Ury department store

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Ury department store, around 1920

The department store Ury (officially Warenhaus Ury Gebrüder ) was an establishment in Leipzig that existed from 1896 to 1941. The department store, founded by the Jewish brothers Moritz and Julius Ury, became one of the leading shopping centers in the city. The building was destroyed in World War II.

Location and description

The Ury department store was close to the center on the west side of Königsplatz, today's Wilhelm-Leuschner-Platz , and was at number 15/16. It bordered Nonnenmühlgasse on the right.

The five-story building was built in the reform style. The first floor rose above the shop window zone on the ground floor with wide arched windows and architectural decorations in between. The other floors had narrower windows with nineteen axes to the square and nine to Nonnenmühlgasse. The spaces between the windows emerged slightly as flat fluted pilaster strips and all carried an arc lamp at the upper end. A stepped hipped roof with a row of arched dormer windows and a row of bat dormers rose above the double eaves cornice .

The floors were divided as follows: textiles were offered on the ground floor and first floor, children's and leather goods on the second, glass and enamel goods on the third and groceries on the fourth.

story

The brothers Moritz (1872–1939) and Julius Ury (1873–1940), born in Birnbaum in the province of Posen , came to Leipzig in 1896 from Mulhouse in Alsace . After completing a commercial apprenticeship, both had professional experience and opened their department store on March 4, 1896 on the ground floor of Café Royal (Königsplatz 15), the first in town to have such a name. Their motto “Small prices with a large selection and courteous service” was well received, and in 1906 the sales area was enlarged.

  • Beginning on the ground floor (around 1900)

  • Before the renovation (around 1914)

  • The department store in 1918

  • Light week 1928

In 1914, the Leipzig architect Emil Franz Hänsel was commissioned to construct the building described above by converting and expanding it, including the neighboring property that has since been acquired (Hotel “Münchner Hof”). The basic structure of the front of the main building was retained, but the beginning of the neighboring property was identified by two neighboring pilaster strips .

Ury advertisement around 1930
(Text: The way to us is always worthwhile, even if you live somewhere completely different)

In 1924, the company had 400 employees with socially secure working conditions: three weeks of paid annual leave, loyalty bonuses, a savings account with 100 Reichsmark start-up capital for each newborn child and a foundation for employees in need.

In 1928 the company was converted into a stock corporation with other houses in Saxony, Thuringia and what is now Saxony-Anhalt. In the course of the Aryanization by the National Socialists , Julius and Moritz Ury and his son Walter were ousted from the company's boards as shareholders and managers. Moritz Ury and his wife, who had lived in Villa Wächterstrasse 32, emigrated to Switzerland in 1937. Julius Ury went to France from Berlin. Both brothers died in the years up to 1940. The company was liquidated by 1941 , and the Leipzig department store was redesigned into the Reichsmesse textile store .

In the bombing raid on Leipzig on December 4, 1943 , the department store on Königsplatz was destroyed and, after the rubble was removed, the square has not been rebuilt until today (2020).

The Zwickau Ury department store as the nucleus of the Schocken Group

The Ury brothers had another department store in Zwickau . On March 18, 1901, Simon Schocken , like the Ury brothers from the province of Posen , became personally liable partner of the Ury department store in Zwickau. In 1906 the Ury brothers' department store was taken over by Simon Schocken, who later became Moritz Ury's son-in-law, on his own. Together with his brother Salman , Simon developed one of the five largest department store groups in the Weimar Republic.

literature

  • Andrea Lorz : Ury Gebrüder department store. The house of popular prices . In: Leipziger Blätter , Heft 27 (1995), pp. 84-88.
  • Andrea Lorz: The "House of Popular Prices". The Ury Gebrüder department store on Königsplatz . In: Seek the city's best. Life pictures of Jewish entrepreneurs from Leipzig. ProLeipzig, Leipzig 1996, ISBN 3-00-000597-8 .
  • Horst Riedel, Thomas Nabert (ed.): Stadtlexikon Leipzig from A to Z . 1st edition. Pro Leipzig, Leipzig 2005, ISBN 3-936508-03-8 , pp. 615 .
  • Peter Schwarz: Millennial Leipzig . From the end of the 18th to the beginning of the 20th century. 1st edition. tape 2 . Pro Leipzig, Leipzig 2014, ISBN 978-3-945027-05-9 , pp. 509 .

Web links

Commons : Ury Department Store  - Collection of Images

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b The millennial Leipzig, Volume II , p. 509
  2. ↑ Simon Schocken. In: Industrial culture in Saxony. Accessed December 16, 2020 .

Coordinates: 51 ° 20 ′ 4.4 "  N , 12 ° 22 ′ 25.5"  E