Fur house A. Weiss
| A. Weiss
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|---|---|
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| legal form | one-man business |
| founding | 1854 |
| Seat | Cologne |
| management | A. Weiss; successor |
| Branch | Skinning with fur retailers |
The A. Weiss fur store in Cologne was located in the busy Schildergasse shopping street , number 14-16. An additional warehouse was maintained in the neighboring house, number 8-12. The commercial building number 14-16, which was commissioned by the company and still exists today, was built by the architects Clemens Klotz and government builder Joseph Fieth.
The company A. Weiss
In 1854 the furrier Adam Weiß founded a furrier with fur sales. A later owner was Ludwig Weiss.
At the time the company was founded, the furriers still worked to measure for most customers, that is, the buyer ordered a fur that was made for him from the skins or sheets of skin presented to him . With the invention and introduction of the fur sewing machine around 1900 and a fashion in which fur was not only worn as fur lining and trimmings , skinning took a huge boom. The Paris-based company Revillon Frères in particular began manufacturing fur clothing before the turn of the 20th century, which it also sold to textile retail outlets and to furriers. From the inscription on the fur box shown here, it can be seen that Ludwig Weiss already advertised at the beginning of the 20th century that he carried fur clothing. In the letterhead of an invoice for the storage of fur capes from January 1, 1912, in addition to the “fur confection”, a reference is made to a “tobacco store”. This suggests that there might be a fur wholesaler in addition to retailing, perhaps also a fur clothing store for other retailers.
Two photos from 1955 by Cologne photographer Carl Detzel, ten years after the end of the Second World War , show a shop window of the sales room in the older neighboring building on the left, house number 8-12. The decoration shows high-quality furs, in keeping with the fashion of the time, among other things, ocelot coats and skins, an exuberantly crafted fur coat, fur necklaces and various small fur shawls. The company is still listed in the fur directory of 1957, at the latest in the 1966 edition it is no longer included.
The commercial building
A detailed description of the new six-storey commercial building at the company's previous headquarters was published in March 1930, and the completion should have taken place shortly before (1929?). At the time of the new building, with its facade described as "going beyond the" new objectivity "to a mature realization of the sensually beautiful", there were further commercial buildings of the most varied architectural styles in Schildergasse.
The small, angled plot of land with projections and recesses on the neighboring floor made special demands on the architects Clemens Klotz and Joseph Fieth. The front width was also very narrow, especially for an industry that needs a representation appropriate to the value of the goods. However, the exhibition area was enlarged by the shop window of the shop on the left, which was also managed by the company.
The front of the shop consisted of a very large glass surface, set in a tightly profiled bronze frame, which, curved to the right, led into the shop and house entrances to the rear. The back, also curved, closed off the elegant shop window with a mahogany back wall and a small pane of glass from the sales area. The front of the shop runs diagonally to the axis of the property, but "the oscillation with which the curve of the shop space reaches into the shop window, the curves of the wooden wall and the glass obliterate any differences in the inclines". The shop was an average of 5 meters wide and about 19 meters deep. A rolling grille was installed to protect against burglary.
Large slabs of limestone stretching from window to window on the next floor formed the exterior view. The company logo A. Weiss, made of matt bronze, which was obviously modernized with the new building, was located above the shop, above the window fronts of the three floors. Another vertical company lettering "Pelze A. Weiss" was on the side wall of the side wall of the neighboring house on the left, which protruded further into the sidewalk due to the curvature of the street.
The front of the house was on three floors, corresponding to the height of the neighboring houses. Three further floors, each stepped back, could be seen from the street opposite, but in any case from the Hohe Straße intersection . While the continuous window areas on the second and third floors were divided eightfold by frames, the first floor had a continuous window, which was made up of a single wide pane of glass. It was only interrupted by the company's logo in the center, a slim Diana standing on a fox . The shape of the fox is reminiscent of the fox necklaces , fur collars in animal shape, which were in fashion at the time . The sculpture of the goddess of the hunt comes from the Cologne sculptor Willy Meller . The first, eight-meter-wide floor was also used as a sales room.
The interior of the shop was clad in polished natural-colored mahogany. Large wall mirrors multiplied the width of the room. The only jewelery were crystal chandeliers, which created “a comfortably intimate and distinguished atmosphere”. A glass roof in the rear area of the shop brought additional light during the day. The rounded shape of the window was repeated harmoniously in the rounded corners of the room, rounded sales tables and glass display cases. The fur goods were otherwise all hidden in ventilated closets.
The wall and ceiling painting of the rooms was kept in friendly and light colors. The stairwell was paneled with a yellowish flagstone. In order to lose as little of the valuable shop space as possible, the transition from the street to the stairs was made through a corridor between floors that spanned the shop space at the side. The fur storage for customer goods during the summer months was located in cooled and ventilated basements, which were accessible from the back of the shop.
In addition to the spacious apartment, there were a number of workshop rooms on the upper floors, which provided exceptionally good ventilation and ideal lighting conditions for the furriers who were sorting skins, especially on the upper two floors.
The commercial building after the Second World War (1939–1945) until today
Today the statue of Diana is no longer in the middle in front of the windows on the first floor, but on the left of the house, set lower directly above the shop. The impressive, formerly continuous window on the first floor has been divided into individual windows, as was previously the case on the other floors. The pattern of the original, small-scale rear wall of the shop window was similarly taken up again in the house entrance door, which is now separate again.
After the textile chain Bonita , the company Rituals now operates a branch on the ground floor with a modernized, open storefront, mainly selling personal care products. As of May 2017
Diana on the fox necklace (2014)
Fox necklace in the 1920s
Front view (2017)
With the recessed upper floors (2017)
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e f g h L. Haubrich, H. Schmölz (photos), Karl Pütz (Fig. Construction plans): The fur house A. Weiss in Cologne a. Rh. In: Moderne Bauformen , Stuttgart, March 1930, pp. 105–110 and supplements to p. 144.
- ↑ Address book for Cologne, Deutz and Mülheim as well as the business companies in the Cologne area . 4th year 1857, p. 186. Retrieved January 12, 2018.
- ↑ www.bilderbuch-koeln.de Illuminated advertising at night: White fur shop, Schildergasse 14–16 (50667 Altstadt-Nord) . Retrieved April 24, 2017.
- ↑ www.bilderbuch-koeln.de Company from the 1950s: Ludwig Weiss fur shop, Schildergasse 14–16 (50667 Altstadt-Nord) . Retrieved April 24, 2017.
- ^ Winckelmann, specialist directory of the tobacco and fur industry and the furrier trade . 1957; 1966. Winckelmann Verlag, Frankfurt am Main.