Dervish cigarette factory
The Dervish cigarette factory existed from 1943 to 1950 in Niendorf , part of the municipality of Timmendorfer Strand . In the first years after the war, it was Schleswig-Holstein's largest taxpayer and employer of 120 people, mostly refugees from the eastern regions.
history
The future cigarette manufacturer Willi Derwisch-Ehren was born in Saloniki (former Ottoman Empire) in 1896 . He completed his engineering studies in Dresden , where he worked as a student trainee in the cigarette industry in the 1920s and finally moved there for professional reasons. In Dresden he married his wife Else Franke and after about ten years founded a cigarette factory in Hamburg. This plant was destroyed by a bomb attack on July 28, 1943. In order to start his production elsewhere, Derwisch moved to Niendorf / Ostsee and leased the Kurhotel Mayer there at Strandstraße 94. He also got the right to convert the house accordingly for his factory, so that in autumn 1943 he Cigarette production could resume. However, sales continued to be carried out via an office in Hamburg , which is why Hamburg was specified as the production location. In addition to the casino , Dervish was the largest taxpayer in Schleswig-Holstein in the post-war years.
Derwisch himself initially lived in the Strandperle in Timmendorfer Strand and later bought the Köstersche house on Rodenbergstrasse, which he had demolished and built a new villa here for his family, which was called the White House by the sea because of its appearance and location .
His citizenship allowed him to resume production under the occupation relatively quickly . At its peak, the factory in Niendorf employed 120 people in two shifts. Hundreds of millions of cigarettes could have been produced per month in one shift with the existing systems, but because of the quota one had to limit it to around 50 to 60 million. The brands of cigarettes that Dervish made at the time were Port Said , Boston , Türkenstolz , Colonel and Luxor .
Since the arrival of American tobacco, the competition between forty cigarette factories in western Germany had soon flared up in all sharpness. Dervish got its raw material from its Turkish homeland. He obtained the raw material from the USA and the Orient for around 200 million Deutschmarks annually. Dervish was authorized by the bizonal Joint Export-Import Agency JEIA to buy tobacco in the Orient.
At the end of 1948 Dervish applied to the Schleswig-Holstein finance minister for an annual lump sum of 200,000 D-Marks for his income tax, which corresponded to a tenth of his income at the time. The ministry approved this amount in January 1949.
The press had been very busy with this amazing company in the years before and reported about it many times. Of course, it was primarily about manufacturing. But some reports also took up the spectacular villa on Rodenbergstrasse because it was so unusual for the time. This went so far that the mayor of the large community of Timmendorfer Strand , Geiter, took a position against it in a large-format statement with a public appeal and protested in clear words against these scribes, who considered the difficult struggle for existence with unobjective, untrue and twisted descriptions, although they wanted to survive it with the permitted means of free and clean economic management. In Geiter's statement, the Dervish cigarette factory was the only company mentioned by name. We will not allow this venture to be embittered with untrue reports.
All the more astonishing is the development that in 1950 led to Dervish being accused of forging tax badges for cigarette packs and evading taxes in his company. Finally, on April 12, 1950, an arrest warrant was issued against him because of the risk of blackout. The British military government objected to the approach taken by the public prosecutor's office, but the public prosecutor maintained that Dervish had sneaked into the previous tax regime, although it was emphasized at the time that the cigarette factory in Niendorf, as an exemplary independent company, had also supported charitable and social works in a unique way. In contrast, the public prosecutor's office and tax authorities in the press stuck to their brisk accusations.
On April 1, 1950, the banderole tax was transferred from the state to the federal government, which now 12 days later with 30 officials searched the dervish factory and demanded that it acknowledge its tax liability. Arrested because of the risk of blackout and taken to the marshal's prison at Burgtor in Lübeck , the end of the factory finally began. When his protests and the involvement of the military government and the Turkish Consulate General were of no avail, he fired the entire staff. At that time there were still 76 employees. One day later, however, the employees decided together with the trade union secretary Niernkarn in Eutin to get the company going again.
Contrary to expectations, everything came to a quick end, as Dervish committed suicide on June 11, 1950 after nine weeks in prison in Lübeck. This news of his death drew new puzzles and rumors, as it was not known what motives Dervish had committed to this act.
Today none of the buildings and barracks that belonged to the dervish factory in Niendorf are standing. The factory building on Strandstrasse was used as a laundry for a few years, but was later demolished. The warehouse used by Dervish was later used as a gym in Niendorf. In this warehouse the tobacco was stored, but also u. a. Cigarette holders and silver foil kept for the packaging.
After it was demolished, the manufacturing barrack was stored for a few years and then rebuilt with a few additions near the secondary school. It was used for some purposes, such as a sports center and canteen, accommodation for lifeguards and police reinforcement, until two temporary classrooms were even built there due to the lack of space in the new school, which were built into two real classes around 1980 and the barrack was improved into a pavilion. Ultimately, it was demolished in the 1990s. The other, smaller barracks in the dervish factory are lost. However, they were also probably dismantled because of their good structural condition and set up elsewhere. They are standardized type barracks as used by the Wehrmacht.
At the end of September 2011, the community disposed of the last barrack on Hauptstraße.
Individual evidence
- ↑ : der reporter 06/97 cigarettes from Niendorf .