2023-07-13 14:37:00
Despite the fact that Berlin Fashion Week takes place twice a year, Berlin today cannot be called the fashion capital of the world. Even the city’s natives themselves are surprised to learn that Berlin was a thriving fashion metropolis before World War II – thanks to Jewish entrepreneurs.
The Berlin clothing industry emerged in the 1830s. The situation changed dramatically after the invention of the industrial sewing machine: now, for example, a shirt could be sewn in one hour instead of eight. At the height of the industrialization process, social and political conditions in Germany still allowed Jewish entrepreneurs to determine the development of the industry.
Rise in the imperial era
For centuries, however, Jews living in Germany experienced restrictions on their rights. Among other things, for example, they were not allowed to engage in all kinds of activities. This prevented them from earning a living and often led to poverty. Many had to trade haberdashery and used clothing. Wealthy Jews, on the other hand, traded fine fabrics, explains journalist Uwe Westphal, author of Metropolis Berlin, 1836-1939: The Rise and Fall of Jewish Clothing Stores. Westphal spent almost forty years researching and studying the forgotten Jewish fashion industry in Berlin.
1920s design by Lissy Adler (later Alice Newman) for Loeb & LevyPhoto: Uwewestphalarchives
According to Westphal, such important historical events as the industrial revolution in the middle of the 19th century and the subsequent founding of the German Empire in 1871 made a special contribution to the success of Jewish ready-to-wear shops. Its constitution gave the Jews new rights and led to the flourishing of Jewish life in Germany. In 1871, just over 800,000 people lived in Berlin; in the 1920s there were already over four million, four percent of whom were Jews. Jews moved from agricultural regions to cities in the hope of finding work. “Among them were tailors, seamstresses and entrepreneurs such as David Leib Levin from Königsberg. He founded a factory for the production of women’s coats and was one of the first to introduce fixed prices for his goods around 1840,” emphasizes expert and journalist Uwe Westphal.
Berlin as a fashion center
The fashion trends of Paris, especially haute couture, were out of reach for the middle class. However, this did not prevent the growth of interest in fashion trends, especially office workers who wanted to look modern were interested in fashion. Thus, Jewish entrepreneurs came up with the idea to “produce affordable fashionable clothes according to established standards for mass production. There was a need for it, and the industry grew and developed rapidly,” explains Westphal.
The fashion industry peaked during the so-called “golden twenties”, when there were more than 2,700 fashion companies in Berlin, mostly owned by Jewish families. Names such as the Gebrüder Manheimer brothers, David Leib Levin, Nathan Israel and Hermann Gerson have become synonymous with the new ready-to-wear trend.
Jewish entrepreneurs quickly adapted to the needs of the new industrial age. “They had an understanding of what people like and international connections with textile manufacturers,” says Uwe Westphal. Goods were sold in luxury department stores, which were also mostly owned by Jewish families.
The Berlin fashion industry has also been successful internationally, exporting its products to the US and the Netherlands, England, Scandinavia and Argentina. Berlin offered affordable stylish and quality casual wear. Design ideas were taken straight from the Parisian fashion shows, so the business flourished.
Cover of the magazine “Arbeit und Wehr”, which shows the fashion of 1938, when the National Socialists were in powerPhoto: Uwe Westphal
The decline of the Jewish fashion industry
Anti-Semitism and envy of the success of Jewish fashion designers manifested themselves in German society. But when Hitler came to power in 1933, these problems became even more acute. First came the boycott of Jewish businesses, which was announced on April 1 of the same year, and then the forcible seizure of Jewish companies by supporters of the National Socialist Party. “In addition, Jews were soon banned from taking bank loans. This was a disaster for clothing companies. (…) The life of the owners of Jewish companies was deliberately complicated,” says researcher Uwe Westphal. First, Jewish entrepreneurs were forced to include members of the NSDAP in the list of business partners in order to obtain loans, and only then they were forced to sell their companies to them at ridiculously low prices.
In November 1938, Nazi supporters stormed numerous Jewish shops on the Hausvogteiplatz square in the Berlin district of Mitte, the center of the Jewish clothing industry. They destroyed everything that got in their way: “Out of 2,700 Jewish fashion stores, only 24 remained, but even these were expropriated no later than 1940,” Uwe Westphalia specifies. The Nazis were especially interested in the property around the Hausvogteiplatz, he said, because the ruling party needed new offices. And the expelled Jewish seamstresses turned out to be forced laborers in concentration camps.
Seamstresses in the Auschwitz concentration campPhoto: Yad Vashem Archiv
Josef Neckermann and Hugo Boss are just two of the many German companies that benefited from the Nazi takeover. “They oversaw the production of clothing and military uniforms,” says Uwe Westphal.
In the 1950s and 1960s, Berlin fashion designers no longer had to fear Jewish competition. At that time, the West German fashion industry had already moved to Düsseldorf and Munich due to the division of Berlin. The GDR government had little interest in the fashion industry, because fashion from Germany in the 1970s no longer played such an important role in the world as it did in the Golden Decade.
Culture of memory
“Everything that defined and constituted fashion, especially in the 1920s – the fashion design schools, the overarching culture, architecture, the Bauhaus, music, the film industry and the visual arts in general – was completely destroyed,” says Uwe Westphal.
“It scares me that no one wanted to remember this fashion culture since 1945. (…) No memory of the many Jewish fashion designers, nor the forced laborers, nor the thousands of seamstresses who once worked in Berlin. No innovative prizes for young talents with the names of the founders of 1836”. This is in stark contrast to the flourishing business of German companies that were heavily involved in the activities of the Nazi state.
Memorial in BerlinPhoto: Uwe Westphal
In the early 1990s, Uwe Westphal, frustrated by the silence about the Jewish past of the Berlin fashion industry, encouraged the city, along with its Jewish community, to promote the idea of a memorial at Hausvogteiplatz, which was opened in 2000 with the support of the Berlin Senate.
The heyday of Jewish fashion houses in Berlin is long gone, but as part of the Days of Jewish Culture on September 7, 2023, a fashion show of Israeli and Jewish designers will take place in Berlin. This will happen for the first time since 1939.
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