Simon Schocken

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Portrait of Simon Schocken from the 1920s

Simon Schocken (born November 23, 1874 in Margonin , † October 24, 1929 in Berlin ) was the founder of the German company, owner and community leader. With his brother Schlomo Salman he founded the Schocken department store .

Life

Simon Schocken came from a Jewish family in Poznan . His parents were the merchant Isaac and Eva Schocken. Simon had six other siblings: Emma married Hirsch, Hermann, Lea Helene married Spiro; Julius Joseph, Schlomo Salman and Rosa Schocken.

In 1895, at the age of 21, he performed his military service in Lübben with the Brandenburg Jäger Battalion No. 3 , which promoted him to chief hunter .

In 1898 Simon Schocken took over the management of the Leonhard Tietz department store in Braunschweig . On March 18, 1901, he became a personally liable partner in the department store owned by the brothers Julius and Moritz Ury in Zwickau. Like the Schocken family, they came from the Posen Province .

On October 21, 1904, the brothers Simon and Salman opened their first Schocken department store in Oelsnitz / Erzgebirge . In 1906 the Ury brothers' department store was taken over by Simon Schocken alone. In the same year he and his brother Salman founded the Schocken und Söhne purchasing center (I. Schocken Söhne Zwickau OHG), which was converted into a partnership limited by shares in 1921. In the years that followed, the Schocken brothers opened many branches and department stores, including in large cities such as Nuremberg and Stuttgart .

Simon was married to Rosa Ury, daughter of Moritz Ury, and had a daughter with her, Hanna Schocken.

As the client and builder, Simon Schocken and Erich Mendelsohn created the pioneering design of department store buildings that found their unique expression in Nuremberg, Stuttgart and Chemnitz . The department store in Chemnitz is now home to the State Museum of Archeology Chemnitz . Other houses are u. a. in Oelsnitz / Erzgeb. in Meinertstraße 18 and in Wałbrzych (Waldenburg / Silesia).

As the undisputed spokesman for the Zwickau Jews , Simon Schocken was elected their community leader in 1911 .

After the First World War , Simon Schocken was a sponsor of social projects, such as the support of war invalids and those released from prison. He founded a home for the deaf and the blind in Zwickau. Today there is a retirement home in this building. Actually bought in 1925 for his daughter Hanna, in 1927 he was the founder of an agricultural school and large-scale gardening (Gut Winkel) south of Spreenhagen , which his brother Salman continued after his death.

He was the sponsor and designer of the Weißenborn settlement in Zwickau , whose construction of the originally five semi-detached houses, like the city of Zwickau itself, funded with 50,000 Reichsmarks , and also builder of the mourning hall of the Jewish cemetery in Zwickau . As one of the best-known department store entrepreneurs in Germany, he was a member of the Association Committee of German Department Store Entrepreneurs . He was also a member of the German Werkbund .

Simon Schocken died on October 24, 1929 as a result of a traffic accident and was buried in Berlin-Weißensee in the Adass-Jisroel cemetery of the Israelite synagogue community in Berlin .

Honors

  • Memorial plaque on Simon-Schocken-Platz in the Weißenborn Zwickau settlement with a memorial stone in his honor.

Fonts

  • Settlement through self-help. A proposal for the creation of residential housing at affordable rental prices. Ernst Oldenburg Verlag, Leipzig 1925

literature

  • Hans-Eberhard Happel: Schocken - a German story. Nordwestdeutsche Verlagsgesellschaft, Bremerhaven 1994, ISBN 3-927857-53-X
  • Tilo Richter: Erich Mendelsohn's Schocken department store. Jewish cultural history in Chemnitz. Passage, Leipzig 1998, ISBN 3-9805299-5-9
  • Archeology of a department store. Group, client, architect. The book for the permanent exhibition. smac State Museum for Archeology Chemnitz, Dresden 2015, ISBN 978-3-943770-21-6 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Jewish Affairs (Volume 12), South African Jewish Board of Deputies, 1957, p. 55
  2. ↑ Simon Schocken at www.industriekultur-in-sachsen.de ; accessed on April 10, 2019
personal data
SURNAME Shock, Simon
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German businessman
DATE OF BIRTH November 23, 1874
PLACE OF BIRTH Margonin
DATE OF DEATH October 24, 1929
Place of death Berlin