Theodor Thorer

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Theodor Thorer
Company postcard "Theodor Thorer" from 1893
New York branch (before 1912)
Entry in the ledger of the Leipzig tobacco shop Naoum Dedo: Thorer & Keller (1874)
Cleaning machines for skins at Thorer, early 20th century
Furs used to be traded in Oelßners Hof , Leipzig-Ritterstrasse. The building belonged to the Thorer family until 1946
Tomb of the Thorer family in the Leipzig south cemetery

Theodor Thorer (born June 26, 1828 in Görlitz , † March 31, 1894 in Leipzig ), furrier from Görlitz, founded the important tobacco wholesaler Theodor Thorer , which was located on the Leipziger Brühl . The company was one of the leading companies in the European fur industry.

Career and company

The furrier tradition of the Thorer family goes back a long way. In the church register of the city of Gera there is an entry from August 10, 1618 that the master furrier Hans Georg Thorer (also written Tohrer) married Katharina Puschel.

Theodor Thorer was the son of Ernst Friedrich Thorer (* March 20, 1799) and Florentine Gottliebe Franke (* February 7, 1799), who were married on May 17, 1824 in Görlitz. Theodor Thorer himself married Ernestine Emma Hofmann on June 6, 1854 in Gera (* June 5, 1834).

Founding period (1853–1871)

As the eldest son, Theodor Thorer took over his father's furrier business in Görlitz , today the easternmost German town. It was the most important shop in the area; it not only ran furring, but also supplied the furriers in the area with tobacco products. Thorer's training took place not only in Germany, but also in other countries, especially England and France. After Thorer's departure, the company was continued for many years by his works manager as J. Wagner, Theodor Thorer Nachf. In Görlitz.

The expansion of international business relations led to the relocation to Gohlis , at the time still a suburb of Leipzig, at that time a center of the international fur trade. He opened a company for tobacco products in the smoking hall in Leipzig, which he ran under the company name Theodor Thorer . In 1872 Ernst Louis Keller joined the company, which was called Thorer & Keller for five years. In view of the fact that in the meantime three Thorer's sons were active in the business, Theodor Thorer had decided to continue running the business with their help and not to take advantage of the option to extend the partnership. The property at Brühl 70 had previously been acquired for an expansion of the company. The focus of the business was initially on the trade in Canadian furs, since the 1880s, Russian and Asian furs have increasingly been added. At the same time (1883) Thorer set up workshops for dressing (tanning) and dyeing, mainly of Karakulfellen ( Persians ). It was later expanded by taking over the former Zacharias'schen finishing shop.

International expansion up to the Second World War (1872–1945)

The education of Theodor Thorer's sons, who were to take over the company, was based on the part of the company intended for them. In 1883 they entered the business as partners. The eldest two sons were sent to England and Canada to represent the company's North American interests. Paul Thorer (third son) was prepared to take over the Russian business. Theodor Alexander Thorer (fourth son) founded a Theodor Thorer branch in St. Paul (Minnesota, USA) in 1884 . In 1890, Carl Praetorius founded a "Transatlantic Fur Company Limited" in New York. Both branches mainly traded in Persian fur.

Theodor Thorer retired in Leutzsch in 1892 , now also part of Leipzig. Thorerstrasse, now Paul-Michael-Strasse, was a reminder of his work there for a while. His three oldest sons continued to run the company as partners until Ernst Alfred and Theodor Curt left. Paul Thorer accepted Carl Praetorius as a new partner in the company. In 1907, Paul Hollender, who actually wanted to take over the fur silk weaving mill G. Hollender Sons of his family, had a son-in-law as a partner: Hollender had married Paul Thorer's daughter Ella Maria in the same year. As a result of the First World War and the subsequent revolution in Russia, the sources for skins from there were initially lost. In the USA, Theodor Thorer Inc. had to be sold at a loss in 1917.

On the initiative of Paul Thorer, in 1903 the Karakul sheep , the supplier of Persian fur , which until then had only been native to Russia and Afghanistan , was imported to Germany. From here the breeding spread all over the world. Above all, however, Persian pelts became, again at the suggestion and with the assistance of Thorer, under the much later trade name Swakara, one of the essential economic articles of what was then German South West Africa , today's Namibia .

After the end of the war, a new branch was established in New York under the company name Thorer & Hollender Inc. In 1920 the independent company Thorer & Co. was founded, into which the fur trimming and dyeing works were transferred. The trading activities remained under “Theodor Thorer”.

Theodor Thorer's grandson, Herbert Schönburg (* September 12, 1885; † July 12, 1951), joined the finishing and dyeing department of the parent company in Lindenau as a volunteer at Easter 1905. This practical training was followed by several years of study at the leading technical schools in Krefeld and Mühlhausen in Alsace. At a young age he was entrusted with the plant management in Lindenau. Together with his uncle Max Thorer, he did successful pioneering work there in the development of completely new fur finishing methods. When the production department of the old family company Theodor Thorer was separated at the beginning of 1920, Schönburg joined the new company as a partner and junior boss. After the steady upward development up to now, the two sister companies now experienced an unexpected, even stormy upswing. It was thanks in particular to the German fur processing industry that after the First World War the Leipzig tobacco industry with its innovative products quickly took on a leading role in the world again. When Schönburg's uncle and senior partner Max Thorer died in 1925, he became the oldest of the managing partners. In 1925, the married family member Rudolph FW Sack (* 1893; † August 31, 1954) took the place of Max Thorer and was mainly responsible for the internal commercial management, while Schönburg took over the representation and external commercial management. The only son Christian Schönberg, originally intended to be his successor, was missing in Russia in 1944. After 46 years in the industry, Herbert Schönburg died in 1951.

In 1920 Paul Thorer, Paul Hollender and Arndt Thorer signed a social contract regulating the succession. Through Paul Hollender, who was both co-owner of Theodor Thorer and Thorer & Co., the Thorer companies were represented in the local chamber of commerce and on the board of the Society of Friends of the Leipzig University of Commerce (HHL). Hollender was an honorary doctor and honorary senator of HHL. A “Theodor Thorer Foundation” was set up for the benefit of HHL students.

King Friedrich August of Saxony visits the company (1908)

A sales agency was added in 1923 in London (Raw Furs Ltd.) . In 1925, Rudolf Sack joined Thorer & Co. as a married family member. Another foundation took place in Paris in 1931 (SA de Pelleteries Productions Theodor Thorer) ; In the same year the first word and picture mark for "Thorer Farbe Leipzig" was registered. On March 5, 1928, Amanullah Khan , the King of Afghanistan, visited the Theodor Thorer company.

The global economic crisis at the beginning of the 1930s made problems for the South African representation because of the foreign exchange restrictions. Thorer was previously able to direct all Namibian skins to Leipzig in an almost monopoly-like manner, but now London and New York have taken over significant parts of the trade in karakul skins .

The Theodor Thorer company belonged to the South West Africa Committee of the “Group of German Colonial Economic Enterprises” of the Reich Chamber of Commerce during the National Socialist era . As recently as 1939/40, agreements on the export of fur were made with state companies of the USSR ( Sojuzpushnina ) . During the Second World War , arms contracts were mainly processed. Thorer & Co. employed workers from the Leipzig camps Engel camp and Eastern workers camp "Riga" . In June 1941 the company was recognized as an armaments company. In February 1943, the registration of a new tobacco product processing company Thorer & Co in the General Government in Warsaw, which had already started operations, is published.

Post-war period (1945–1994)

Expropriation in Leipzig and GDR successor company

Swakara skin prepared according to the Thorer Process (trademark below)
The Thorer building in Offenbach had been empty for several years since 1994

At the beginning of June 1945, the new company "Thorer & Hollender KG" was founded in Hamburg to prepare for expropriation. In fact, the Leipzig plant was nationalized in 1946. VEB Edelpelz Leipzig was established in Leipzig in 1946 as a tobacco finishing and dyeing factory. The VEB had a total of four plants; Plant I was housed in the premises of Thorer & Co. and the Rödiger & Quarch animal hair processing facility belonging to Theodor Thorer. The property of the trading company Theodor Thorer remaining in Leipzig was transferred to VEB Stadtpelz .

New beginning and end in West Germany

Paul Hollender became the managing partner of the newly founded company in West Germany. The Thorer heirs were still underage and only indirectly represented as limited partners . In the year of the expropriation, a finishing shop was operated again in Offenbach. Paul Hollender died in 1950; from 1951 the company was run as an open trading company (OHG). Oskar Volkmann, husband of Walter Hollender's widow, and Jürgen Thorer joined the OHG as personally liable partners. Also in 1951, the Thorer Fur Processing Company of South Africa Ltd. founded and registered the word mark “Thorer” and the word / figurative mark “Thorercolor TC”.

In the years after 1960, Thorer opened several fur cleaning companies ("Thorer Finish", West Berlin, Hamburg, Velbert, Oberpframmern). The company expanded to Sulzbach in 1967, and in 1978 a factory in Mühlheim (Dietesheim leather industry) was taken over. In 1980, Thorer & Co. GmbH & Co. registered a word / figurative mark for the "Thorer trial". Towards the end of business activity, there were branches of tobacco product finishing and finishing in Ireland and South West Africa.

In 1984, Gerhard Spitzner (* 1938; † April 15, 1984), who joined the company as an intern in 1961, later co-owner and deputy managing director of Thorer & Co. on the Offenbach factory premises at the age of only 46, had a "terrible fatality". The exact course of the accident could not be clarified. His father, Karl Walter Spitzner, married to a daughter of Paul Hollender, already held a managerial position at Thorer. In 1950 he took over the Thorer companies in South and South West Africa, now Namibia, as Managing Director. In the same year, the managing director and co-owner Hans Nill (born February 11, 1915 in Nuremberg; † July 8, 1984) , who joined the company in 1951 and had been retired for six years, died .

After reunification, the Thorer family applied to buy the Oelßners Hof property in Leipzig . According to Pat Allalemdjian of Allalemdjian Fur Corp. the Thorer family had sold their share in Oelßner's farm to his family before 1920. In 1993 he wrote on behalf of his family: "Actually, it is not a buyback of the Thorer family, but rather a purchase of a piece of land on behalf of a third party, the ownership of which has not yet been clarified in the years 1933 to 1945".

In its heyday, the company employed more than 600 people with a turnover of 30 million DM. In the 1980s, a crisis began in the German fur industry. In the first 1990s Thorer recorded an annual loss of 2 million marks with an increasing tendency. After months of unsuccessful attempts to sell the large company property (140,000 m²) at an acceptable price, the company, which was then run as Thorer & Co. GmbH , declared its bankruptcy in 1994. 154 employees lost their jobs, and the Thorer site on Mühlheimer Strasse in Offenbach remained unused for several years.

The last of the Thorer fur cleaning companies operated in Berlin under the name Thorer & Co Cleaning GmbH until 2012.

Miscellaneous

Under the heading “Princely gifts in the fur industry ...” a trade journal published the following note from an industry member in 2004: An anniversary gift from the Russian auction company, later known as Sojuzpushnina, was auctioned on November 20 at an antiques auction of the Arnold auction house. The gift was given on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the old trading house Theodor Thorer, Leipzig, in 1912. It was a silver-plated model of a ship with a rescue depiction, made by the Tsar's purveyor, Ivan Petrovitsch Chlebnikov , who was more respected than Fabergé at the time . A Russian telephone bidder bought the part at the "sensational price" of € 20,000.

See also

literature

  • Paul Albert Thorer: 300 years of the Thorer family, 50 years of Theodor Thorer . Self-published by Thorer, 1912.
  • AT: 325 years of the Thorer family; 75 years of Theodor Thorer . Self-published by Thorer, spring 1937. Oscar Brandstetter: Leipzig 1937.
  • Erich Dittrich : Theodor and Paul Thorer. In: Life pictures of Saxon business leaders. Sächsische Lebensbilder Volume 3. Leiner, Leipzig 1941, pp. 346–362.
  • Otto Nauen (new part): 250 years of handicraft, 100 years of trade, 80 years of refinement . Self-published by Thorer, spring 1962.
  • Without indication of the author: 1883–1958, 75 years of Thorerfarben . Self-published by Thorer, Offenbach January 1985.

Web links

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

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Michael Schäfer: Family businesses and entrepreneurial families: on the social and economic history of Saxon entrepreneurs, 1850-1940 . CH Beck; 2007, p. 88, p. 119.
  2. ↑ Family tree edited by Albert Spitzner-Jahn ( Memento of the original from August 11, 2012 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. , accessed April 14, 2013 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / gw0.geneanet.org
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g h Hessisches Wirtschaftsarchiv
  4. ^ Richard Maria Franke: 25 years - 250 years - 2500 years. From the beginnings of finishing to the key industry of the tobacco industry In: Felle Farben Fantasy. A portrait of the German fur processing industry . Rifra Verlag Murrhardt, 1973, p. 14
  5. ↑ Family tree edited by Albert Spitzner-Jahn ( Memento of the original from August 11, 2012 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. , accessed April 15, 2013 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / gw0.geneanet.org
  6. ^ City of Leipzig, City Archives, inventory overview, February 2, 1942 by Thorer & Co .; online ( Memento from February 6, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 640 kB) available; Retrieved April 15, 2013
  7. ↑ Without indication of the author: Consul Herbert Schönburg † . In: Rund um den Pelz issue 7, July 1951, Fulde-Verlag Cologne, pp. 46–47.
  8. ^ Archived copy ( Memento from April 1, 2013 in the Internet Archive ); Retrieved April 14, 2013
  9. ↑ register.dpma.de; [1] , accessed April 30, 2013
  10. ↑ Stadtgeschichtliches Museum Leipzig , Fotothek F / 2011/85; Retrieved April 14, 2013
  11. ↑ Martin Eberhardt: Between National Socialism and Apartheid: The German Population Group of South West Africa 1915-1965 . LIT Verlag, Münster 2007, p. 204.
  12. ↑ Stefanie van de Kerkhof, Dieter Ziegler: Corporate crises and how to cope with them in the 20th century . Yearbook for Economic History, Akademie Verlag, February 2006, p. 156
  13. ^ Edward E Ericson: Feeding the German eagle: Soviet economic aid to Nazi Germany, 1933-1941 . Greenwood Publishing Group, 1999, p. 215
  14. ↑ Thomas Fickenwirth, Birgit Horn, Christian Kurzweg: External and Forced Labor in the Leipzig Area 1939–1945 Special archival inventory. Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 2004, p. 233, p. 266
  15. ↑ Editing: New tobacco processing plant in the Generalgouvernement . In: Der Rauchwarenmarkt , No. 7/8, Leipzig, February 12, 1943, p. 6.
  16. ↑ City of Leipzig, City Archives, inventory overview, February 2, 1942 Thorer & Co. ( online ( Memento from February 6, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 640 kB) available; accessed on April 15, 2013)
  17. ↑ register.dpma.de; [2] , accessed April 30, 2013
  18. ↑ register.dpma.de; [3] , accessed April 30, 2013
  19. ↑ Route der Industriekultur Rhein-Main, Hessischer Oberer Main, available online (PDF; 3.8 MB), accessed on April 15, 2013
  20. ↑ register.dpma.de; [4] , accessed April 30, 2013
  21. ^ Editing: Gerhard Spitzner †. In: Die Pelzwirtschaft No. 5-6, Berlin, June 29, 1984, p. 65.
  22. ^ Editing: Hans Nill †. In: Die Pelzwirtschaft No. 7, Berlin, August 17, 1984, p. 67.
  23. ^ Correspondence - To John Winckelmann . In: Winckelmann Pelzmarkt No. 1201, Frankfurt am Main August 13, 1993, p. 4.
  24. ↑ Without indication of the author: Offenbach: After failure to move property - Thorer & Co goes into bankrupty . In: Winckelmann International , Fur Bulletin 2335, Sales Report 466, August 30, 1994, p. 2.
  25. ^ FAZ of November 27, 2003 , accessed on April 15, 2013
  26. ↑ Michael Gentsch: Princely gifts in the fur industry ... In: Winckelmann Pelz & Markt No. 1725, Winckelmann Verlag, Frankfurt am Main December 17, 2004, p. 2
personal data
SURNAME Thorer, Theodor
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German furrier and tobacco wholesaler
DATE OF BIRTH June 26, 1828
PLACE OF BIRTH Goerlitz
DATE OF DEATH March 31, 1894
Place of death Leipzig