Sternheim & Emanuel

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Building complex Sternheim & Emanuel 1927 in Osterstrasse and Grosse Packhofstrasse
Advertising stamps for the fashion house, anonymous artist

The Sternheim & Emanuel department store in Hanover was a department store founded by Jewish merchants at the end of the 19th century , which in 1933 was one of the first to be affected by the so-called “ Jewish boycott ”. After the Aryanization in 1938 by the Hanover city administration, it was later run under the name Kaufhaus Magis .

history

Beginning and ascent

The parent company at Große Packhofstrasse 44 in 1886; (Copy of a photo)

The Sternheim & Emanuel department store was founded in October 1886 by the merchants Louis Sternheim (* around 1862; † 1941 in Switzerland) and Max Emanuel († 1899), initially as a textile and manufactured goods store in rented rooms at Große Packhofstrasse 44 . Only a little later the merchants acquired the building and rebuilt it in order to replace it with a new building in 1896: With the addition of the purchased property at Osterstrasse 99 , “a department store worth seeing for the time” was created.

Acquisitions of neighboring properties and buildings and corresponding new constructions and conversions by 1927 resulted in around 9,000 m² of usable space with a good 300 employees: the department store had grown to become a big one.

The square between Osterstrasse , Große Packhofstrasse , Heiligerstrasse and Johannishof was accessible from all sides . In 30 special departments with all articles for daily needs, women's, men's and children's clothing was offered, linen and fabrics of all kinds, haberdashery, women's cleaning and handicrafts, curtains and furniture fabrics, carpets and beds in all price ranges and much more.

For the building complex its own 300 was PS -strong diesel engine plant operated as a reserve were large accumulator - batteries available to generate electricity for about 1,000 light-burners, motors and batteries, passenger and freight elevators.

Visitors could also reach the four floors via a flight of steps that was modern at the time. 50 post and house telephone connections were just as much a premium at the time, as was a so-called “refreshment room” with its own confectionery . Thousands of customers visited the department store every day.

But even in the time of the Weimar Republic , not only the operators of this department store were the target of anti-Semitism : In January 1929, during the great global economic crisis ,

“… A leaflet made the rounds in Hanover in which department stores such as Sternheim & Emanuel, Max Molling & Co., Elsbach & Frank , Bor Maß , Wolff etc. a. were referred to as robbery institutes , from which the working Germans were systematically plundered. "

The time of National Socialism

Louis Sternheim , one of the two department store founders

As Sternheim & Emanuel was in Jewish hands, shortly after the takeover of power, it was one of the first department stores to be affected by the boycotts instigated by the National Socialists : the terror against the department store began on April 1, 1933 - on the same day as it was the attack on the trade union building of the General German Trade Union Federation (today the Tiedthof on the Goseriede in front of the Steintor ).

After further hostility and threats, the owners - Paul Steinberg had become a partner in the company - tried in vain for more than three years to sell the company. But then negotiations began between Norbert Magis, who had previously been based in Mühlheim , and the company founder Louis Sternheim and his son-in-law Karl Munter . Letters received prove that the conversations were perceived as "friendly". In June 1938 , the textile merchant Norbert Magis leased the department store and took over the warehouse and the inventory at a price lowered by the aryanisation authority of the Hanover city administration.

A few months later the so-called " Reichskristallnacht " began. These portrayed Nora filter :

“The old owner of the large double company Sternheim & Emmanuel lived with his Jewish wife on the first floor of the house owner Schulze, who lives on the ground floor, in the Richard-Wagner-Str./Grünewaldstraße area. Late in the evening of that notorious 9th November 1938, the ground floor residents heard terrifying noises on the heavy oak doors of their house, which were destroyed with long axes and crowbars by SA men . Crystal disks flew into the stairwell, which was cooled in an instant by the cold wind.

Everything that was in the Sternheim's apartment was also destroyed. No chair was spared, there were enough withering SA hands relentlessly at work. In the bedrooms, all the duvets were cut up and their contents scattered, partly from the window, the panes of which had been smashed, so that it ran through all the rooms that had become doorless. There was no longer any thought of living in. "

While the family of department store partner Paul Steinberg emigrated to Argentina in 1938 , Louis Sternheim was deported to a concentration camp . However, in 1939, when the Second World War began , Sternheim was able to flee to Switzerland . The "Third Reich" had moved in land and business premises . Norbert Magis, however, sent payments to the former owners of the department store of his own free will in order to compensate at least to some extent for the purchase price for goods and inventory, which had been reduced by the National Socialists.

Sternheim died in Switzerland in 1941. Only a little later, the building complex, now known as the Magis department store, was destroyed by the air raids on Hanover .

Reparations and ways to reconciliation

After the end of the Second World War, the heirs of the former owners of Sternheim & Emanuel conducted sometimes bitter negotiations for reparations .

At the beginning of the 21st century, the Steinberg family, Jewish descendants of Sternheim & Emanuel , lived scattered from South America to Israel and struggled to keep in touch with one another.

And almost 70 years after the Aryanizations, neither the Steinberg families nor the Magis knew of each other. When the Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung reported on a visit from the Jewish Steinbergs in October 2007 , four of Norbert Magis' seven children from all over Germany also came spontaneously to Hanover. For hours people sat together who had never seen each other before, heard their stories, looked at their pictures. And in a constellation that was not taken for granted, “a personal atmosphere was created”. The children of Norbert Magis decided to work through the history of the Sternheim & Emanuel department store with the help of a historian. They could count on the support of the Steinbergs: "We think this is a good way to go," explained Ursula Steinberg , great-niece of the former Jewish partner Paul Steinberg .

literature

Web links

Commons : Sternheim & Emanuel  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j Waldemar R. Röhrbein: Sternheim & Emanuel (see literature)
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g Paul Siedentopf: Sternheim & Emanuel department store, Hanover (see literature)
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j Thorsten Fuchs: The way to reconciliation ... (see literature)
  4. ^ A b Klaus Mlynek : Jewish community life and anti-Semitism of the 20s. In: History of the City of Hanover , Vol. 2: From the beginning of the 19th century to the present , ed. by Klaus Mlynek and Waldemar R. Röhrbein , with the collaboration of Dieter Brosius , Carl-Hans Hauptmeyer , Siegfried Müller and Helmuth Plath , Hanover 1994: Schlütersche, ISBN 3-87706-364-0 , pp. 459-461; online through google books
  5. ^ Helmut Knocke : ADGB trade union building. In: Stadtlexikon Hannover , p. 221

Coordinates: 52 ° 22 ′ 23.6 "  N , 9 ° 44 ′ 12.9"  E