Leonhard Tietz

Leonhard Tietz (March 3 1849 - November 14 1914) was a German department store entrepreneur and art collector of Jewish origin.^[1]

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Biography

Born in Birnbaum an der Warthe, Province of Posen, Prussia (today Międzychód, Poland), Leonhard Tietz was the brother of Oskar Tietz and a founding member of the Tietz Department store dynasty. On 14 August 1879, he opened his first department store in Stralsund, with the idea of selling high-quality products at fixed prices for cash.^[2] He was the first to introduce a money-back guarantee. In 1891, a shop was opened in Cologne.^{[citation needed]}

In 1905, his enterprise was transformed into a joint stock company.^[3]

Art collector

Tietz owned an art collection^[4] which included paintings by Vincent van Gogh and Paul Cézanne. In 1912 he lent a self portrait by van Gogh and a still-life by Cézanne ("Stilleben, Früchte mit Glas und Porsellanschale") to the famous Sonderbund Exhibition in Cologne (Internationale Kunstausstellung des Sonderbundes Westdeutscher Kunstfreunde und Künstler zu Cöln).^[5]

Legacy and loss

After Tietz's death, his son Alfred Leonhard Tietz led the Tietz firm. In 1933, the Nazi Party came to power in Germany and Jewish businesses were targeted.^[6]

The Nazi policy of racial discrimination and anti-semitic harassment of Jewish-managed firms hurt the Tietzs' department store and other businesses.^[7] The business was renamed Westdeutsche Kaufhof AG. In an "Aryanisation" (the obligatory transfer of Jewish businesses to non-Jewish owners),^[8]^[9] the Tietz family was forced to sell their shares under market value. They fled Nazi Germany. After the Allied victory, they received some compensation estimated at 5 million DM.^[10]

Today, the department store chain Galeria Kaufhof is the direct descendant of the tiny shop opened in 1879.^[10]

References

^ "The Tietz Famiy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2020-09-27.
^ "Tietz – Förderverein Historische Warenhäuser Wertheim und Tietz in Stralsund e.V." Retrieved 2023-11-06. Leonhard Tietz left the company "Winkelmann Nachfolger" for a payment of 3000 Talers. This was the seed money for his new beginning in Stralsund (close to the Baltic Sea in Eastern Germany). On 14 August 1879, Leonhard Tietz opened a small shop in Ossenreyerstrasse 31. I
^ "Tietz – Förderverein Historische Warenhäuser Wertheim und Tietz in Stralsund e.V." Retrieved 2023-11-06. On 17 March 1905, "Leonhard Tietz AG" (Corporation) was established, its starting capital comprising ten million marks. Six million marks came from Leonhard Tietz, one million each from his co-founders and brothers-in-law Sally and Max Baumann as well as from his cousins Louis Schloss and Willy Pintus. In the year 1909, shares of the "Leonhard Tietz AG" were traded at the Berlin stock exchange for the first time.
^ Tietz, Leonhard (1908). Modernes Kunstgewerbe Kunst-Ausstellung im Hause Leonhard Tietz A.-G., Düsseldorf. Leonhard Tietz Akt.-Ges, Düsseldorf. LCCN 1106633751.
^ Sonderbund Westdeutscher Kunstfreunde und Künstler (1912). Internationale Kunstausstellung des Sonderbundes Westdeutscher Kunstfreunde und Künstler zu Cöln, 1912. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum Library. Cöln a. Rhein : M. Dumont Schauberg.
^ The Attack on Berlin Department Stores (Warenhaeuser) After 1933 Simone Ladwig-Winters published by Yad Vashem https://www.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%205622.pdf
^ Stock Market Performance of Jewish Firms During the Third Reich https://www.wiwi.uni-konstanz.de/typo3temp/secure_downloads/85539/0/e1c9300496b7624a1c5f62720b94796f91d46780/Version25_1_.pdf
^ Katin, William M. (2018). A Re-Assessment of Aryanization of Large Jewish Companies in Hitler's Reich, 1933-1935: The Role of Conservative, Non-Nazi Businessmen (Thesis).
^ Huber, Kilian; Lindenthal, Volker; Waldinger, Fabian (1 September 2021). "Discrimination, Managers, and Firm Performance: Evidence from 'Aryanizations' in Nazi Germany" (PDF). Journal of Political Economy. 129 (9): 2455–2503. doi:10.1086/714994. S2CID 169530350.
^ ^a ^b "HBC Heritage — Galeria Kaufhof". www.hbcheritage.ca. Retrieved 2024-01-23.