Digital resources in the Social Sciences and Humanities OpenEdition Our platforms OpenEdition Books OpenEdition Journals Hypotheses Calenda Libraries OpenEdition Freemium Follow us

./. BHR Tanzschule Willy Weißbart

Founded in 1884 by Jacob Weissbart the Dance School served the middleclass citizen’s need to learn classical dance – from Walz to Polka. In 1929 Willy Weissbart took over the school on Tempelhofer Ufer 1 at the southern end of the fashionable Friedrichstrasse. The school not only had a ballroom but also a bar.

Costume ball of a dance group in an unknown dance school, 23 May 1926; Jewish Museum Berlin, Inv. No. 2006/204/72, gift of Thomas S. Salinger

In 1930, in an addendum, Willy and his wife Helene agreed on the separation of their property in marriage. In his restitution case, Weissbart would later claim, that this was to protect the enterprise from Nazi assaults. As the assaults grew both in frequency as well as in violence in 1930, that might actually be the case. But, when his wife filed for divorce in the summer of 1933 and easily won the case, it meant that Willy Weissbart was left with nothing.

Yet, the dance teacher did not give up, and started a new school for which he frequently advertised in Jewish newspapers. Seemingly the school was not plundered by the Nazi mob in the pogrom and Weissbart somehow continued teaching, offering classes “for distinguished elderly and married couples”: 

Advertisement by Willy Weissbart, 24h January 1939, Jüdisches Nachrichtenblatt

Weissbart survived the war – under unknown circumstances. He opened another dance school in the south-western district Lichterfelde West and started a restitution case against his former wife in 1951. Yet, his wife claimed that the separation of property had been agreed upon long bevor the Nazis came to power and that the divorce had been merely about her ex-husbands unfaithfulness. Since Weissbart could not prove his case he withdrew his claim in Juli 1951.[1]


[1] Letter by Willy Weissbart to the Restitution Office, July 30, 1951, State Archive Berlin, , B Re. 025-06, 834/51

Heike Nelsen & Christoph Kreutzmüller

NB Thanks to Jörg Waßmer in the Jewish Museum Berlin! DANKE!

Kullak & Levy Timbertraders – BHR A 16498

‘Touch wood’ – for Berlin-born Ernst Moritz Levy (1894–1982), the phrase was less about luck than about livelihood. As a seasoned timber merchant, this natural resource passed through his hands regularly, forming the very foundation of his professional life.

His father, Alfons, had co-founded the Offene Handelsgesellschaft Kullak & Levy alongside a non-Jewish partner in 1896. After returning from the First World War and completing a Phd, Ernst joined the company as the third fully liable partner.

The recently renovated entrance to the office and timber yard of OHG Kullak & Levy at Reichenberger Straße 108, Berlin 1935. Wiener Holocaust Library Collections 2130/8/15/64

With its headquarters at Reichenberger Straße 108 in Kreuzberg and an additional branch in Treptow at Karpfenteichstraße 13/14, the company became a well-respected player in Germany’s timber and veneer trade. Sound management and an excellent reputation with clients helped to navigate the challenges of the 1920s and early 1930s. Neither a devastating fire at one of its timber yards nor the death of Alfons caused any lasting damage.

Negative photostat of a circular informing about the ‘Aryanisation’ of the OHG Kullak & Levy, Berlin 1938. Wiener Holocaust Library Collections 2130/2/1/9

None of that mattered anymore, of course, once the Nazis began targeting business owners for their own or their ancestors’ religious background. By the end of 1937, Ernst was replaced as partner and emigrated to Britain the following year.

The company was rebranded as Kullak & Metto. After suffering heavy damage during the Second World War and the nationalisation of its Treptow branch by the newly formed East German state, it ultimately filed for bankruptcy in 1955.

Ernst Levy in front of former premises of OHG Kullak & Levy at Reichenberger Str. 108, Berlin 1977. Wiener Holocaust Library Collections 2130/8/4/84

By that time, Ernst Moritz Levy was leading a modest life with his family in London. Well into his eighties, he visited his birthplace and the former company grounds one last time. “After all,” he reflected upon his return, “I was content with myself for having seen it once again.”

The content of this blog post is sourced from The Wiener Holocaust Library, Collection 2130: Ernst Levy Collection. This material has been digitised and is available on Wiener Digital Collections:  https://www.whlcollections.org/ernst-levy/.

Torsten Jugl

Richard Tauber Tonfilm GmbH, HR B 43500

By the late 1920’s Richard Tauber had become an international star. Born in Linz in 1891 into a very musical family, the tenor had moved to Berlin after the First World War. There, he regularly filled the Metropol theatre – and other showrooms of the Rotter brother’s theatre empire. Touring Europe and the US he also recorded his songs and became one of the first radio stars – Dein ist mein ganzes Herz/You are my heart’s delight was (and still is) played all over the world.

Still from the film “Ich glaub’ nie mehr an eine Frau”, Richard Tauber in the middle

In 1929 the age of the silent movie came to an end. In a bid to exploit the popularity of this brother for the new medium sound-film, Max Tauber registered a new company. Alas, the choice of directors was rather unfortunate. The three films made with Richard Tauber became a “debacle”. Instead of singing or humming along, the audiences could not help but laughing about some of the scenes shown in the movies. By 1932 Richard Tauber made it officially known that he did not want to give his good name to the disastrous film company anymore. The Richard Tauber Tonfilm Ltd went into liquidation and was deleted from the commercial register in 1935.

By that time, Richard Tauber had long left Berlin. Regarded as being a Jew, because his father had been born into a Jewish family, Tauber was attacked on the Kurfüstendamm on March 9, 1933, by a gang of SA-Men. The man with the golden voice continued his international career – but died of lung cancer in 1948. His songs live on!

Photo by Christoph Kreutzmüller, London 2025

He is buried in London – on Brompton Cemetery, near Emeline Pankhurst.

Christoph Kreutzmüller

Bookstore Bayerischer Platz Benedict Lachmann Buchhandlung und Verlag BHR A 48919

Benedict Lachmann had originally opened his bookstore in Salzburger Straße, but moved the business to the more fashionable Bayerische Platz after the First World War. Branching out to be publishing house, too, Lachmann had his company entered into the commercial register in 1919.

A frequent visitor of the Romanisches Café, Lachmann was not only a simple book trader, but a booklover and intelectual. As the well researched biografie for his stumbling stone by Anne Meckel highlights, he began editing one of the few German-language anarchist newspapers “Der individualistische Anarchist” in 1919.

Even though Lachmann had left the Jewish congregation early, many of his customers were Jewish – just like Albert Einstein.

Of course, the Nazis did not care about what he believed (or not), but counted grandparents. They regarded Lachmann as a Jew and put him under pressure, too.

In September 1937 Lachmann sold his business and had his company deleted from the commercial register. His long standing employer Paul Behr took over the bookshop which still exists today. Run by booklovers who have not forgotten the anarchist founder, who was deported in 1941 to the ghetto of Litzmannstadt, where he perished.

Christoph Kreutzmüller

Max Lindemann – Etam BHR A 44283 / A 89966

An Etam shop in Paris, 2025 Photo by Christoph Kreutzmüller

Any flaneur in Amsterdam or Paris, will notice one of the many Etam shops. Yet, only a few will know, that the acronym stands for “Etablissement Mayer” and that the company was set up in Berlin by Max Lindemann in 1918. Due to the high quality of the stockings he produced and sold, Lindemanns business thrived and expanded, setting up branches in the Netherlands, France and the UK in the 1920s.

The company had its main office in the Prinz-Albrecht Straße near Anhalter Bahnhof, the most important railway station of Berlin. When the Gestapo set up headquarters next door, making the Prinz-Albrecht-Straße one of the most dreaded addresses in Germany, Etam moved – in Berlin.

After years of blockades and Nazi aggression Max Lindemann sold his German business just before the pogroms of November 1938. The original company was deleted from the commercial register and a new company set up: Etam Textilwaren Reincke & Co.

Hamburger Fremdenblatt, 10.2.1939

However, having become an Argentinian citizen Lindemann managed to hold on to the very successful foreign branches, especially in France and the Netherlands. A lawyer for the new, non-Jewish proprietor of Etam, moaned about the “notorious” method of “shifting assets abroad under the guise of the promotion of exports” in a letter to the Reich Economics Ministry in January 1939.

Booking receipt for Etablissement Mayer GmbH, 1939, Private

Even though Nazi Germany invaded both the Netherlands and France in 1940, the move – and the nationality – proteced the Etablissement Mayer. Up to today this Berlin business is a thriving – abroad.

Christoph Kreutzmüller

With a little help from… the database

Going though all the entries of the Berlin commercial register was a tiresome affair. Hundreds of companies were entered, changed or deleted every week.

Yet, in order not to miss any company that was owned or run by someone the Nazi persecuted as Jewish, this was (or seemed) necessary (but would be done by AI today).

Now, the database can also be used to investigate the deep changes Berlin’s economy was undergoing after 1933. Striking, that dozens of armament factories were set up many of them in the field of aviation. Other new companies were founded and entered into Berlin’s commercial register to exploit the occupied territories.

For our forthcoming book on the history of Berlin in National Socialism, we made abundant use of the hidden information of the database. Be it for the chapter on the economic development of Berlin, the one we discuss beds or the chapter on bars and pubs….

Bjoern Weigel & Christoph Kreutzmüller

Nissim Zacouto – BHR A 46351 / A 94858

In the end, the file was stamped. In the first weeks of 1938, the Chamber of Industry and Commerce in Berlin went through all its files and stamped all companies that were Jewish according to the secret decree the Interim Minister of Economy, Hermann Göring, had issued.

Nissim Zacouto was Jewish. The decendent of an ancient Sephardic family had moved from Istanbul to Berlin before the First World War and opened a carpet trading business under his name. Situated in Jägerstraße, it was regarded to be among the best businesses of its kind – until the not-Jewish traders started a slander-campaign in 1933. When Turkey withdrew its protection Zacouto moved to Paris with his family in 1939. He had to start all over again – but did so with great skill.

First page of a letter to the Chamber of Industry and Commerce, January 1939, Brandenburg State Archive, Rep. 70, 163/556

Having managed to hide in the times of the occupation of France Zacouto immediately tried to regain the carpets he had left behind in Berlin – to no avail.

Photo of the exhibition in the Leo Baeck Institute, New York, 2010

Having portrayed the business in our 2009 exhibition, we got into contact with Fred Zacouto, Nissims son, who encouraged us to write a small book on the Turkish Carpet Dealer and Miraculous Survivor – it’s the only Jewish Miniature to be translated to Turkish. We are very proud that Nissim Zacouto will feature in the new TAM Museum.

Bjoern Weigel & Christoph Kreutzmüller

A poem by Ben Barkow

Allerheiligen — Wien 2024

(For Rachel, who saw it all)

The sky was clear as clarity itself and

filled with summer sun — even though this was the first day

of November.

The queue outside Central went on forever —

Landtmann had no queue at all

nor did Diglas im Schottenstift. I ate eggs Hemingway drank

cappuccino from those lovely Julius Meinl cups.

Snakes of tour groups clogged the pavements —

you couldn’t move for selfie sticks —

they were like Great Birnam Wood

en route for Dunsinane.

They photographed themselves all day

capturing the city —

doing everything and standing everywhere

and eating Kippferl large and small.

But something here was very wrong and no-one seemed to

see or know.

Squatting on the Hofburg gates

four angry eagles

stared and glared — surely left over from the Nazi days —

waiting for history to come around again. Since 1945 nobody

saw the need to knock them down or cover them

or put a sign up to explain what

they were doing here.

The city was a Breughel — 

landscape with the fall of Icarus  —

what should be at the centre pushed off to the margins —

that tiny splash signalling

catastrophe.

In a street where tourists seldom go unless they’re lost

a small tobacco shop — its window daubed

in white paint —

Judenstern.

 

(November 2024)

Photograph by Ben Barkow, Vienna 2024, copyright: Wien Museum Vienna

Due to recent events, I have decided to publish this wonderful poem by Ben Barkow instead of news on Jewish owned businesses in Berlin. Poetry such as Ben’s can be more urgent and compelling than my (often) rather factual texts on buisnesses.

In that vain, I strongly recommend Ben’s new book “Poetry After Auschwitz: Walking in West Cornwall with the Ghost of Great-Aunt Hilde

Christoph Kreutzmüller

New artice: Mortgages and Dispossession in Yad-Vashem-Studies 52/2

In the three years in which we collected the data for the database, we left out all companies that were dedicated to overseeing only a single house in Berlin – there were simply to many of them.

A new article published by Carolin Lange and Christoph Kreutzmüller in Yad Vashem Studies shows how an independent German mortgage bank was willing to lend money to buy or build houses to Jews in order to keep its share in a shrinking market and to strengthen its foothold in Berlin. In fact, Jews were the bank’s best customers in the mid-1930s until they were dumped. An in-depth analysis of the cases also shows, that the Jews made a strong claim as to the fact that they regarded Germany as their home and eventually used the customary and legal protection land registers and housing enjoyed in a bid to outplay the Nazi assault onto their property.

File by Pfälzische Hypothekenbank, Historical Archive Commerzbank, Frankfurt/Main, 500_100839MS

The article is based on an analysis the nearly 5,000 documented individual transactions of the Pfälzische Hypothekenbank between 1935 and 1940 conducted by Carolin Lange. Only by going through all the transactions, the importance of Jewish customers became obvious!

Excerpt from the loan file of Dr. Michael Sperling [1935]. Historical Archive Commerzbank HAC-500/MS100839

In the process of expropriation, as Franz Neumann would have argued, state law collided with state administration from 1938-39 onward. Due to the strict legal regulations (and established procedures) protecting property, the actions of the National Socialists initially had little effect on them. Much like their colleagues in the district courts who managed the commercial register, officials in the land registry offices, as well as in the Reich Ministry of Justice, did not act as protectors of Jewish rights. Instead, they sought to prevent measures against Jews from undermining the established legal system. The acquisition of real estate could serve both as financial and legal security for Jewish individuals, as well as, in political terms, an act of resistance. The efforts made by some Jewish customers to obtain loans late in the game suggest that they were not willing to be simply displaced. Ultimately, this strategy of real estate acquisition was both rational and effective: from 1948/49 onwards, property was relatively easily and quickly restituted or compensated, while the procedures for other assets in the Federal Republic of Germany dragged on painfully for the applicants until the late 1960s or even longer.

One big Jewish customer of the bank was Dr. Michael Sperling, director of the M. Sperling Getreidehandel AG [BHR B 36274 / B 53529] – which can be found in the database:[1] In May 1935, likely as a result of increasing pressure from the Nazi Reichsnährstand (state food society) on grain merchants, Sperling was removed from the board of M. Sperling Getreidehandel AG.[2] Nearly simultaneously he obtained a loan of 60,000 RM. His dismissal from the company that bore his name probably played a role in the initiation of this transaction. Nonetheless, the internal correspondence between the Berlin branch and the Ludwigshafen headquarters does not mention it. In any case the management decision of June 14, 1935, stated that the situation was considered “besonders günstig” (particularly favorable) and the condition of the house was described as “einwandfrei” (impeccable).[3] It is evident that the bank tried to focus on city neighborhoods, especially in the more affluent areas of western Berlin, but made an exception for this property in less-well-off Berlin-Weissensee. This was largely due to the borrower, whose Jewish heritage is not mentioned.

In support of the application, the Berlin branch enclosed an assessment from the renowned credit agency Schimmelpfeng: “Dr. Sperling has a reputation as a prudent and capable businessman, he is respected in professional circles and enjoys the others’ trust.”[4] The forty-two-year-old was already a customer of the bank and had “always met his commitments punctually”; he was also “known to be wealthy.”[5] When the former grain merchant was forced to sell the rest of his property in the second quarter of 1940, shortly before fleeing to Cuba, this is one of the few times that the bank explicitly identified the transaction as an “Aryanization.”

Another big Berlin customer was, Ernst Gräfenberg, a famous gynecologist and urologist. He alone took out four loans in the fourth quarter of 1935, totaling nearly 80,000 RM, for new construction on the property at Bundesallee and Badenallee in the fashionable West of Berlin. In 1936, he acquired three more loans for two properties on Bundesallee and another new construction project on Eschenallee. Gräfenberg had obtained the undeveloped property in Berlin’s Westend from the liquidation assets of his father’s clothing company.[6] He invested a significant portion of the proceeds and planned to build a house with eight apartments of the “highest comfort” – estimated to have a market value of 400,000 RM.[7]

In short, the article sheds light on hitherto overlooked aspect of dispossession of Jews: Buying real estate as a way to safeguard their assets. Buying a house can be seen as an act of resilience!

Christoph Kreutzmüller


[1] See Database of Jewish businesses in Berlin: www2.hu-berlin.de/djgb. Last access 04-12.2024.

[2] Henning Medert, Die Verdrängung der Juden von der Berliner Börse. Kleine und mittlere Unternehmen an der Wertpapier-, Produkten- und Metallbörse 1928-1938 (Berlin: Metropol, 2012), pp. 236-244.

[3] Management decision of PHB regarding Dr. Michael Sperling’s loan application dated June 14, 1935, Historical Archive Commerzban (HAC), 500-100839MS, 3rd ed.

[4] Internal letter of information about Dr. Michael Sperling dated May 20, 1935, HAC, 500-100839MS, p. 53.

[5] Letter Zweigbüro Berlin to the Ludwigshafen head office dated May 28, 1935, HAC, 500-100839MS, 55

[6] On the suspension of payments by the coat manufacturing company Michaelis & Gräfenberg, Berliner Börsen Zeitung, January 24, 1930.

[7] Letter from Hans Redlich to Dolf von Berg, May 4, 1937, State Archive Berlin, A Rep. 358-02, 97382.

M. Woellner’s Möbeltischlerei Nachf. BHR – A 18871

Max Woellner’s furniture joinery was founded in 1871. Berlin was booming, not least because of the high reparation payments that the German Reich had demanded from defeated France. The capital was growing fast and the new houses needed new furniture. It is not clear from the documents who exactly founded the cabinetmaker’s workshop. What is documented that Samuel Katz took over the company in 1897 and added the words Nachf[ahren] was added.[1] Katz moved the location of his business from Köpenicker Straße 154 to Molkenmarkt 2/3, proving good instincts. Near the oldest department stores of the city, N. Israel, the shop was located right between the old main shopping street, the Königstraße, and the new boulevard, Leipziger Strasse. On 20 April 1899 – the 10th birthday birthday of an Austrian boy named Adolf Hitler – a clerk at the royal district court noted that Moritz Elsoffer had joined the company.

Note by the Berlin Court , April 20, 1899“, State Archive Berlin, A Rep. 342-02, 35452

The company was clearly well managed. It survived the perils of the First World War and the subsequent inflation. After Samuel Katz’s death in 1920, his widow took over his half of the considerable capital, but left the management to her partner. Almost the entire house served as a showroom and warehouse for ‘a few hundred complete rooms and countless individual pieces of furniture’.[3]

Ten years later, however, the world slid into the Great Depression. Unemployment figures rose and political disputes became increasingly brutal. Woellners Möbeltischlerei will certainly have suffered as a result. Unemployed don’t usually buy new furniture. In addition, Molkenmarkt was in the territory of Horst Wessel’s SA-Sturm, which was considered particularly brutal and also had a Sturmlokal in the immediate neighbourhood, the Mühlendammklause.[4]

It can be assumed that on 1 April 1933, SA posts were also set up at Molkenmarkt. What was almost more serious was that the furniture store was also systematically excluded from an important business segment from June 1933. In the ‘Unemployment Reduction Act’, the Nazi government had announced its intention to grant so-called marriage loans. These loans were issued in the form of ‘Bedarfdeckungsscheine’, which newly married couples could use to purchase household goods. Through administrative channels, all Jewish businesses were excluded from accepting these vouchers. Female employees of the municipal, Prussian and Reich authorities were also prohibited from buying from Jews. [5]

In the course of planning the expansion of the Reichsmünze, the Prussian Treasury cancelled the company’s business premises. Moritz Elsoffer managed to extend the very short notice period. By mid-1935, he was able to clear his warehouses by selling them off. After repeated requests from the Berlin Chamber of Industry and Commerce, ‘M. Woellners Möbeltischlerei Nachf.’ was finally deleted from the commercial register on 24 January 1938.[6]

Neither of the two partners managed to emigrate. Faced with the deportation order, Elise Katz, born in 1861, opted to end on 12 October 1942.[7]  Salomon Katz managed to escape from Gestapo custody during the mass arrests in the course of the so-called ‘Fabrikaktion’ in February 1943. Hiding in Berlin, he survived until May 1945, when he was killed by shrapnel on 2 May 1945, the last day of the war in Berlin.

In the subsequent proceedings, the Berlin compensation office ruled that the business had been closed down mainly because of Moritz Elsoffer’s old age and not because of the persecution.  The office therefore did not want to recognise any ‘damage to professional advancement’.

Today the German French Youth Work has its office in the house on Molkenmark. Funded and supported by the Youth work, the fate of the furniture shop was first recalled in a study by Johanna Kühne in 2023: Palais Schwerin – Ein Haus packt aus. Die Geschichte eines französischen Palais in Berlin.


[1] Note, 1.7.1897, State Archive Berlin (LAB), 342-02, 35452.

[2] Note, 20.4.1899, ibid.

[3] Letter Walter Goetzel to Compensation Office, 6.1.1953, Berlin Compensation Office 4114.

[4] Joris K. von Engelbrechten/Hans Volz, Wir wandern durch das nationalsozialistische Berlin. Ein Führer durch die Gedenkstätten des Kampfes um die Reichshauptstadt, Munich 1937, S. 78.

[5] Letter by Erna Elsoffer, 14.11.1952, Berlin Compensation Office 4214.

[6] www2.hu-berlin.de/djgb.

[7] Letter by Wilhelm Schuster, 20.10.1960, Berlin Compensation Office 161288.