Goebbels and the Nazi Attack on Jewish-owned Department Stores
[IMAGE – anti-Tietz and Wertheim Cartoon, Der Angriff, August 1st, 1927 –
Propagandist Joseph Goebbels published this cartoon in the fifth issue of Der Angriff (“The Attack”), a paper Goebbels founded after he became the leader of the Nazi Party’s Berlin branch during a period when the Party was officially banned. Under the motto, “For the oppressed against the exploiters,” the paper attacked the Weimar Republic and Jews, often drawing links between the two. In this cartoon, Goebbels lampooned two Jewish-owned department store chains, Tietz and Wertheim, and the Aryan Germans who supported them. The sketch portrays a fat Jewish owner sitting atop a supposedly combined Tietz-Wertheim emporium advertising an end-of-season sale. The propaganda suggests the Jewish owner has both the capital to invest in advertising and the lack of moral consciousness to publish indecent notices in newspapers, but shows the truly “patriotic” German populace streaming into an Aryan middle-class shop next door. [Am I getting this right? Is this what you’re trying to say?]
[IMAGE – Headline of Der Angriff, December 12th, 1927
In December 1927, Goebbels published his first of five special editions dedicated to opposing the Jewish-owned department stores. No other theme of Nazi propaganda was blazoned across the masthead of the newspaper so frequently. Under the front-page headline, “Berlin Department Stores Tax Evasion,” the article read:
“plans to spread a network of department and junk stores across Berlin have expanded. Karstadt is building an enormous department store ‘palace’ in the middle of the Communist section of Berlin, Neukölln.
The Jewish-owned Karstadt chain, with capital of nearly a quarter billion Marks and ninety stores, has flourished due to the stupidity of the masses and the interests of Social-Democratic newspapers. However, the growth has ruined innumerable small and mid-sized businessmen through the power of department stores’ capital and their unscrupulous business practices.
… But already in 1903, the three owners of the Karstadt Department Stores were sentenced to the fantastically high fine of 20,000 Marks for tax evasion, since they had reported only 22,000 Marks of their 120,000 Marks income.
According to expert estimates, the annual income of all department stores in Germany is 1 ½ billion Marks, which is three times as much as before the War. Of this sum, approximately 1 billion may be apportioned to the five largest Jewish department stores: Hermann Tietz, Wertheim, Karstadt, Wronker in Frankfurt am Main, and Leonhard Tietz headquartered in Cologne.”
NEED SOME FOLLOW-UP COMMENT HERE – how this article demonstrates how Goebbels wove together critiques of the Jews, the Weimar Republic and the prevailing political economy in Germany to stir up anti-Semitism – then take it to how the Nazis use that anger to get Hitler into power. Can be brief but need to draw out that connectionHostile Takeovers of Jewish-owned Department Stores
After seizing power in Germany, the Nazis used a variety of methods to take control of the country’s Jewish-owned businesses, as well as Jewish bank accounts and property. Aryan German banker Georg Karg assumed ownership of the Hermann Tietz chain of stores. [Language is vague here can you characterize the methods the Nazis used to do this? Then provide the example that follows] The Deutsche Bank and the Dresdner Bank recalled loans, which Jewish entrepreneurs had used to acquire merchandise. Department stores had utilized the tactic of selling their entire inventory several times per year to avoid the necessity of retaining millions of Marks in cash. In collaboration with Germany’s two largest banks’ recalls, Baron von der Tann secured a new 14 million Marks loan. He and Georg Karg forced a restructuring of the company in which Georg and Martin Tietz’ position changed from private owners to Board members, but their brother-in-law Dr. Hugo Zwillenberg immediately forfeited all financial interest in the firm. At first, Tann and Karg only assumed decisive power in case of split decisions, whereas the Tietz brothers maintained responsibility for all liabilities. But by 1934, Georg and Martin had also forfeited their entire financial investment in the Hermann Tietz department store chain. [was that voluntary? I think you can be more explicit here!]
Similar methods were used by Josef Neckermann to acquire Siegmund Ruschkewitz’s department store in Wurzburg. Ruschkewitz owned both the department store and a single-price store in Wurzburg, but in 1935, when he attempted to obtain new funding for more merchandise, the Dresdner Bank recalled all loans. Josef Neckermann, who had been on the lookout to buy a Jewish firm at a depressed price, seized the opportunity and obtained an early inheritance of 200,000 Marks [Is this what RM means?]. He then claimed that the inventory of the two stores consisted of scraps, using the claim to push the price down even further to 100,000 Marks. His claim about the merchandise clearly had no basis, since he later maintained that he earned his first million in Wurzburg. Not satisfied with taking over just one Jewish-owned company, Neckermann took control of Karl Amson Joel’s mail order business in 1937. Although the price had been set at 2.3 million Marks, Neckermann only paid 1.14 million from his trust account. [Citation here? There’s one quotation mark but not a second and no footnote]
These families used what compensation they did receive to flee the country. Georg and Martin Tietz escaped with their mother Betty to Lichtenstein and then traveled through Switzerland to Cuba, eventually reaching the United States. Georg and his mother eventually died in New York, while Martin returned to Germany after the War’s end, dying there in 1965. The Joel family fled to France, travelling through England and Cuba to the United States, where grandson Billy Joel became a Grammy award-winning musician. The Ruschkewitz family was successful in their efforts to escape. They boarded an “Exodus” [EXPLAIN] type ship for Palestine, but the ship was denied entry by the British government [is that right?], and the parents died of typhus in the Mediterranean. [Did the kids make it to Palestine??]
These families were, of course, the exception. Of the over 500,000 Jews who lived in Germany in 1933, only 37,000 remained in 1950. And the pattern continued…