Victor Anneke

Victor Anneke (* 1892 in Duluth , Minnesota , USA ; † October 20, 1937 there ) was an American entrepreneur of German descent ( Annecke family ), grandson of the German socialists and revolutionaries Fritz Anneke and Mathilde Franziska Anneke .

Life

Victor Anneke took over management on April 20, 1920 from his father's partner Percy Shelley Anneke August Fitger, who looked after other business interests in California, and later from his father Percy, who had a stroke on New Years Eve 1923, and from his daughter in Santa Barbara was cared for. Fitger had successfully joined Celite Corporation, which is still the world's largest producer of diatomite , which is used, among other things, as filter material in beer production and other chemical and process engineering processes.

Victor Anneke, together with his new partner John Beerhalter, a proven employee of Fitger and his father Percy, managed to survive the company in the prohibition years through numerous non-alcoholic products such as chocolate bars and self-created soft drinks (brand names "Extra Dry" and "Silver Spray") ) secure. At the same time, Victor got involved as a boxing promoter and set up the “Silver Spray Gym” in the brewery, one of the most important training and competition facilities for boxing in the region. 1927-28 Anneke was president of the "Club 25", the local Rotary Club chapter in Duluth. B. the young Max Schmeling from Germany (who came to the USA in 1928 to start his professional career there) visited the gym in Duluth. On April 7, 1933, the prohibition laws were repealed and Victor Anneke was able to sell beer again. In a radio address on the local broadcaster WEBC, the CEO of Fitger's praised the importance of the lifting of prohibition (which was largely rejected by the mostly Lutheran or Catholic Americans of German descent) for the economy and society of the city of Duluth and the United States.

Victor had a serious car accident in 1933 in which his wife Elsa, a son and the chauffeur were seriously injured. He never really recovered from this and died in 1937.

His wife Elsa (born 1896) was a well-known concert pianist who performed with major Midwestern orchestras from the 1920s to 1950s, including the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra , the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra , the Chicago Symphony Orchestra , and of course the local Duluth Symphony Orchestra. She died almost a century in 1995.

The Beerhalter family took over the brewery completely in 1944 and operated it until it had to close in 1972 due to the overwhelming power of the big beer companies in Milwaukee. At the beginning of the 1980s Fitger's was reopened as an adventure hotel and industrial monument and is reminiscent of a piece of German-American industrial history of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Fitger's Brewery is now a major industrial monument on the National Register of Historic Places in Duluth , the port city on Lake Superior .

literature

• Tony Dierckins, Peter Clure: Naturally Brewed, Naturally Better: The Historic Breweries of Duluth & Superior , ZENITH City Publishers, 2018, ISBN 978-1887317498

Web links

• Brewed in Minnesota: History of Brewing in Minnesota
• Fitger's Brewery, industrial monument and hotel in Duluth, Minnesota
• National Register of Historic Places
• Duluth Rotary Club: August Fitger
• Rotary Club Duluth: Victor H. Anneke (photo)
• Zenith City Press: April 26, 1928 - death of Percy Shelley Anneke
• April 20, 1920: Victor Anneke takes over Fitger's Brewing Company

Individual evidence

1. ↑ April 20, 1920: Victor Anneke takes over Fitger's Brewing Company. Retrieved August 16, 2019.
2. ↑ Clarence Johnson: Fitger's - The Brewery and its people - chap. 12: Soda pop: Fitger's Publishing, Duluth, MN, 2005, pp. 79–86 Archived copy ( Memento of the original from April 28, 2014 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. 
3. ↑ Heidi Bakk-Hansen: Drought at the Head of the Lakes, Part 3 , In: Zenith City Online, December 5, 2013: Archived copy ( memento of the original from July 14, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.