzer Landstrasse, Karlstrasse and Niddastrasse .

The settlement in and around Frankfurt's Niddastraße was no accident. As in Leipzig, it was not far to the train station to give up the many daily express parcels for the furriers and retailers. The proximity to the banking district also corresponded to the location in Leipzig, not unimportant given the large loan requirements of the fur wholesalers with long payment terms to its customers, for financing during the "quiet" season. The district, which was less destroyed in the war, was designed as an industrial area, the buildings were optimally designed. The building density was high, 13 houses in the fur triangle had six floors. As in Leipzig, there were some (mostly dingy-looking) backyards, although not, with the exception of one, with the option of driving in on one side and out on the other side of the block. The required large freight elevators were also available. The high rooms with large window fronts with the indirect northern daylight, which is important for sorting fur, were also good. In addition, the Frankfurt Bahnhofsviertel was a focal point of the wholesale trade in general. The atmosphere of the Leipziger Brühl, legendary in the branch, soon set in here. Just like in Leipzig, the street was lively with traders and market helpers in their white coats, who wore fur bundles, fur bodies and ready-made coats or rolled across the street in basket weaves or on stands, from one company to another or to the trucks. The street, which was not exactly wide, was constantly crowded with vehicles. Harald Schmidt, tobacco merchant from Ofra, reported that under the houses there was a corridor “labyrinth” with “boxes” for tobacco products, some of which could also be rented by non-residents. When it was raining heavily, traders did not cross the street, but used the corridor system of the connected cellars. There were even customers who had rented a box and set it up like a living room in order to spend the night there while they were shopping on Niddastraße.

However, the time had become a bit more hectic, the “standing on the brühl”, talking to colleagues and intercepting customers no longer took place to that extent. Something like a special Saxon / Hessian tongue emerged among the dealers. For many years Niddastraße still had the name (Frankfurter) Brühl, reminiscent of Leipzig, as a second name in the German fur industry. In 1964, when he asked a tobacco shop apprentice: "Have all the companies here been to Leipzig earlier?", After a brief reflection, his head of apprenticeship gave him the counter-question: "Who is not from Leipzig?" The highest concentration of fur companies was in the triangle Nidda- / Karl-, Düsseldorfer and Mainzer Landstrasse. Certainly because of the lack of further space reserves, the Pelzviertel expanded into the adjacent streets, in 1983 only 23 companies were located in other districts of the city. It was not possible to establish fur auctions in Frankfurt. A first attempt by dealers and farmers in 1956, starting with Persian pelts from South West Africa, today's Namibia , was not continued as intended and the company established for the auctions was discontinued. This domain, which was once important for Leipzig, was not taken back by the foreign auction houses after the Second World War. A small part of the Russian and domestic skins ran through Leipzig auctions again during the GDR era. An offer from the city of Frankfurt to rename one leg of the fur triangle "Neuer Brühl" was rejected by the trade. Leipzig's Brühl should remain unique and historic .

Football team SG Brühl , anniversary game, 30 years of football in Leipzig, 10 years in Frankfurt (1962)

If a furrier customer does not find the material he is looking for at his dealer, he is easily passed on to the corresponding wholesaler. The cohesion within the industry was not limited to business hours, there were skat and bowling clubs. In 1962 the footballers, the Brühl-Elf, celebrated their 30th anniversary and the "Frankfurter Truppe" their 10th anniversary with a tournament in the Waldstadion . The teams from the finishing companies Thorer & Co., Hilchenbacher Pelzveredlung, Nagel & Dorn, Dietesheimer smokers' finishing and dyeing and the "Brühl team" took part.

• Niddastraßen-Höfe, 1989
• 

  Passage

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  No. 62 and 64

The fur section of Niddastrasse never had the exclusive flair that one would probably expect from an industry that deals in such high-quality products. Overall, the houses looked gray and gloomy, the backyards with up to two rear buildings even more. Business was booming, at least for a time private customers were hardly desired, and there was neither time nor need for external features. At some point there was also uncertainty as to whether the houses might not be demolished and whether the fur industry would have its domicile here for longer. For almost all fur centers in the world, the proximity to the red light districts was typical, which was less due to the love of the women working there for fur, but rather that both businesses like to settle near the train station for business reasons. Over the years, more and more drug and alcohol addicts came out onto the streets, and in the mornings the syringes had to be disposed of in the entrance areas. The residents fought in vain against the establishment of a fixer's room in the street. On the traffic island on the Karlsplatz in front of the strait there was a small snack bar as a meeting point for the scene, which had been extended by "a kind of winter garden". After a signature campaign, addressed to Lord Mayor Wallmann, the real estate office of the city of Frankfurt terminated the lease with the Henninger brewery without giving reasons. On May 1, 1982, the “drug stall” remained closed.

As early as the 1970s, considerations began to free the fur center from the narrowness of Niddastrasse and to rebuild it elsewhere. In February 1971, the renowned Frankfurt architect Richard Heil visited several companies on Niddastraße to inquire about their needs for a "Green Meadow" project in the western part of Frankfurt not far from the autobahn with a plot of land that was already available. The smoking goods association had already set the expected monthly rent per square meter at “definitely below DM 10”. The importance of the proximity to the train station decreased more and more, most of it was meanwhile transported via the airport or by truck. Later on, banks and speculators began buying up land in the district, so it was no longer certain that the houses would eventually have to give way to new buildings. At first it looked as if a broad consensus among the dealers could be achieved for the relocation. The large trading house for fur and fur clothing Rosenberg and Lenhart took a decisive step by giving up the R & L house on Mainzer Landstrasse 65, which it moved into in March 1972, and in 1988, 18 years after the "Green Meadow" project, with two other companies in the branch moved into a prestigious building that it had newly built on Ludwig-Landmann-Strasse with a floor space of around 11,000 m². Mainly because of the now somewhat gloomy business situation, opinions had changed and their colleagues in the industry did not follow suit. Some houses on Niddastraße also had to make way for new buildings, most dealers did not return to the new houses, and some had relocated their business addresses outside of Frankfurt.

“CUNDA” own fur stamp from C&A

By the early 1980s the steady general growth of the fur industry had slowly stalled. The fur was no longer the status symbol that it was in earlier times and as a sign of the new prosperity in the Federal Republic. It had become affordable for most citizens, C&A Brenninkmeyer was now the largest German fur supplier, and the fur designers had done the rest to make the fur look as suitable for everyday use and less elitist as possible. The once exclusive stand symbol had finally become a mass product and the market seemed soon to be saturated. There was also a kind of “rubble woman look” in textile fashion with a turn away from elegant fashion. This continued increasingly with the "punk look" and similar fashion trends that emerged from the subculture , with which even artificially worn clothing came into fashion for the bourgeois youth. The erotic woman, to whom a glamorous fur was part of for many decades, was no longer in vogue. A series of unusually warm winters followed. The vegan movement, which not only rejects the consumption of animal bodies, but also any use of animals and animal products, received increasing public attention. The already difficult situation in the industry was accompanied by massive demonstrations and actions by fur opponents in front of fur shops and against women who wear fur. All of this together led to a decline in fur consumption in Germany, followed later by Switzerland and Austria, which are colder due to their geographical location. In the other Western European countries too, fur consumption stagnated or declined. After the return of furs around the turn of the millennium, especially as a component of textile clothing, fur production has shifted for the most part to Asia, especially China. There is still a significant concentration of furriers and fur traders in Kastoria, Greece. The Frankfurt Pelzviertel was hardly able to benefit from the market recovery, and there are usually no successors for the companies that are closing for reasons of age and require a high capital investment. Only the house at Niddastraße 66-68 is still completely rented to companies in the fur industry in 2014, a few smaller collections and individual companies are still scattered nearby.

Plans to set up a fur museum in Frankfurt had already progressed so far in March 1985 that the city of the fur industry on the left bank of the Main, the "Museumsufer", directly behind the Städel Museum , had a plot of land for the construction of a four-storey building under very favorable conditions Building should offer. However, a branch museum was not set up.

Economical meaning

Chinchilla skins and hats at the Karl Eckert company, Niddastraße 57 (1975)

In 1983, of the 268 companies in the fields of refinement, clothing and commissioning united in Germany in the Association of the German Tobacco Industry, 177, that is 66 percent, were based in Frankfurt am Main. At this time around 11,000 people were employed in tobacco companies in Frankfurt. The fur industry made up 45.6 percent of all employees in the densest part of the town, the Frankfurt Bahnhofsviertel. With a turnover of 536 million, the 356 German businesses in the tobacco trade and fur manufacture contributed almost 10 percent to the city's national product. Within the German tobacco industry, Frankfurt had become the undisputed linchpin of the German tobacco industry. At the time, 65 percent of all fur products freely traded around the world took some form of route via Frankfurt am Main.

The specialist address book of the German furrier trade from 1983, the "Winckelmann", lists 266 of the 524 registered German tobacco products manipulators in Frankfurt am Main / city alone, that is 50.74 percent. Together with the 23 companies in the vicinity of Frankfurt, that is 54.9 percent. If one only considers the companies organized in the Association of the German Tobacco and Fur Industry (“Rauchwarenverband”), the ratio of 135: 200 (excluding West Berlin) or 67.54 percent was even more in favor of Frankfurt. 9 foreign companies had agencies and sales warehouses in the Niddastraßenviertel. The Frankfurt companies in turn had 18 branches and warehouses in the sub-centers of Berlin, Cologne, Munich and the “province”, and 7 had their own agencies abroad.

The warehousing of the German tobacco goods wholesalers was estimated at 1 to 1.1 billion DM in 1983, of which around 800 million were in the Frankfurt Pelzviertel. The upper limit of the storage of German companies was assumed to be 25 to 30 million, the average of 2 to 3 million.

After the Federal Republic of Germany had been the main consumer of fur for years, in 1983 it ranked third in terms of imports, together with Italy, behind the USA and Japan. 4/5 of the tobacco goods import volume came from Frankfurt, of which the Rhein-Main airport had a considerable share. Since Germany hardly has its own supply of raw materials, almost everything has to be imported. In 1983, raw and finished skins were imported and manipulated from the Frankfurt tobacco wholesalers for 757.3 million DM. The vast majority in terms of value came from Scandinavia (focus on mink), followed by the USA (focus on mink and wild products), the USSR (focus on Persians and wild products), Canada (focus on minks and wild products), South and Southwest Africa (focus on Persians) and Great Britain (intermediate trade), for certain articles also other countries emerged.

In 1983 the German tobacco goods export volume amounted to 657.5 million DM, of which 44 million were raw hides (the wage values ​​included may lead to distortions in the figures). The share of Frankfurt wholesalers was estimated as "80 percent certainly not wrongly stated". The export share was even 95 percent. A considerable part, worth DM 311 million, went to the fur-processing country Greece, about six times as much as to the rest of Europe.

The company, goods handling

After the first fur traders and fur manufacturers , other branches of the fur industry settled in the area around Niddastraße. Some of the businesses themselves were more or less vertically structured, in the course of the years in individual cases even at wholesalers from buying fur to their own production to their own fur shops. However, their retail stores often did not have the same name as their parent companies in order not to make the direct competition to the rest of the retail sector too noticeable. In particular, some larger fur processing companies were also active in the fur trade and, in some cases, also as clothing manufacturers.

A small part of the goods went through the entire trading process at the Frankfurt “Brühl”, from purchasing the raw hides through all intermediate stages to selling the finished fur to the consumer.

The fur or tobacco dealer

→ Main article : Tobacco wholesale merchant

Rabbit fur dealer Wolfgang Czech, apprentice tobacco merchant in Leipzig, on Niddastraße since 1955, retired in 2016 (2009)

The tobacco trade in the narrower sense is usually only referred to as the fur trade . It is the first link in the retail and production chain represented in the Niddastraßenviertel. The connections and shopping trips of the retailer and manipulators exist and go to the breeders, buyers and trappers of all fur-supplying countries. However, a fur dealer seldom stocks the entire, very broad range of most types of fur. Some have very few varieties on offer, often with skins from certain areas with which one has special business relationships (for example Russia, China or South America). Others are considered to be specialists in common, so-called staple items such as persians or mink, while others, for example, mainly deal with long-haired skins, which are mainly bought by the trimming industry. Persians and mink are bought almost exclusively by middlemen - in competition with some retail chains and larger furriers - at international auctions; other types of fur are also acquired by collectors or middlemen in the countries of origin. Two or three Frankfurt traders had their own fur farms, such as the Thorer company for Karakul sheep (Swakara-Persians) in Namibia, which had been made at home there with their substantial help.

The skins are bought either raw or already tanned, which happens mainly in winter up to the beginning of the year due to the incidence. A considerable part of the skins is traded raw, so that the customer, furrier (1985 = 60 percent) or manufacturer (1985 = 15 percent) has the skins trimmed and refined, a part goes to other, mostly smaller tobacco dealers. About a quarter of the goods sold during the fur fair went abroad. The skins that are not sold raw are passed on to the fur dresser if they were not shipped there directly from the country of purchase. The part of the skins that is to be subjected to further finishing, such as dyeing, shearing or plucking, has to be sorted out after dressing, depending on its suitability. To sort the skins, daylight or light similar to daylight is desired, which is why the walls and curtains were often kept in blue, in Leipzig it was said that “the Brühl color is blue”. Since the pelts arrive largely in the same period of time, the finishing and finishing plants are at full capacity at this time, and the expensive capital is often fixed for a longer period of time. At the latest at the fur fair in Frankfurt, which took place in March / April, the trade wanted to offer the skins and the garment manufacturer even wanted to show off his sample models.

The short season in which the furrier stores were able to realize the capital invested in goods if the season went as expected meant that the wholesalers had to grant them long-term payment terms in order to be able to sell. This required a very special relationship of trust between wholesalers and retailers. The contract was usually concluded in the early 1950s with a handshake, "whereby the custom existed to put on the hat, as far as this had not already been the case to identify the boss". Despite the frequent use of bills of exchange in the beginning , payment terms of over a year were not uncommon. Since the wholesalers received no credit on the procurement side, they had to look for bank loans, at least to bridge the tense period.

On the fur ties of the tobacco merchants and the ready-made fur of the clothing manufacturers there are labels that contain information about the warehouse numbers and the desired sales price of the goods, today usually also provided with the barcode . In order to show the seller the desired sales price without looking up, but not to reveal it to the customer, it is encrypted with a code, often a word from the industry, for example "BLUE FOX". The B stands for the 1, the "L" for the 2 etc. and the "E" for the zero. Regular customers often know the key, and the Niddastrasse apprentices and some furriers make a sport out of deciphering the code words of all of their competitors or suppliers in order to be able to read and check the prices themselves.

136 of the 266 Frankfurt fur wholesalers located in the city (51.1 percent) and 148 of 288 (51.4 percent) in the greater Frankfurt area operated a clothing business at the same time around 1985 or were entered in the specialist directory with both divisions. The 136 inner-city mixed companies (that was 70.8 percent of Frankfurt's clothing stores) were all in the premises of their wholesale parent companies, or at least in the same building.

An important tobacco shop on the square is the company Mayer & Cie., Zurich, with its branch at Düsseldorfer Strasse 1–7, in the late sixties and seventies with annual sales in the three-digit million range. It is based on the legacy of Bernhard Mayer (* 1866, † 1946). Before the Second World War, Mayer was, in addition to his work as a smokers' merchant, an important art collector and financier of various companies in the fur industry. His descendants did the same, some companies were said to be financed by the Merzbacher heirs. Part of the important art collection, including important works by van Gogh, Renoir, Cézanne, Matisse and Picasso, has only been shown in exhibitions two or three times so far. In 2004 Werner Merzbacher established the connection between his two activities. For his strongly color-oriented selection of art, the following applies: “If you are a fur specialist, you have to have a keen eye for small color nuances - and I have.” Before 2000, the company followed the changed production and Markets and moved its main activity to Hong Kong, then increasingly to the booming metropolitan area of ​​Shanghai. The company management is located in Zug , Switzerland, in Zurich, in addition to the wholesale business, there is a fur shop in a prime business location.

The Ofra company , at times also active as a clothing company, was primarily a specialist until 2014 for the trimming skins, which are mostly long-haired furs, and sheets for fur linings . It originated as a sister company of Murrhardter Pelzveredlung - MPV .

Since 1987, the owner of Uhlig Rauchwaren GmbH , Niddastraße 66-68, has been the smokers merchant Hans-Josef Braun (2020), where he also started his apprenticeship 30 years earlier at Uhlig & Co. He was a member of the board of the German fur association and later fur wholesale and foreign trade association and thus also part of the supervisory board of Fur & Fashion Frankfurt Messe GmbH. In 2017 he was elected treasurer of the fur wholesale and foreign trade association. The company's tradition goes back to the Uhlig family, who were active in the fur industry in Eastern Europe as early as the 19th century. In 1920 Theo Uhlig's father opened a fur trading company in Leipzig; Theo Uhlig (* 1921) started the business in Frankfurt on March 1, 1950. The owners have always been active as buyers and commission agents at all auctions worldwide.

The fur dresser and the fur refiner

Shadow fox skins in fashion colors at Ofra (2009)

→ Main articles : Fur dressing  and fur finishing

Each coat arrives at the beginning of his career to the fur to Pelzzurichter which produces a durable and suitable for clothing fur coat in a sort of tanning from the only preserved raw hide. Any further changes to the fur is the job of the fur refiner , mainly both processes are carried out by the same companies.

While most of the most important German fur trimming and finishing companies had previously settled around the Leipzig fur center in Brühl, there were only eight in the Frankfurt center in 1985, which was 28.6 percent of the German companies. At the time, the type of work required a location close to flowing water, the water-rich Rhine-Main area was quite suitable for this. However, if a company had decided to move to another location in the first few years after the war, it made little sense to move closer to Frankfurt later due to cost reasons. However, Frankfurter Platz was so important that eight foreign and one Offenbach company had offices in the Pelzviertel. In addition, there were two companies that were already represented here by their tobacco wholesalers, and a Belgian and a French company that were represented by a wholesaler.

In the best times of Leipziger Brühl, 80 to 90 percent of the world's raw hide harvest was refined in Germany. In 1983, due to the relocation of finishing to low-wage countries and the high quality competition in America, it was still about half as much, 40 percent of which was attributable to Frankfurt companies.

The sorter

Head shop Henry Beck sorts himself (1973)

Fur traders employ sorters to put together the furrier assortments , only very large companies have their own employees for this, only about 5 percent of the fur bundles were sorted in their own rooms. Smaller quantities are also handled by the employees in between. Small and medium-sized businesses are not able to profitably utilize a sorting worker all year round. In addition, the space required for the work process is quite considerable.

The sorter is usually self-employed as a one-man operation and works for various clients. Around 1985 there were about 12 sorters in Frankfurt.

If the skins come from the finishing or finishing, they have usually already been bought in according to size, quality and color. It is now the job of the sorter to produce "pure" furrier assortments for a coat or jacket as evenly as possible from hundreds or thousands of skins, while still keeping as little residual skins as possible. The more skins he gets of one type, the “cleaner” the bunches become. The assortments intended for sale are bundled in such a way that the bundle makes as uniform an impression as possible when the future customer browses through. At the top and bottom of lambskins (Persian, Indian lamb and the like), the largest possible cover skin is placed, the end of the lacing on the front paws and on the head is formed by a handle for hanging the waistband. In the case of very valuable pelts, the bundles were sometimes provided with a line cover adapted to the fur. In addition, the lambskins are often pierced in the head, and a round leather plate is placed under each knot. Mink and similar skins are bundled in the head, possibly with perforated discs provided for this purpose. Very small skins were only tied together, but today almost all of them come on the market as prefabricated panels.

The tobacco agent

Advertisement from 1992 by the tobacco goods commission agent Bernd Klebach († 2008), author of the book Der Brühl, Niddastraße, the fur center

Commission agents have an overview of the market, they mediate the business between furriers, retailers, buyers in department stores and the garment factories. Legally, the common in the fur trade name is wrong, because the activities of the tobacco products-commission agent is more like that of a commercial agent or representative , that is, it is operated on behalf of its principals (client) as an intermediary or agent for goods transfers, but assumes no separate Obligation.

47 of the 52 commission companies organized in the Rauchwarenverband were based in Frankfurt around 1985. In addition to a large number of local or external German companies, they represented important foreign and international tobacco goods trading houses, although the majority of the companies were also active in wholesaling.

Because they have an overview of the fur stores, they are able to procure difficult accessories - these are pelts required for repairs or redesigning old fur - for their furrier customers . They receive a brokerage fee of 2 to 5 percent for their work, and more for the time-consuming supplementary work, which they usually handle on their own account. For this purpose in particular, they often keep their own stocks in stock. Just as foreign companies were represented by Frankfurt companies and commission agents in Germany, Frankfurt companies were also represented in foreign markets by commission agents.

In order to solve the difficulties of obtaining Zupasser, the central association of the furrier trade set up a collection point for leftover skins at Werner Loh, Niddastraße 56. Here, the furriers were able to give their leftover skins on commission for a fee.

Some customers, especially furrier customers, also use the commission agents for direct purchases at the auctions. This saves them time and travel costs, and they also use their material and processing knowledge. For many small clients, this makes purchasing direct from the auction of the breeding associations possible.

The intermediate master

The clothing companies needed furriers, known in the industry as intermediate masters, who also set up their workshops in the Niddastraßenviertel because of the lower rents in the surrounding area. The few German wage fryers were clearly in the west of the fur center, while the foreign (93 percent!) Gave priority to the east. The penetration into the entertainment district happened mainly through the Greek fur workers.

The more industrial fur production of the interim master , who is usually employed in the form of piece wages , does not differ much from the activity of the detail skinner, it always involves a lot of manual labor. The natural material, which is very different in shape, color and structure, prevents greater mechanization. The number of similar products, the same models from the same skin types, however, allow a certain degree of rationalization in the manufacture. In addition, there are some jobs that refine the finished fur, if only because the interim master was forced to offer his work at the lowest possible unit price. While the detail skinner may try to deliver a part that is particularly perfect in terms of craftsmanship, the interim master's yardstick is to get it through acceptance by the manufacturer. In spite of the similar work, the production times in the interim master workshops per part are considerably lower than those of the furrier who produces individual pieces and custom-made work, depending on the type of work. As a rule, even the small companies in which only the boss does the classic furrier work employ skilled workers for sewing work. Large companies specialize the work processes even further and use semi-skilled workers for some work steps.

"Finished" fur scarves from China, collection by roller stand from the fur cleaner (2009)

The fur cleaner

→ Main article : fur cleaning

While the fur cleaner is normally responsible for the care of worn pelts, the job of the Prima Finish company on Niddastraße was mainly to finish ready-made clothing or to freshen up goods that had just been delivered. The owner of the company, which was founded on October 24, 1983, is Giuseppe Barresi (born October 28, 1960), who came from Piazza Armerina in Sicily at the age of eleven . In the fur industry since 1974, he spent six months at Thorer-Cleaning familiarizing himself with fur cleaning. As the owner of the company Springsgut of Prima Finish. died, he acquired the company. His main partner Gregori Apostolidis left in 2017.

Loose cut hair is removed with lautering or shaking bins, steam steamers and ironing machines bring the hair back into a sales-promoting, optically advantageous appearance. Newer fields of activity are the cleaning of textile clothing with firmly bound fur using hydrocarbon solvents as well as the cleaning of leather and leather clothing.

Other resident companies around 1997 were Alexander Pelzreinigung , American Soft & Carefull Finish , Best Pelz Finish , also neighboring, with branches in three German cities and West Berlin, the Thorer offshoot Thorer-Cleaning in Offenbach.

The fur manufacturer

Joint fashion show of the Frankfurt fur manufacturers (1973)

The fur clothing companies work almost exclusively on order. At the beginning of the year, the sample parts designed by designers are produced, according to which orders from domestic and foreign retailers are accepted, especially at trade fairs and when representatives visit on site. Since the skins are very different, especially in the case of wild goods, this requires a certain degree of trust among customers that the items ordered will later roughly correspond to the pattern. Thanks to the possibilities of quick photography, deviations in deliveries can now be documented easily. In particular when the retailer's business is poor, they are not so rarely a possibly only pretended reason for not purchasing one or more ready-made furs. A separate branch of fur manufacture that has been quite significant for a long time is the manufacture of fur hats . A number of fur hat wholesalers with their own production and smaller fur hat modists had their rooms mainly on the upper floors of Niddastrasse.

The production of fur clothing takes place either in our own workshops or at the contract processing companies, the intermediate foremen. If at all, only the design and compilation of the sample collection was done in-house. In 1983 only 15 companies had their own workshops in Frankfurt, and the trend is falling. In 1982, the factories achieved 70 percent of their sales with items of low or medium quality that were made in wage labor in low-wage countries such as Taiwan, Hong Kong and Greece (around 80 percent of foreign production). When processing in Greece, 50 to 100 DM per part could be saved compared to Germany.

At the beginning of the 1960s there were hardly any German fur manufacturers, but there were quite a few fur workshops that made trimmings for industry. At the beginning of the 1970s, after the decline in fur trimmings for ladies' outerwear due to the start of a fur boom, they could mostly be easily converted into pure fur clothing companies or at least into fur production workshops. In the Frankfurt area in 1983 of 443 West German and West Berlin clothing companies, 192 (43.3 percent) were located in Frankfurt / Main-Stadt and 221 (49.9 percent) in the greater Frankfurt area. In addition, there were 105 clothing manufacturers for fur headgear , so that the number for Frankfurt was 240 and 286 (43.8 and 52.2 percent). Here, too, the Pelzviertel at the train station was the preferred location, in the street triangle there were 102 businesses, in the vicinity of which there were another 77. 22 of the total of 75 companies were located here, mostly with foreign owners. With the exception of a small collection of 11 companies in five consecutive houses on the north side of the northeastern part of Niddastraße, the rest of the clothing manufacturers were fairly evenly distributed over the rest of the fur quarter.

One of the really big dealers was Nachman Daitsch (born July 15, 1907 in Lithuania; † September 10, 1983), who, after a meteoric rise, had grown his business to a size that was previously unknown . At the age of 17 he started his own business as a tobacco merchant in Lithuania.In 1950, after a war-related new start, first in Munich, he came to Frankfurt in Niddastrasse, and in the mid-1970s he had reached a turnover of 100 million. The company went as spectacularly as its rise was unexpectedly bankrupt. In September 1983, Nachman Daitsch was hit by a car and fatally injured while crossing Taunusstraße at the age of 76.

On March 10, 1969, the Heinz Nitsche company , headquarters and workshops in the Rhineland in Korschenbroich , moved from Karlstraße 16 to the bright “Green House” on Mainzer Landstraße 67. Originally, a bank wanted to move into the seven-story building. Another sales office was located in Zurich. Eight years later, in January 1977, the still young fur clothing company Kroll & Ziper took over the rooms in the Green House and converted the shop windows on the ground floor (previously Taunusstrasse 45). Their high-quality mink clothing was produced in their own New York company "Almiro" Fur Fashion Design. After the first letters of the two owners Michael Kroll and Reuben Ziper , they named their models "M & R Pelze".

The Richard König company , Niddastraße 66-68, was one of the most important fur wholesalers in Germany for three generations; all owners had the first name Richard. After the Second World War, the company was relocated from Leipzig to Frankfurt. The founder's grandson, Richard III, contributed to a considerable extent to numerous fundamental works on animal and fur science. Initially a pure fur trade, the company changed more and more into a fur clothing company in the course of the post-war years. In 1986 the company got into financial difficulties, around 1990 it was finally closed, last trading as König Pelze GmbH .

The company Rosenberg & Lenhart - R & L , one of the market leaders who gave the "Frankfurter Brühl" its profile, is still active internationally today . It emerged from a collaboration between Harry Rosenberg and Arthur Lenhart in Leipzig in the late 1920s. In its prime, with 100 employees in Germany alone, it made 50 million DM in sales. In 1990, R & L was the first German company to open a fur store in Russia, in the traditional GUM department store in Moscow , which was to be followed by more. In the same year, a license agreement was signed with designer Wolfgang Joop . Wolfgang Joop's breakthrough in the fashion industry was essentially based on a fur collection that he designed for a Frankfurt company. Before moving to R & L, Joop worked for the clothing company HM-Pelz Design for five years .

The fur ingredient dealer

Fur ingredient dealers - and leather dealers and fur machine mechanics came along. The ingredients dealer keeps the materials for the internal processing of the furs, from the ribbon to the silk lining, in stock. He also carries fasteners such as Keska (clipfasteners) or buttons and furrier tools. Leather always plays an important role in fur fashion, not only as a galon strip to save fur, but above all as a design element that exudes a similar value to fur.

In 1983, the accessories companies were all located in the northern part of Niddastrasse, four out of seven in the north-eastern part.

The fur retailer

A. Vassilakis fur hats, Niddastraße and Karlstraße (2009)

Raw fur delivery to Niddastraße. In the background Gerson Fur House (1973)

The end consumer did not miss the fact that there were large warehouses in and around Niddastrasse with a huge selection of made-up furs. On the first floor of the houses in Niddastraßensack there were shops almost all the time, eight in a row in a block, but some of the displays were not decorated or even curtained. The external appearance of the shops indicated that only resellers were actually expected here. While most of the garment manufacturers wanted to at least maintain the appearance of their commercial customers that they were not selling to end consumers, smaller dealers in particular opened shops on the edge of Niddastrasse, mostly with associated furrier businesses. Many did not have the flair of their exclusive competitors in the city, but their appearance perhaps corresponded to the customer expectation that one could buy a fur at particularly good value here. Exceptions were, for example, the very innovative companies Helmut Feilitsch (always very sporty, he also ran his errands on his racing bike) and Rolf Schulte, whose shops were in the Niddastraße block on Düsseldorfer Straße. When Rolf Schulte, a trained furrier and tobacco merchant, opened his shop in January 1970, it was important to note that he only sold goods to resellers. The large, luxurious and high-turnover Gerson fur store had 21 shop windows on the station side of Düsseldorfer Strasse, house numbers 1-7, corner of Niddastrasse, on the outer edge of the fur triangle.

As in other cities, the Frankfurt fur retail trade was spread across the city, with a focus on the old and inner city, where the other upscale specialist shops were particularly concentrated. Even from more distant regions or countries, private fur customers liked to travel to Frankfurt because of the above-average selection and the low prices. The furriers who only live from the retail trade, but also the fur textile houses, found themselves in a difficult position in addition to the direct and intense competition from the garment manufacturers around Niddastraße. Many of their potential customers let friends or acquaintances sell them a fur "under the hand" or made a "super purchase" directly from the clothing manufacturer (statement by Obermeister Anthes). The fur prices in Frankfurt retail were generally lower than elsewhere. The Frankfurt Furrier Guild only had 30 members in 1984, despite the large Rhine-Main catchment area.

Truck on Niddastrasse, on the occasion of a fur collection campaign for earthquake victims in Armenia (1988)

The shipper

The Niddastraße, at one end an impasse, is actually not equipped to handle large numbers of large trucks due to the local conditions. And yet significant quantities of goods were loaded and unloaded here every day. Confectionery was transported, especially for bulk buyers (department store chains), in so-called hanging shipping, especially by the Hamacher shipping company . Each fur hung on a coat hanger, each part or several together protected by plastic covers. From Kastoria in Greece up to 100 large-scale shipments of semi-finished products and made-up items and skins came to Germany every day, most of them certainly to the fur district, to Greece there were around 5,000 kilograms of fur pieces a day for further processing, especially into so-called bodies, the semi-finished fur products . A Frankfurt forwarding company transported almost 150,000 fur parts from Kastoria to Frankfurt in one year alone.

The Kuehne & Nagel forwarding company maintained a warehouse in the Sticht part of Niddastrasse, from where it temporarily drove to Kastoria four times a week. "Air freight master" signaled a neon sign above a small shop on the opposite side. The HE Meister forwarding 1949 (May 16 * 1909 in Berlin; † 6 June 1982) of the Berlin Hans Eberhard Master founded. The company Westra GmbH. followed the fur industry from Leipzig to Frankfurt, back then and again since around 1980, under the name of the company founder, Benno Richter, since July 2016 Westra-Sable International GmbH (owner Schmalz + Schön).

The specialist fur insurer

Four of the five special insurance companies were based in Frankfurt. The company Schunck KG, which mainly insures furriers and retail fur stores, also had nine branches in all of the smaller fur stores in Germany.

Again and again there were spectacular break-ins in the fur district. For a while they increased so much that it was feared that they would no longer be able to find an insurer for the fur stores. A series of burglaries began in the early seventies, with alarm systems with direct switching to the police headquarters, motion detectors and alarm wallpapers found their way into companies that had previously felt safe, the insurance companies made corresponding requirements. Around the end of April 1970, the insurer Schunck sent an alarm telegram to the ministries: "Since March 1, 1970, burglaries have been committed at 14 fur businesses with a total damage of around 1.5 million DM in the Frankfurt area alone."

There was also a series of car breakups. The customers were spied on while loading the goods on Niddastraße, while resting on the motorway parking lot, the trunk was forcibly opened and the furs reloaded.

The fur trade associations

In addition to their specific tasks to promote their members, the fur trade associations represented their members externally and carried out general public relations work more or less intensively. In the Association of the German Smoking and Fur Industry (Rauchwarenverband, Düsseldorfer Straße 1–7), four sub-associations are organized: wholesalers, clothing manufacturers, finishers (including dressers) and commissioners, as well as the Central Association of the German Furrier Trade , which represents the interests of German specialist retailers independent of the Chambers of Crafts and furriers. The Head Shop Association was to the founding of the German Fur Institute - DPI is the only professional interdisciplinary organization of the fur industry.

In addition to the compulsory membership of the furriers in the chambers of crafts , as a retailer also in the chamber of industry and commerce and the voluntary membership in the furriers' guild , other furrier associations existed or still exist.

In 1973, the Central Association of the German Furrier Handicraft moved its office from Bettinaplatz in Frankfurt to a newly acquired building in nearby Bad Homburg vor der Höhe ; the legal owner was the Gesellschaft zur Förder des Kürschnerhandwerk mbH .

The quality protection association of furriers (QSV) , founded in 1962, guaranteed a particularly correct and high quality furrier work according to its self- image with a quality seal . In its heyday it had around 300 members. They used the advantages of joint shopping, joint advertising, model exchange, etc.

In January 1983 the Association Initiative Pelzgestaltung (VIP) was founded in Frankfurt with around 100 members from the Federal Republic and Austria, including some members from neighboring German-speaking areas. Among other things, because it also covered the area of ​​responsibility of the quality protection association, the quality protection association dissolved around the beginning of the 1990s.

The Greek tobacco companies are also represented by their association Prophet Elias . Prophet Elias is a worldwide traditional association that was founded in Kastoria in 1914. In 1918 it comprised a total of 3,000 companies and over 2,000 individuals. This connection results in the best business connections all over the world, especially to Kastoria, the USA and Canada. Social work is an important area of ​​responsibility. This includes the placement of jobs, many compatriots commuted between Kastoria and Germany depending on the seasonal workload in the companies. Another Greek association was the "Capitol Club" Greek fur merchants e. V. with an office at Moselstrasse 45.

"All about fur 1960" with the announcement of the internationalization of the fur fair

The fur magazines

Of the five German trade journals of 1983, three were edited in Frankfurt, the monthly Berlin magazine “Die Pelzwirtschaft” had a representative at Frankfurter Platz.

• “All about fur” was also the official news bulletin of the Central Association of the Furrier Trade. It was later renamed "Pelz International" (Rhenania Fachverlag GmbH, Hamburg).
• The “Pelzspiegel” was similar to the “Rund um den Pelz”, but showed significantly more model photos of the clothing manufacturers (Ed. IM Bergmann, Berlin; later Verlag Walter Gebauer, Berlin).
• The magazine “Die Pelzwirtschaft” addressed not only the furriers but also the leather clothing retail trade, the tobacco wholesalers and the fur finishers, and it was later included in the “LPD Journal”. Both published by CB-Verlag, Carl Boldt, Berlin.
• The monthly magazine "Hermelin" mostly delivered full-page pictures, to stimulate the furriers and as a template for the end consumer (Hermelin-Verlag Dr. Paul Schöps, Berlin and Leipzig).
• The “PelzReport”, the specialist magazine for fur fashion and leather, appeared as a seasonal brochure on the 1st and 15th working day of the month, for the trade fair and for the season also as a journal with ready-made photos (Kurt Lindemann, Oberursel).
• The Frankfurter Winckelmann Verlag, in addition to its free, annually published specialist address book “Winckelmann” before the fur fair and before the start of the season, also produced extensive booklets with the clothing companies' offers, as well as in its journal Fur Parade International . In addition, since 1969 he published a weekly, multi-page newsletter, the "Winckelmann Pelzmarkt", which was distributed free of charge, especially in the Frankfurt Pelzviertel. In addition, the "Winckelmann tables", posters with the addresses of the fur wholesalers and related specialist areas, were hung at all tobacco shops and many furriers. The first Winckelmann address book for Germany appeared in Leipzig in 1909, and the Winckelmann tables also existed in the 1920s. The publications were also distributed in other languages ​​for various other countries by a London family member. The publications were discontinued in 2007 after the death of the last owner, John Winckelmann.
• Murrhardter Pelzveredlung has been selling "Die Pelzmotte", the "only literary and humorous industry magazine in the world", through its Rifra publishing house since 1956. The last edition appeared in the 51st year in January 2007, for the second time as "Pelzmotte - FurMoth", now no longer in German, but in English.
• The monthly “Pelzmarkt”, “Newsletter of the German Pelzverband”, has replaced the Winckelmann Pelzmarkt since October 2008. The editor is Dr. Barbara Sixt. ^{(As of 2018)}

Federal fur school

• 

  Red fox skins from the collection of the Federal Fur School

• 

  Ludwig Brauser, teacher and director of the Federal Fur School (1986)

→ Main article : Deutsche Kürschnerschule # Bundes-Pelzfachschule in Frankfurt am Main

The main task of the Bundes-Pelzfachschule , Frankfurt, Hamburger Allee 23, was to prepare apprentice furriers for the master craftsman examination. This included the commercial area, technical engineering, the creation of patterns and, increasingly important, fur design and species protection. She also offered training seminars for all professions in the fur industry. In addition to teaching, the institute performed special tasks, such as expert reports in the field of species protection, and the school principal was a member of the advisory board of the World Wildlife Fund Germany. Customs officers were made knowledgeable at the school, the close cooperation with zoologists, scientific institutes, universities, ministries and offices at home and abroad as well as the information work for animal welfare and consumer organizations went far beyond the commitment of conventional vocational schools.

Closely associated with the school in Frankfurt is the name Ludwig Brauser (* 1924; † 2009), who accompanied the school through the entire period in which it was called the Bundes-Pelzfachschule and made it the most renowned training center for qualification as a master furrier , a reputation similar to that of the master school of the furrier trade in Hamburg. The school association Bundes-Pelzfachschule was founded on September 13, 1967 in Frankfurt. From the beginning, the school was located on the 3rd floor of the Bergius vocational school in Frankfurt am Main. The school was financed mainly through participation fees, as well as monetary and material donations from the companies and grants from the smoking goods association and the central association of the furrier trade.

Over the years, senior teacher Brauser accumulated the world's largest collection of fur by constantly harassing the fur companies. It is now in the archive of the Senckenberg Museum in Frankfurt . The stock from 1981 was photographed by press and trade fair photographer "Mickey" Bohnacker, almost an original from Frankfurt, on behalf of the Tobacco Association. His now somewhat faded fur photos are in the fur collection of the Federal Fur College .

In the first year the courses were attended by 68 participants. From 1975 there were 12 main courses on the program for more than 200 participants each year. In 1988 it was the only technical college for the fur industry in the world. Around 750 masters were trained in the first 20 years, plus 3000 participants in short courses from Germany and abroad.

With the change in economic development in the furrier trade, the school was restructured. After Ludwig Brauser took over the management of the Bergius School, which had since been renamed the Frankfurt School for Clothing and Fashion , in 1984 the areas of fur, leather and textiles were combined "in a meaningful symbiosis between private and state schools" to form an educational offer .

The Greek community of the Frankfurt fur industry

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  Tobacco dealer Dimitri Emmanoulidis , chairman of the "Prophet Elias", dances Sirtaki with Walter Langenberger , chairman of the fur association (1976)

• 

  Emmanuel de Greco with his fur bike and the fur trader Sotiros Kazakis on Niddastrasse

Greece, namely the region around the city of Kastoria in the prefecture of Kastoria, together with the town of Siatista 50 kilometers away , have a centuries-long tradition in processing pieces of fur and in trading the products made from it, mainly semi-finished products for further processing by foreign furrier companies. Greek traders were already represented at the Leipziger Brühl, who also bought up the fur scraps and exported them to their homeland and re-imported them as pieces of fur boards. In the course of time, a number of Greek furriers had settled in Leipzig. When fur sales in the Federal Republic rose enormously after the Second World War, the Greek fur trade and trade also benefited. Many Greek fur sewers came to the Federal Republic from West Macedonia because of the better earning potential, a significant part settled in the Frankfurt area because of the Niddastraße fur center, and several of them started the fur trade. With the upswing in Kastoria, many seamstresses returned to their homeland, in the meantime they had acquired knowledge of fur processing in addition to processing leftovers. With their special sewing technique on the fur sewing machine , they were far superior to the German fur seamstresses, the skipping of fur was soon almost exclusively in Greek hands, and the German furriers also had "their Greeks" to sew mink . Not only the so-called piece bodies came from Greece, but also finished furs. To this day there are numerous furrier workshops as family businesses and large fur clothing companies with attached, representative sales rooms, especially for private customers from Russia and the Emirates.

In 1985 there were around 700 fur businesses with Greek roots registered in the commercial register in Frankfurt, most of which were located in the block adjacent to the “fur triangle” between Nidda, Moselle, Elbe and Taunusstrasse . 65 to 70 percent of all Greek fur companies in Germany were located here, two of which were branches from Kastoria. Another 20 percent were based in neighboring Offenbach. About 50 of the companies were garment manufacturers with a business area like their German competitors, at least three of them were among the largest in the division. The other 650 companies mainly worked as intermediate foremen for Greek and German companies. Due to their special productivity, they made up the majority of the furriers working for the fur industry in Frankfurt (88.74 percent). The local concentration was particularly strong with them, in only three houses, for example, there were 42 wage cuts. Just under 6/7 of all of Frankfurt's intermediate masters were in the block mentioned, with relatively cheap rents. A total of about 4,000 Greek citizens were busy with furs in Frankfurt. 50 companies had more than 15 employees, a further 100 had 5 to 10 employees, the rest of them were family businesses. With an annual production value of 520 million DM, the Greek colony was an important part of the Niddastraße fur center.

The Frankfurt Pelzviertel also represented a special case with regard to its high proportion of foreigners. In 1977, the city of Frankfurt had a foreign workforce of 13 percent, making it one of the German cities with the highest percentage. The leather, textile and clothing industries accounted for the largest part with 39.5 percent. The Greeks in the Frankfurt Pelzviertel accounted for 31.1 percent of this, according to a survey by S. Gelzenleuchter in 1983. In contrast, the proportion of Greeks among all foreign employees in Frankfurt was only 8 percent. The fur center was also the center of the city's Greek workers.

A well-known original and the most well-known Greek was Emmanuel de Greco (actually Emmanouil Chatzinikolaou; born March 30, 1937 on the island of Paros ; † October 12, 2018 in Frankfurt am Main), a hairdresser with a salon on Schäfergasse. His bicycle was decorated with bright colors and fur. On his death in mid-October 2018, a fur specialist publication stated: “He also drew special attention when he mingled with people in his long fur coat, hat and flashing sunglasses or in his red Mitsubishi from the 1970s, who was completely padded inside with fur went for a walk ”.

International Frankfurt fur fair

Fur fair 1949 to 1964
year	Exhibitors	surface	Visitors	sales	of which export
1949	123	1,880 m²	6,000
1950	160	3,000 m²	8,000
1951	198	3,640 m²	8,500
1952	205	4,147 m²	11,000
1953	191	3,920 m²	8,000
1954	183	3,930 m²	9,000
1955	170	3,920 m²	8,000
1956	162	3,980 m²	9,000	20,000,000 DM	1,070,000 DM
1957	170	4,100 m²	8,000	23,000,000 DM	1,160,000 DM
1958	160	3,800 m²	8,000	18,500,000 DM	1,200,000 DM
1959	170	4,120 m²	8,000	22,500,000 DM	2,100,000 DM
1960	185	5,400 m²	12,000	25,000,000 DM	4,000,000 DM
1961	215	6,200 m²	13,000	35,000,000 DM	5,250,000 DM
1962	235	7,400 m²	15,000	35,000,000 DM	6,000,000 DM
1963	250	8,900 m²	18,000	45,000,000 DM	6,500,000 DM
1964	280	10,200 m²	20,000	56,000,000 DM	10,000,000 DM

International fur fair 1964: Red broad-tailed coat with white mink from Marco

On April 24, 1949, the Hessian Smoke Goods Association opened the first fur fair, renamed the Rauchwaren-Messe until 1962 , renamed the International Fur Fair in 1963 , from 1964 as the International Fur Fair in Frankfurt and since 1990 as Fur & Fashion . It took place annually on the Frankfurt exhibition grounds, typical for the industry in March / April, when the majority of the pelts that fell in winter were present. According to the old Leipzig custom, it was accompanied by a novelty show of the West German furrier trade and a meeting of traders and furriers, the furrier day. The first fair with 123 exhibitors was already considered a great success, the 6000 visitors were an extraordinary event for this time . The fair developed very satisfactorily in the first few years. After internationalization, it expanded quickly; European exhibitors were admitted for the first time in 1960, and from 1962 there were no longer any national restrictions. The Frankfurter Rauchwaren Messe GmbH , supported by the Rauchwarenverband, was founded in 1953, the first managing director was Willi Treusch. For years, the Frankfurt fur fair was the most important event of its kind worldwide. Exhibitors and buyers came from almost all fur-producing and fur-consuming countries in the world.

The fur fair was both a sample fair and a sales fair, and a large part of the retail and furrier needs were covered here. Because of the individual differences in quality and appearance of many types of fur, specialist retailers endeavor to buy the skins to be bought, but also ready-made clothing items directly by appearance. In the case of finished fur clothing, this is opposed to the wishes of the producer, who only wants to produce as much as is sold in the current year. Thus, at the fair, mainly skins were bought, the demonstration models (if the maker had already given the samples) and the other ready-made items that had been brought with them were signed off as sold and otherwise the made-up was ordered for delivery, either as soon as possible or at the start of the season in autumn. The new designs for the special fur silks were examined and ordered from the silk weavers . Machine manufacturers, also for fur finishing machines, showed their offers, as did ingredients dealers, pattern designers and other peripheral suppliers. The current color samples could be viewed at the fur refiners. Associations and breeding associations offered information talks at their stands, as well as the Russian state trading company for fur, Sojuzpushnina , was represented again.

Fashion shows took place several times a day, and not just in the halls of the clothing stores. Regular highlights were the furrier ball and fashion shows by exclusive fur designers in the hotels, but above all in the evening a joint fashion show by the garment manufacturers, in 1983 with two presentations, each with 3800 spectators. At the fair, people not only bought things, but the suggestions for their own production were very important for the furriers. Another point of attraction and an orientation about fashion and processing innovations was therefore the exhibition of the furs that were awarded in the performance competition of the furrier trade , which were also shown again at a fashion show during the furrier ball.

Shuttle buses brought visitors to the companies around Niddastrasse and back. In 1984 the fur fair again set a new record for exhibitors. 548 providers came from 30 nations. 196 (35.8 percent) of the exhibitors came from abroad. The exhibition area was expanded from 58,000 m² to 65,000 m². With 24,900 guests from 60 countries, the number of visitors in 1985 was slightly lower than in the previous year, but the proportion of foreign visitors had increased to 45 percent. In April 1990, before German reunification , the furriers of the GDR had the first opportunity to find out about the state of western fur fashion for the first time, with free entry.

The Frankfurt fur fair had shrunk considerably in the last few years of its existence; the last, 60th fair took place in spring 2008 as “Fur & Fashion”. Then Fur & Fashion Frankfurt Messe GmbH took part in the Milan fur fair "MIFUR". Since then, so-called “Market Days”, organized by the Frankfurt tobacco wholesalers, have taken place in Frankfurt every year. ^{(As of 2016)}

Exhibition of the furrier trade

Award-winning Swakara-Persian cape with fox at the model competition of the furrier trade in 1982

Since 1949 there has been a model competition in the furrier trade every year after a ten-year break due to the war . Despite the difficult conditions in divided and occupied Germany and against all fears, participation in the first event was considerable. A company on Niddastraße solved the then still precarious lack of space and made its premises available for the preparations so that the jury could make its selection on April 21st. After the goods and the shipping boxes had been temporarily stored in a cement warehouse (!), They were then decorated in Hall 3 of the fair and presented by mannequins in the public rooms of the Palmengarten on April 25, 1949 .

Since 2006 the model competition has been called the International Fur Design Competition of the German furrier trade . The International German Red Fox Award has also been held annually since 2013 . ^{(As of 2018)}

Market Days

Every March, after the Frankfurt fur fair was discontinued, a sales show called Market Days has been held in the Pelzviertel and the surrounding fur companies until 2017, especially in the house of the tobacco goods trading company Rosenberg and Lenhart on Ludwig-Landmann-Straße (moved to Oberursel) carried out, in which some non-Frankfurt based companies in the fur industry participate. The Frankfurt companies open their sales areas together for three days and thus offer external trade visitors the opportunity to concentrate on shopping and maintain contact with their suppliers. ^{(As of 2018)}

literature

Commission agent and gloss author Rudolf Sonntag, almost an original from Niddastrasse

• Ingrid Kopenhans: The Frankfurt tobacco shop in the post-war period . Diploma thesis, Frankfurt am Main 1958.
• Rudolf Sonntag: “I have to consider ...!” A collection of stories from the newspaper Pelzmarkt. Winckelmann-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 1970. Book cover and author's signature.

Web links

• Anita Strecker: The last ones at the Brühl . Frankfurter Rundschau, February 13, 2011. Last accessed on October 10, 2014.

See also

Commons : Rauchwaren-Handelszentrum Niddastraße  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Commons : Niddastraße  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Commons : Frankfurter Rauchwaren dealer  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Commons : Frankfurter Pelzmesse  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Commons : Frankfurter Kürschner  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Commons : Competitive performance of the furrier trade  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Commons : Fur skin collection Frankfurt / Main  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Demolition excavator on Niddastrasse, 2003

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x} Henning Zeumer: The international position of the German tobacco industry with special consideration of the Frankfurt / Main location (table of contents) . Diploma thesis, University of Mannheim, self-published 1985.
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l} Sonja Gelzenleuchter: The Frankfurt Pelzviertel as an example of a monofunctional district . Diploma thesis, Darmstadt, July 1983. Table of contents.
3. ↑ ^{a b c} Ingeborg Heider: Frankfurt's tobacco and fur trade in olden times . In: Die Pelzwirtschaft , No. 4, April 1960, Berlin / Frankfurt am Main, pp. 194–198.
4. ↑ ^{a b} Without indication of the author: From the history of the tobacco trade: From the fur trade and fur trade in medieval Frankfurt. In: Der Rauchwarenmarkt No. 67, Leipzig, August 28, 1935, pp. 3-4.
5. ^ Paul Bruss: 100 years of Bircks . Special print by Peter Bircks & Cie. Krefeld, August 1963, p. 107.
6. ↑ ^{a b} Friedrich Hering: Frankfurt am Main - the new West German smoking center . In: Author collective: Der Kürschner. Technical and textbook for the furrier trade. 2nd revised edition. Published by the Vocational Training Committee of the Central Association of the Furrier Craft, JP Bachem Publishing House, Cologne 1956, pp. 270–274.
7. ↑ ^{a b c d} Otto Nauen: On the history of the German tobacco industry 1945 to 1951; 1952 to 1962 . In: 350 years of Thorer . Frankfurt am Main, 1962, pp. 145-184.
8. ↑ Sonja Gelzenleuchter, p. 16. Secondary source F. Lerner: Frankfurt am Main and his economy. Reconstruction since 1945 . Frankfurt am Main 1958, p. 396.
9. ↑ Erich Friedrichs, in: The opening of the Frankfurter Rauchwarenmesse 1951 (address from April 1, 1951). In: Rund um den Pelz No. 4, April 1951, Fulde-Verlag, Cologne, pp. 25, 27.
10. ↑ ^{a b} L. G .: 20 years of Frankfurter Brühl . In: Rund um den Pelz , No. 5, May 1966, Rhenania Fachverlag Koblenz, pp. 3–21.
11. ^ Adolf Heidinger: 40 years of EUROPA-HAUS Niddastr. 64 . Signed letterhead v. August 5, 1990 from Adolf Heidinger, 6 Frankfurt a. M.-Ginnheim 50, Am Weimarfloß 23. G. & C. Franke collection, Murrhardt.
12. ^ Rudolf Sonntag: Chronicle of the week . In: Winckelmann Pelzmarkt No. 631, February 19, 1982, p. 9.
13. ^ Peter Michels: The wholesalers in the tobacco industry . Weltkulturverlag Anton Hain, Meisenheim and Vienna, p. 56
14. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Bernd Klebach: The Brühl, the Niddastraße, the fur center. Memories of 35 years of the fur industry . Self-published, Frankfurt am Main, 2006.
15. ^ ^{A b} Dieter Wieland: Organization of the tobacco market . CB-Verlag Carl Boldt, Berlin / Frankfurt am Main, 1972. ISBN 3-920731-01-8 .
16. ^ Pelz International , June / July 1981
17. ^ Pelz International , Issue 4, April 1982, p. 208.
18. ↑ Without indication of the author: In the past week ... In: Winckelmann Pelzmarkt Heft 70, Frankfurt am Main March 5, 1971, p. 10.
19. ↑ ^{a b} Andreas Lenhart: The importance of the city of Frankfurt for the fur industry . In: Die Pelzwirtschaft No. 10, November 19, 1987, CB-Verlag Carl Boldt, Berlin, pp. 10-14.
20. ↑ Without indication of the author (? - sheet missing): Only speculations? In: Pelzreport Kurt Lindemann , February 2, 1987, Oberursel, pp. 1–2 f.
21. ↑ Without Autorenangabe: Large inauguration at R & L . In: Winckelmann Pelzmarkt , No. 123, March 15, 1972, p. 10.
22. ↑ UBF: European Fur and Fashion Center . In: Pelzreport , February 12, 1989, Kurt Lindemann, Oberursel, pp. 14–15.
23. ↑ Without an author's name: Fur Museum in Frankfurt . In: Winckelmann Pelzmarkt , No. 788, March 15, 1985, p. 9.
24. ↑ Henning Zeumer, p. 42. Secondary source: Information office Pelz: Pelzstadt Frankfurt .
25. ↑ Henning Zeumer, p. 42. See Sonja Gelzenleuchter: The Frankfurt Pelzviertel as an example of a monofunctional urban district . Diploma thesis, Darmstadt, July 1983, p. 76.
26. ^ Henning Zeumer, p. 42. See Jürgen Thorer, Frankfurt, in FNP October 23, 1982.
27. ↑ Henning Zeumer, p. 43. See Winckelmann Germany 1983, pp. 16-71.
28. ↑ Henning Zeumer, p. 43. See 1983 Annual Report, pp. 48–70.
29. ↑ Business announcement Business liquidation Remaining sale of rabbit skins, rabbit specialist since 1955 . In: Pelzmarkt 03/16, Frankfurt am Main, March 2016, p. 18.
30. ↑ Peter Melchers: The wholesalers in the tobacco industry . Pp. 50-56, 59.
31. ↑ A custom that was already common in Leipzig in the 1920s. Jury Fränkel used the Russian word "Cernosliwy", which is difficult to guess for Germans, as a code key for his company. From: Jury Fränkel: One-way street - Report of a life , Volume 2. Rifra-Verlag, Murrhardt, 1972, p. 199.
32. ↑ www.bilanz.ch : Werner Merzbacher, Nerze, Nerze, and Kandinsky . May 25, 2004. Last accessed November 3, 2014.
33. ^ Theo Uhlig, Frankfurt, 80 . In: Winckelmann International - Fur Bulletin 2527 - Sales Report 656 , Winckelmann Communication Frankfurt, January 30, 2001, p. 6.
34. ^ Hans-Josef Braun - 50 years with the Uhlig company, 30 years self-employed . In: Pelzmarkt Newsletter 11, November 2017, pp. 12–13.
35. ↑ 3% brokerage rate accepted . Quote: At the association meeting on February 8, 71, the manipulators subsequently approved the increase in the commission agent's brokerage rate to 3% with a majority. Exceptions are provided for larger contracts as well as for raw goods . In: Winckelmann Pelzmarkt No. 66, February 5, 1971, Winckelmann Verlag Frankfurt am Main, p. 9.
36. ↑ Signed "F.": Recently Zupasser headquarters in Frankfurt . In: Die Pelzwirtschaft issue 12, December 1970, p. 61.
37. ↑ Without an author's name: Anniversary at Prima Finish . In: Winckelmann Pelzmarkt No. 1212, Frankfurt am Main, October 29, 1993, p. 2.
38. ↑ Without indication of the author: Giuseppe Barresi - Fa. Prima Finish, Frankfurt. In: Pelzmarkt Newsletter No. 1, January 2020, Deutscher Pelzverband, Frankfurt am Main, p. 11.
39. ↑ Without the author's name: Prima Finish - The cleaning specialist . In: Pelzmarkt Newsletter , Deutscher Pelzverband, Frankfurt am Main, May 2018, p. 3.
40. ↑ Winckelmann 1989 , specialist address book, p. 95.
41. ↑ signed "JW" (John Winckelmann): The current function of the fur manufacturers from the point of view of the furrier . In: Winckelmann Pelzmarkt , No. 1340, August 16, 1996, Frankfurt am Main, pp. 1-3.
42. ↑ Without indication of the author: Nachman Daitsch † . In: Die Pelzwirtschaft No. 9, September 1983, p. 50.
43. ↑ In: Winckelmann International Fur Bulletin No. 2176, Hsgr. Winckelmann Publications LTD., London September 26, 1983 (English).
44. ↑ Signed "He": Green light for the "Green House" at Brühl . In: Die Pelzwirtschaft , April 1969, pp. 32–35.
45. ↑ Without indication of the author: Kroll & Ziper oHG in new rooms . In: Rund um den Pelz International, issue 4, April 1977, p. 212 and advertisement p. 122.
46. ^ Brochure R&L Rosenberg & Lenhart 1948-1998 .
47. ↑ Rund um den Pelz , No. 3, March 1974, p. 104.
48. ↑ www.industriehof-ffm.de: Heads of the quarter, Thomas Lenhart . ( Memento of the original from September 24, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Last accessed October 25, 2014. 
49. ↑ www.whoswho.de: Biography Wolfgang Joop . Last accessed October 25, 2014.
50. ↑ In: Winckelmann International Fur Bulletin , eds. Winckelmann Publications LTD. No. 2175, London, June 9, 1989 (English).
51. ↑ Signed "He": Grosvenor and Empress Chinchilla now in Frankfurt with Rolf Schulte ... who opened at 20 Düsseldorfer Strasse . In: Die Pelzwirtschaft Heft 1, 1970, p. 42.
52. ^ Johannes Sartorius: Sales growth at Gerson . In: Die Pelzwirtschaft , December 1982, p. 21 (here: “Shop window front (100 meters long)”).
53. ↑ Andrea Scherell: Frankfurt as a barometer of development . In: Pelz International , Rhenania-Fachverlag Hamburg, issue 12, December 1984, p. 42.
54. ^ Walter Langenberger: Greece ... In: Pelzspiegel , Heft 5, 1980, p. 185.
55. ↑ Kühne & Nagel: We drive Kastoria - Frankfurt, Frankfurt - Kastoria four times a week . Advertisement, Winckelmann Pelzmarkt No. 601, July 17, 1981, p. 9.
56. ↑ Editor: Hans Eberhard Meister passed away. In: Winckelmann Pelzmarkt No. 647, Frankfurt am Main, June 11, 1982, p. 14.
57. ↑ Without an author's name: No day like any other. A shipping company turned fifty . In: Die Pelzwirtschaft issue 12, December 1982, pp. 58-61.
58. ^ Advertisement and editing: Westra Benno Richter becomes Westra-Sable International GmbH . In: fur market. Newsletter of the German Fur Association , pp. 6, 9–10.
59. ↑ Signed "Fe.": Fur theft . In: Die Pelzwirtschaft Heft 5, May 1970, p. 59.
60. ↑ drkn (Bert Knoop): Central association of the furrier trade relocates its office to Bad Homburg . In: Rund um den Pelz International , issue 4, April 1974, p. 190.
61. ↑ Without indication of the author: 25 years under the sign of the crown and ermine . In: Pelzreport Kurt Lindemann, June 17, 1987, p. 6.
62. ^ ^{A b c} Walter Langenberger: The history of the federal fur school . In: 20 years of the Federal Fur School . Federal fur school e. V., Frankfurt am Main 1988, pp. 9-12.
63. ↑ Ludwig Brauser: The training ship "Federal Fur School" in troubled waters . In: 20 years of the Federal Fur School . Federal fur school e. V., Frankfurt am Main 1988, pp. 13-15.
64. ↑ Family name, date of birth and death according to the grave cross on the day of burial.
65. ↑ Without mentioning the author: Emanuel de Greco . In: Pelzmarkt Newsletter 11/2018, Deutscher Pelzverband e. V., p. 14.
66. ↑ Thomas J. Schmidt: Friseur Greco - A colorful bird on the Zeil ( memento of the original from November 3, 2018 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . Frankfurter Neue Presse , May 31, 2014. Last accessed November 3, 2018. 
67. ↑ Without mentioning the author: Memory of Emmanuel de Greco . Video on Facebook. Last accessed November 3, 2018.
68. ↑ La foire de la fourrure depuis 1949. The Fair of Frankfort since 1946 . In: Hermelin , 1965, No. 1, Hermelin-Verlag Dr. Paul Schöps, p. 3.
69. ^ Willi Treusch: Mass and association chronicle of 25 years ... Manuscript p. 27, 1972 (Collection G. & C. Franke).
70. ↑ Editor: Correspondence: Free entry for GDR visitors to the Fur & Fashion fur fair in Frankfurt . In: Winckelmann Pelzmarkt No. 1043, Frankfurt am Main, March 9, 1990, p. 3.
71. ↑ Paul Kunze: That's how it began 25 years ago . In: Rund um den Pelz International , No. 4, April 1973, pp. 92–93.
72. ↑ Source: Pelzmarkt Newsletter of the German Fur Association, Frankfurt am Main.

Coordinates: 50 ° 6 ′ 33.1 ″  N , 8 ° 39 ′ 46.9 ″  E