Richard König, tobacco shop
| Richard King; Koenig Pelze GmbH
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| legal form | one-man business |
| founding | 1903 |
| resolution | around 1990 |
| Seat | Leipzig , Frankfurt am Main |
| management | Richard King |
| Branch | Wholesale tobacco products and fur clothing |
The Richard König company belonged to the leading fur wholesalers in Germany for three generations, all owners had the first name Richard. In 1903, the company's founder Richard I (* 1895; † March 2, 1937) took over the Leipzig tobacco goods trading company Adolph Schlesinger Nachf. After the preliminary division of Germany during the Second World War , the company was relocated from the tobacco goods trading center in Leipziger Brühl to the new fur center in West Germany Niddastraße in Frankfurt am Main. The founder's first successor, Richard II, contributed to a considerable extent to numerous fundamental works on animal and fur science.
Founding years of "Adolph Schlesinger"
The original company, taken over by Robert Schlesinger's founder, was founded in Bojanow (today Polish) in 1869 . Soon afterwards Schlesinger moved to Lissa ( Wrocław-Leśnica [?]), Then, in 1874, to Breslau . In 1883 a company was founded in Leipzig under the name Robert Schlesinger & Sohn ; ten years later, the son moved into a newly built house in Leipzig, Brühl 64 and renamed the company Adolph Schlesinger .
Richard König joins until World War II
After Adolph Schlesinger's death, his long-time employee Richard König I continued to run the company in which his father was already employed, only to take it over shortly afterwards. His grandfather was a weaver in a small village in the Ore Mountains, where Richard I grew up in very modest circumstances alongside many siblings. During his military service, he met Privy Councilor Dodel , who ran the Leipzig tobacco company G. Gaudig & Blum . After his discharge from military service, he began an apprenticeship there as a tobacco merchant. The attention of the “pretty young man” had been noticed, and so the tobacco company Adolph Schlesinger brought him into the flourishing company. Schlesinger already took the young king with him to his purchases at the second world trading center for tobacco products, London, especially in the Queenstreet quarter, "in order to educate him to be a perfect expert on the difficult area of buying raw goods".
Adolph Schlesinger died in 1901, after a year Richard König, now an authorized signatory, took over the business from the widow. The employee Georg Köhler remained as an active partner until 1922, then married and was self-employed with his own business for a short time.
The company was now called Adolph Schlesinger Successor . Connections with London had expanded considerably over the years, and in order to facilitate the financing of the transactions, the owner of the large clearing house Blatspiel Stamp & Hescock became a partner. This happy connection was instrumental in the continued rise of the company. The financial strength of the London partner made it possible to buy any goods directly. By 1908, Adolph Schlesinger Successor was already one of the “big ones” in the industry. Russian fur buyers have always come to Schlesinger, and they put particular trust in Adolph König, as he understood “the awkward language of the Jews”. So the Brühl 64 also became a Russian specialty house.
Julius Faust took care of purchasing in China . A specialty of the house, cultivated by Richard König I, was Australian wallaby skins , which filled a separate floor. Adolph Schlesinger Successor dominated the wallaby market for two decades.
In the First World War (1914 to 1918) Richard König II entered as a war volunteer. In 1917 he was wounded and discharged with the rank of lieutenant. In 1919 he worked for a long time in Denmark and Sweden. He then made long trips to Eastern and Southern Europe as well as Great Britain and the USA. Richard King I, the senior, himself often visited North America, and when his son Richard II († April 1, 1969) had acquired the necessary education, a shopping mall was built for him in New York, which was only closed when the First World War broke out. Richard King II, his son married in the United States. Since he could not manage everything successfully in the American branch despite all his efforts, his father brought him back to Leipzig. Having become very overweight in the United States, Richard King II died of a stroke in 1928 on his way to business.
In 1904 Eduard Manes (1844–1932) took over the Berlin representation of the company, in 1908 this was continued by his son Philipp Manes (1875–1944), the tobacco merchant murdered by the National Socialists in Auschwitz and at the same time chronicler of the fur industry.
In 1941, shortly before his deportation to Theresienstadt , Philipp Manes remembered his time as a newcomer to the Leipzig branch of the Arthur Schlesinger Successor:
“How often did I remember Anton Wohlfahrt during these weeks , who also entered the large house in Wroclaw as a newcomer. I admired how he saw the large bales stacked on the ground floor, the raw skunkse and opossum, tightly packed in racks, reaching up to the ceiling, on the first floor in cupboards the precious goods - minks - ermines - foxes - beavers - sables .
On the ceilings the cheaper sorts, in the mighty lichen - along the wall - prepared goods waiting to be sorted. On the second floor the wallaby camp with its thousands of dyed furs, then exclusively Martin's London color. One floor up Thibet and goats - these in boxes printed with the red Chinese characters, as well as the back of the skins, which mostly bore the same large stamp, framed by fantastic dragons.
The huge, iron-banded bales contained the gray and white goat blankets.
Upstairs on the 5th floor - acquired in 1909 through the construction and unification of the two neighboring houses, was the large furrier workshop, which has been under the control of master Arno Weber since 1900 and in which the skins were " attached " [repaired] year after year . In the house of Adolph Schlesinger Successors, there was no frequent change of employees. They stayed for decades. "
After the First World War
Richard I was the first to resume the broken business relationship with London after the First World War, which made a decisive contribution to the rapid resurgence of the international tobacco shop Leipzig. As a board member and treasurer of the Reich Association of German Tobacco Manufacturers and Commercial Judge, Richard King I was a well-known personality. In the tobacco industry, "Father King" was respected as an excellent tobacco product expert and helpful colleague. As early as the 1920s, the company had branches and model warehouses in New York, Berlin and Vienna. The son Richard II continued the company with the same success.
Another specialty of the company's founder was Chinese fur goods, of which he bought over a million pounds each year. At the time his fortune was "over a million gold marks ". The nephew Horst Bräutigam , who grew up in the house , traveled to China for the company to do some shopping.
In 1927 the company was renamed Richard König KG.
In February 1937 the senior suddenly fell ill, and on March 2nd of that year he died of a weak heart. From now on, his grandson, Richard King III, the son of his only daughter, ran the company.
After the Second World War
Even after the Second World War there was “a huge deal with possums ”. Richard III (born August 20, 1928 in Leipzig) was occasionally dubbed the mink king in the industry because of his sales of mink skins, but he was still a leader in opossum skins. In addition, he converted significant quantities into long-haired pelts, seal skins and Chinese fur articles.
However, with the Second World War and the separation into East and West, the continuous development came to an end. It was said that Richard König III, now known as the “Old King”, practically started all over again in 1944 in Jochberg, Austria, with a typewriter, a box full of addresses and a mountain of mole skins . He began trading native hides and exporting them to get foreign currency. He expanded this trade more and more and in 1946 was already able to buy again on the London tobacco market.
Richard III grew up with his two sisters in Leipzig-Plagwitz in the Max-Klinger-Villa , which had been acquired by the König family. In 1978 an aunt Richard lived in the house. At the age of 18, Richard III went to Switzerland, where he completed the last two years of school. During this time he was already helping out at various tobacco companies during the holidays. After finishing school, he spent a year at the Alfred Loppacher company in Lausanne . He then emigrated to the United States. In the well-known New York smokers commissioner Hans Hessel he found an excellent teacher. Very soon he was helping, often completely independently, with purchasing for important companies. He completed his military service in the United States and got American citizenship.
In 1956 his father brought him back to the newly created center of the fur industry in Frankfurt am Main. In 1948, the year of the currency reform , his father opened a branch there at about the same time as other tobacco sellers, many colleagues and all branches of the fur industry followed within a few years. The years in America had shaped the junior, he had acquired extensive fur knowledge and ran the Frankfurt business completely independently. The senior devoted himself entirely to the Austrian business from Jochberg, a small mountain town that he had come to appreciate during a previous vacation stay.
At the age of 30, Richard married King III Waltraud Hirsch. In the early 1960s he became a partner in his father's company. In April 1968 he initiated the considerable expansion of the Frankfurt business premises. There was a special attraction for business friends at the opening reception. For the first time in half a century, the hides of the protected sea otter came up for auction. The König company was one of the two German companies that acquired skins from it. Sea otter fur was once one of the most valuable furs of all, its durability is considered to be unsurpassed, it tops the durability table for fur. Even later, hardly any skins came onto the market; in addition to the trade restrictions through protective measures, this fur also seems too heavy for today's demands.
The father died in Jochberg in 1969. Alluding to his reputation as a fur king and the names of the three owners, a specialist newspaper wrote: " Le roi est mort, vive le roi " - the king is dead, long live the king. By this time, the pure fur trading company had already incorporated a fur clothing department for some of the fur types it ran . This offer has now been expanded continuously. In 1973, his wife Waltraud König joined the company and now took over the clothing department. This branch in particular expanded more and more, together with the temporarily also extraordinarily growing fur sales in the Federal Republic of Germany. In 1973, additional rooms had to be rented in order to store the constantly growing quantities of fur and clothing. Main articles at the time were mainly mink, then noble foxes in all varieties, Lakodaseal and Alaskaseal, guanaco and still Chinese articles and American and New Zealand opossum fur .
In 1978, the year of its 75th anniversary, the fourth generation of the family was in the process of preparing for a career in fur. Daughter Britta had finished high school and was due to start an apprenticeship at the renowned Nuremberg fur store Unbehauen on September 1st . The son Holger was 16 and still went to high school and also planned to go into the tobacco shop.
In April 1986, the company's house banks made use of their security transfer rights and all claims were assigned to the banks. The poor earnings situation and thefts in 1985 were cited as the cause of the company's financial distress. In order to ensure continued existence, Richard König brought his entire fortune into the company. Since there was no longer any private assets, a bankruptcy application would have been rejected according to the company for lack of assets . After a short shutdown, business operations "with the usual range of skins and clothing" were resumed in March 1986.
In mid-1986 the company, now trading as König Pelze GmbH , took over the agency for Jindo GmbH , Dreieich. Jindo Industries is a state trading company based in Seoul , South Korea. Since the Korean company had started to set up retail stores at the same time to market its goods directly, this caused some resentment in the competing fur wholesalers and retailers.
In 1988 the company, known as König Pelze GmbH in the fur industry's address directory only as a clothing company, is still at Niddastraße 66-68 and with the old cable address “Furking”. The company is no longer listed in the 1991 directory. Richard König is no longer in the commercial register.
Two rooms of the Felllager (around 1910)
Mink, fox, and opossum skins
Two fur coats from Richard König (1979)
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Works
- Richard King II
- The range of tobacco products . Together with Paul Schöps and Leopold Hermsdorf, 1949.
- Association official, regular price and market reports for the trade journals of the smoking industry, published among others in Der Rauchwarenmarkt .
- Constant collaboration with Paul Schöps, publisher and author of the magazine Das Pelzgewerbe on articles about:
- the durability coefficients of fur skins, Australian fur animals, Chinese weasels, Kolinsky, Solongoi, fishing marten, otters, leopards, lyraskunks, raccoon dogs (sea fox), marmots, opossums, ocelots and tiger cats, sea otters, striped skunk, raccoons, goats and others (until 1969, posthumous) Publication).
Web links
supporting documents
- ↑ a b c d Without mentioning the author: Richard König sen. † . In: Hermelin No. 3, Berlin 1969, p. 37.
- ^ A b c d e f g h i 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. 166–175 ( → table of contents ).
- ↑ Richard König Sr. (Richard König I) .: Richard König senior in the company Adolph Schlesinger, Nachf. Leipzig . In: 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. 165–166).
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i Without mentioning the author: 75 years Richard König . In: Die Pelzwirtschaft No. 8, CB-Verlag Carl Boldt, Berlin August 8, 1978, pp. 59-64.
- ↑ Archive Saxony , inventory 21033, Reichsbank headquarters Leipzig with extensions.
- ↑ Editor: House banks take over goods from Richard König . In: Winckelmann Pelzmarkt No. 844 v. April 18, 1986, p. 7.
- ↑ Editor: R. König finishes inventory . In: Winckelmann Pelzmarkt No. 839 v. March 14, 1986, p. 11.
- ↑ Editor: König Pelze GmbH has taken over representation from Jindo Industries . In: Winckelmann Pelzmarkt No. 854 v. June 27, 1986, p. 12.
- ^ Rolf Walze (company R. Schulz, Frankfurt): Correspondence (letter to the editor). In: Winckelmann Pelzmarkt No. 856 v. July 11, 1986, p. 9.
- ^ Walter Siegel (Werner Siegel KG, Frankfurt): Correspondence (letter to the editor). In: Winckelmann Pelzmarkt No. 858 v. July 25, 1986, p. 7.
- ^ Winckelmann, Pelzadress-Register Deutschland . Issues 1988, 1989, 1991/92.