Scherk (company)

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Information board in front of the former factory building (2011)

Scherk was a family-owned cosmetics company in Berlin . Scherk products were sold until the 1980s.

founding

Stumbling block for Alice Scherk in front of the house, Mozartstrasse 10, in Berlin-Lankwitz

Ludwig Scherk worked for the cosmetics company Dr. M. Albersheim / Khasana in Frankfurt am Main . In 1906 he moved from there to Berlin, where he opened a shop for drugstore items on Joachimstaler Strasse . He had the sole sales license for Albersheim products in Berlin. In 1911 he married Alice Carsch, a niece of the company's founder.

From 1911 he started his own production and concentrated on a few, but high-quality items, such as the Mystikum series consisting of perfume and powder and the smoke- consuming essence Platina . In the 1920s he built a small network of foreign branches; The one in the USA , where he also produced from 1923, was particularly important . Around 1920 Ludwig Scherk acquired a plot of land in Berlin-Südende , Kelchstrasse 31, on which a new factory was built in 1925/26 based on a design by Fritz Höger . 53 branches were established worldwide. The company employed over 400 people in Berlin alone.

Aryanization

In 1938, as part of the Aryanization process , the company was sold to Schering AG , then one of Scherk's biggest competitors alongside Nivea . The products initially retained their name, as Schering obtained a delay to remove Jewish names from the business title on the grounds that the disappearance of Scherk as a brand name would be detrimental to business. The delivery company in Vienna, Penzingerstr. 39, was deleted “ex officio” from the commercial register at the end of 1941 on the recommendation of Scherk GmbH, which was newly founded after the sale in 1938. From 1942 the production was continued under the name Tarsia . In July 1942 a warehouse for foreign forced laborers was set up in the factory in Südende; it was produced for Osram .

After 1945

Former factory building (today Institute for Pharmacy, 2011)

Ludwig Scherk died in London in 1946, where he had fled from the persecution of the Jews , and left the inheritance to his son Fritz Scherk. In August 1949 he applied for redress from Israel on the basis of the restitution order from the Allied Command . He bought the company back from Schering for approximately the equivalent of the purchase price in 1938 and returned to Germany at the end of 1950.

In 1951 the factory building on Kelchstrasse in Berlin-Südende was repaired and the company was re-entered in the commercial register. Production initially focused on toner and compact powder in the old Scherk design. Other care cosmetics were added later, such as facial milk and skin creams.

The company was sold in 1969 to the US company Alberto-Culver , which relocated production to Braunschweig . In 1980 the trademark rights for Scherk products were taken over by Lingner & Fischer ( today GlaxoSmithKline ) and in 1982 Scherk disappeared from the commercial register.

Fritz Scherk

Fritz Scherk temporarily played in the cabaret Die Stachelschweine . Occasionally, this ensemble also performed in the factory building on Kelchstrasse. Fritz Scherk was close friends with the violin virtuoso and conductor Yehudi Menuhin .

In the sixties Fritz Scherk built a Montessori kindergarten at Elgersburger Straße 2 in what was then Berlin-Schmargendorf. He also built up the Montessori school group in Delbrückstrasse in what was then Berlin-Charlottenburg. Fritz Scherk died on March 31, 1995 in Jerusalem. He was visiting his daughter Irene, who now lives in Steglitz again.

Factory building

The former factory building was rented by the Free University of Berlin and bought in 1974. It is a listed building monument. The Institute for Pharmacy is currently located there. Since September 26, 2006 a memorial plaque has been commemorating the Scherk entrepreneurial family expropriated by the Nazi regime.

reception

  • The Heimatverein Steglitz showed Scherk in an exhibition.
  • The Jewish Museum Berlin opened a cabinet exhibition about Scherk in September 2010.
  • Motto cleanliness. The cosmetic companies Scherk and Dr. Albersheim , exhibition in the Museum Judengasse in Frankfurt am Main, 2011 to 2012.

Web links

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

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Jewish Museum Berlin: You've come to perfume shops (2015).
  2. ↑ a b c d e Heimatverein Steglitz: Scherk is no longer there - A checkered Jewish company history in Steglitz ( Memento of the original from April 16, 2013 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. (2007). @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.heimatverein-steglitz.de
  3. ^ History of the Austrian chemical industry (PDF file; 1.75 MB), Auer von Welsbach Museum.
  4. ↑ MonumentPerfumery factory Scherk
  5. ↑ Perfume smell in the pogrom night in: FAZ of December 21, 2011, page 37.

Coordinates: 52 ° 27 ′ 5.7 "  N , 13 ° 21 ′ 26.7"  E