The Kaiser, Hitler and the Jewish Department Store: The Reich's Retailer

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From the emergence of department stores in the late 19th century to the financial disasters of the years following the end of World War I, the history of large-scale retailing in Germany was dominated by a pioneering generation of German-Jewish entrepreneurs who found fortune and influence only to have their livelihoods taken by Hitler and the Nazis in the 1930s. Drawing on a range of archival sources and private collections, The Kaiser, Hitler and the Jewish Department Store reveals how, contrary to Nazi claims, Jewish-owned department stores were decent employers, popular with customers, and well integrated into the economy. In fact, such institutions were so integral to German society that, when Hitler came to power in 1933, the Nazis were forced to abandon their pledge to abolish them. As this revelatory history argues, the end of the Jewish-run store cannot solely be attributed to the rise of antisemitism: it was also the consequence of financial mismanagement and the indifference of the German people. John F. Mueller reveals the German-Jewish department store as a powerful force in society and politics as well as a leader in architecture and design. His book challenges common assumptions about the relationship between consumer culture, the German-Jewish business community and the rise of Nazism, providing fresh insights into the social history of modern Germany.

Reviews

John F. Muellers The Kaiser, Hitler and the Jewish Department Store offers a deeply and creatively researched history of the department stores created by Jewish entrepreneurial families that became central institutions of Germanys economy and society from the mid-nineteenth century to their expropriation in the wave of Nazi antisemitism in the 1930s. Using interviews, local press accounts, company histories, and regional government archives, Mueller convincingly revises a common story that associates department stores only with the major urban centers. While the stores of Knopf, Schocken, Wertheim, Jandorf, Wronker, Karstadt and Tietz were to be found in Berlin and Frankfurt, they were also present in smaller towns and many regions. Mueller reveals the stores to be both examples of innovation, urbanity and internationalism, as well as of traditionalism, class divisions, and cultural conservatism. They were successful and popular because they were very well-run businesses that offered to consumers goods they wanted at prices they could afford. Success bred envy and hatred from those less innovative, who found in antisemitism an effective weapon. Mueller has written an important work that should contribute to revising some familiar ideas about modernity and anti-modernity in this period of German history. * Jeffrey Herf, Distinguished University Professor, University of Maryland, USA *
John Mueller's exciting new book shows how Jewish department stores were not just a big-city phenomenon but were deeply embedded in the local community in many other parts of Germany in a variety of ways until well after the Nazi seizure of power. Their enlightened employment practices won them many supporters amongst local people. Campaigns against them came largely from the Nazi government, from outside the community. The book provides a powerful counter-argument to the widely believed thesis that popular resentment against department stores for undercutting local retailers was one of the reasons why the Nazis were so popular. * Sir Richard Evans, Historian of Modern Germany and Modern Europe; Emeritus Fellow, University of Cambridge, UK *

Author Bio

John F. Mueller is Director of Studies in History at St Edmund's College, University of Cambridge, UK. He has written and presented highly-rated television documentaries in Germany and the UK on the history of consumer culture. He has also been published in The Berlin Department Store: History and Discourse (2013) and Konsum und Gestalt: Leben und Werk von Salman Schocken und Erich Mendelsohn (2016).