Peter Bircks & Cie.
| Peter Bircks & Cie.
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|---|---|
 |
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| legal form | one-man business |
| founding | 1863 |
| resolution | 1996 (successor) |
| Seat | Krefeld |
| Branch | Silk weaving |
The companies Peter Bircks & Cie. and G. Hollender sons , both based in the silk weaving town Krefeld , were essentially the only company that special fur silk , rayon , semi-silk and pure silk for the equipment manufactured by fur clothing and sold worldwide. The specialization in fur silks gave them a certain monopoly position in Germany for this trade article.
Company history
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Founding years
In 1863, the fur cap and hat maker Gerhard Lütten (* 1840; † March 2, 1911) and the silk weaver Peter Wilhelm Bircks († June 9, 1895) founded the later Peter Bircks & Cie. Silk weaving mill in Krefeld . At that time Krefeld was already the “city of silk weavers”. When an association against silk theft was founded there on July 16, 1861, the association included 270 silk manufacturers, appreteurs and dealers in raw silk and yarn. Peter Bircks also came from a family in Krefeld that had been weaving silk for generations and traded in silk goods and silk yarn. At that time there were no mechanical looms, neither gas nor electric light, only the first kerosene lamps.
Before the First World War
After the original factory buildings were no longer sufficient for the new looms, probably the very first mechanical looms, a silk weaving mill, completed in 1882, was built for the production of lining materials for the fur industry in Kempen, Hülser Straße 111. The administration and the cap and hat factory remained in Krefeld. The workforce initially consisted of just 12 employees. In 1888 the overloaded weaving room was first enlarged with an extension. In 1910/11 a large five-story building was built in Krefeld, Louisenstrasse 11. In 1914 the construction of a 35 meter high factory chimney was permitted. In 1870 there were also business or storage rooms at Louisenstrasse 64. In 1903, 178 workers, the highest number of employees in the pre-war period. Business premises also existed at Königstrasse 30, from which the goods insurance was transferred to Schwerdtstrasse 2 in 1866 and to new premises in Schwerdtstrasse 6 b in 1868.
Peter Bircks married a sister of his partner Gerhard Lütten soon after the business was founded. Gerhard himself married much later, a daughter of a well-known and wealthy baker who had been friends with him for a long time. Later co-owners of the business included the sons Willi Bircks (* July 10, 1867 - February 3, 1922) and Max Lütten (* December 5, 1873 - after 1962), brother Hermann Bircks († February 11, 1956) and Ernst Lütten († 1945). In 1911, the “junior authorized signatories” Max Lütten and Willi Bircks signed a company balance sheet with the considerable assets of 1,062,401 marks.
It wasn't long before Bircks & Comp. was also regularly represented in the world trade center for furs, the Leipziger Brühl , at Brühl No. 26, 2nd floor.
In 1923 the house designed by the architect August Biebricher , who in 1883 had also become part of one of the many Krefeld Mennonite textile manufacturer families through the marriage of Anna Scheibler, was completed for Max Lütten at Roonstraße 87. The developer of the site had made the buyers an obligation not to operate any machine-operated business in the area known as the “musicians' quarter” because of the street names. This could have been one of the reasons that the operating facilities remained in Kempen.
During the First World War (1914–1918) Max Lübben headed the distribution center for the silk industry in Berlin with great success.
After the First World War
After the war, a subsidiary founded in 1920, "Sesam, Silk- und Samt-AG, Zurich", made it possible to quickly resume deliveries to foreign customers. In 1937, however, the block of shares with a nominal value of 500,000 Swiss francs had to be made available to the Reichsbank. Sesam could not recover from this, after the Second World War (1939–1945) it was liquidated.
During the Second World War, the Kempen factory premises were damaged several times by bombs. Part of the building was completely destroyed by two direct hits in 1942. Max Lütten was thrown into the cellar by the pressure of the explosion and, only slightly injured, could be dug out of the rubble. The night watchman was killed by the rubble.
After the Second World War
The repair of the war damage dragged on over a long time. In 1953, the weaving mill was completely reorganized with all the preliminary works and a larger jacquard weaving mill was rebuilt. In 1962 the topping-out ceremony was held over a new building that replaced the destroyed parts of the company. The work of the skilled workers working on the loom was billed in piece wages.
In 1963, on the 100th anniversary, the author wrote in a company history bound with Birck silk: "What the author found: A thoroughly lively company with a more or less modern weaving mill - a specialty of high-quality lining silk for the fur industry!"
After the silk weaving mill Peter Bircks & Co. in Rheydt was taken over by the important fur ingredient dealer Gustav Karschinierow, based in Düsseldorf, and a large warehouse or factory building was built, all with a simultaneous, unexpected decline in sales, the then owner, Uriel Karschinierow (* 3. December 1938; † July 1, 2011), son of the company's founder Gustav Karschinierow, file for bankruptcy. Peter Bircks & Co. employees continued the weaving mill for some time. In 1996 they had to give up the company for good.
Gerhard Lütten
Dance scene on silk
Peter Bircks
Philipp Manes on Peter Bircks & Cie.
Philipp Manes , tobacco merchant and author of the fur industry, wrote about Peter Bircks & Cie. in his history of the German fur industry in the war year 1941, the year before his deportation to the Theresienstadt ghetto , later murdered in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp (extracts): (The date of death of Willy (Willi) Bircks differs from that in Manes (= 1932) the official Bircks company history from (= 1922))
- "The silk lining has always been the most important and indispensable aid in the manufacture of fur items, yes, during the inflation it got so far that one looked more at the preciousness of the fur lining than at the fur itself."
- “The Bircks did have their own factory, in which they only produced good, heavy plain lining silk, the quality of which remained the same year after year - it was not necessary to create new ones, because customers had got used to them for decades and wanted them again and again. On the other hand, the lighter varieties, the 120 cm wide qualities, the Crěpe de Chine and what the names of the fabrics are all called, as well as the damasks, were bought from specialist manufacturers. "
- “A sample collection filled two heavy, thick, weighty leather folders and could hardly be carried by one person. Lining silk was brought in all widths and thicknesses - there were the cheap, narrow half silk, the half silk colored damasks and a large selection of the noble damasks, which came from Switzerland and showed the most wonderful weave patterns, it took a lot of taste and a good knowledge of the intended use to bring the right designs. "
- “The sons of the first owner - Willy and Hermann Bircks - combined with their cousins Max and Ernst Lütten to form a working group that was seldom found. Willy Bircks, the eldest - visited German customers himself and was familiar with them like no one else. His calm, thoughtful manner, his unshakable equanimity, his expertise and personal amiability earned him the friendship of customers wherever he came over the decades . "
- "He was a born salesman, with incredible patience, he brought the most stubborn customers to buy, and once the order was placed and the copy book was closed, one of the many pockets on the cover came with a quality that had to be had."
- "The damask collection comprised hundreds of samples, all of which were kept in stock and of which the stocks were communicated to all representatives in weekly lists."
- “In 1932 he fell ill and his body could not find the strength to resist. His passing has been sincerely regretted by the thousands of his customers. He left two daughters and no son who could have succeeded him. If Willy Bircks came with the collection now [in the war year 1941], he would be able to put it comfortably in a coat pocket. It was like that before the outbreak of war. "
- "But your time will also return, and then the collection - even if not the earlier colourfulness - will bring a desired diversity to the processor."
Lüttensche Collection "Modern Painting"
In 1882 the newly built weaving mill was headed by the Kampendonk factory manager. Even in 1890 his signature can still be found in the traditional files. However, he must have worked for Bircks for a longer period of time or had ties to the company, because he introduced Max Lütten, who joined on August 1, 1892, to his famous relative, the painter Heinrich Campendonk . An early painting by Heinrich Campendonk laid the foundation for the Lüttensche collection with excellent paintings, graphics and watercolors. Not only Lütten himself was interested in art, his wife, Gertrud Lütten-Dahl, was an artistically ambitious photographer.
In the anniversary year 1963, the collection included, among other things
- Paintings by Lyonel Feininger , Emil Nolde , August Macke , Maurice Utrillo , Christian Rohlfs and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff
- Graphics or watercolors by Erich Heckel , Heinrich Nauen , Willi Jaeckel , Oskar Kokoschka , Käthe Kollwitz , Ernst Ludwig Kirchner , Lovis Corinth , Ludwig Meidner , Hans Meid , Otto Dix , Ernst Barlach and Marc Chagall .
The neighboring property, silk merchant Richard Merländer, who had his villa built in the neighborhood on Bockumer Strasse (today Friedrich-Ebert-Strasse 42) a year after Lütten, was an admirer and collector of Heinrich Campendonk's pictures. In the large Campendonk retro perspective in Haus Lange in 1960, the three oldest Campendonk works came from the Max Lütten collection.
See also
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j Paul Bruss: 100 years of Bircks . August 1963.
- ↑ a b c Dirk Peterke: Brahmsstrasse . Retrieved December 8, 2017.
- ^ A b Philipp Manes : The German fur industry and its associations 1900-1940, attempt at a story . Berlin 1941 Volume 4. Copy of the original manuscript, pp. 385–388 ( → table of contents ).