Viennese department stores around 1900

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The “Philipp Haas & Sons” department store at the end of the 19th century
Stephan Esders department store

The large companies on Mariahilfer Strasse ( Herzmansky , Gerngross , Stefan Esders department store ) and, from 1911, the Zentralpalast department store , later the Stafa department store, are considered department stores in Vienna around 1900 . Another group of large retail companies was located in the Kärntner Strasse and Stephansplatz areas .

Around 1900, with some delay compared to metropolises like Paris, London and shortly after Berlin, the development of modern large department stores took place in Vienna. In addition to the companies Herzmansky and Gerngross, which slowly grew into this corporate dimension, the Belgian Stefan Esders department store opened in 1895 . The years of intense protests on the part of small businesses and the Christian Social Party fizzled out, and the attempt at a cooperative community warehouse, which began in 1911, also failed.

Inhibited development and political resistance

Until 1890, the distribution of goods in Vienna was largely structured as a small business. The first department store, however, was the Haas-Haus of the company Philipp Haas & Söhne as early as 1866/67 , followed by others, such as the Rothberger clothing store on Stephansplatz or, in other areas, the Wahliss porcelain store, built in 1878/79 on Kärntner Strasse 17, in 1895 Carpet store by Samuel Schein at Bauernmarkt 12, a building by architects Fellner & Helmer , and the women's clothing store designed by Friedrich Schön for Ludwig Zwieback at Kärntner Strasse 11, which was redesigned by Friedrich Ohmann in 1910 .

The application by a French company for the concession of a department store company was rejected by the authorities in 1890. Around 1895, however, there was an upswing in the large domestic retail businesses, and in 1897 a large new building was built near Herzmansky. Although this development met with an overwhelmingly friendly response from the press, it worried the Viennese small business and its representatives, who in some cases reacted with massive anti-capitalist and anti-Semitic rhetoric. When the entrepreneur Stefan Esders, who already owned department stores in Brussels, Rotterdam, Paris, Munich and Hamburg, opened his newly built department store “Zur Große Fabrik” in Mariahilfer Straße 18 on April 3 and 4, 1895, there was also outrage Reactions. The Catholic Esders did not give rise to anti-Semitic harassment, but was fought as a typical representative of international capital.

Fight over the department store tax

With its expansion completed in 1904, the Gerngross company most consistently embarked on the path to becoming a wholesale store. Against this tendency there was a call for a special department store tax, as it had already been introduced in France and some countries of the German Reich. A meeting of 3,000 independent Viennese merchants demanded a special sales tax of 10 percent on March 13, 1905, and corresponding demands were substantiated in the Lower Austrian state parliament from 1907. The agitation that took place until 1910 was ultimately unsuccessful and a "new type of battle against consumer associations and large department stores" The attempt to defeat these large-scale forms of distribution with their own weapons was undertaken with the project of the Mariahilfer Zentralpalast initiated by Jakob Wohlschläger . The department store went bankrupt as early as 1913 and was taken over by the Central Bank of the German Savings Banks . It later became the Stafa department store.

literature

  • Joseph Schwaighofer: On the history of the Viennese department store, competitions Architekturjournal 267/268, February / March 2008, p. 36 f.
  • Andreas Lehne: Viennese department stores 1865–1914 . Deuticke, Vienna 1990, ISBN 978-3-7005-4488-3 .
  • Gerhard Meißl: Old-fashioned or modern Vienna. On the discussion of department stores and department store taxes in Vienna between 1890 and 1914. In: Andreas Lehne: Wiener Warenhäuser 1865–1914 .
  • Felix Czeike : Historisches Lexikon Wien , Volume 5. Verlag Kremayr & Scheriau, Vienna 1997, ISBN 978-3-218-00547-0 , p. 588.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Gerhard Meißl: Old Father or Modern Vienna. On the discussion of department stores and department store taxes in Vienna between 1890 and 1914. In: Andreas Lehne: Wiener Warenhäuser 1865–1914 , p. 82.