Adolph Behrendt and family

Adolph Behrendt saw the light of day on December 8, 1849 in Preußisch Stargardt as the son of a horse trader and after his childhood and youth years from 1875 was demonstrably co-owner of the plaster and white goods store Dyck & Behrendt in Magdeburg. Here he lived with his wife Rosa, who was born in Pomerania on April 29, 1855, the daughter of the merchant Salomon Jacobsohn. From 1879, Adolph Behrendt ran his own straw hat factory here in Magdeburg, and in October 1880 Betty Behrendt, the couple's first child, was born. The small family then moved to Bernburg. There Betty had two sisters in a very short time, Else (1883) and Meta (1884). Here, the family of five experienced two more years together until they left the city for Jena in 1886 at the latest.

On arriving in the Thuringian city, Adolph and Rosa Behrendt together with their three daughters found their first apartment in the house of church councilor Adolf Hilgenfeld on Fürstengraben. After his business license, applied for in the same year, had been approved for a trade in white and plaster goods, Adolph founded his trading business in the house of the master carpenter Herfurth at Markt 16 on October 12, 1886. About three years later, the family father acquired the house at Markt 17 in 1889/90 and laid the foundation for the establishment of Jena's first department store by expanding the original business assortment with manufactured goods. This was the beginning of the successful and popular Kaufhaus Behrendt.

In addition to economic success, even greater family happiness was not to be long in coming. Between 1887 and 1895 Adolph and Rosa's children Arthur (1887), Gertrud (1889), Hans (1891) and Paula (1895) were born.

In addition to the economic success, an even greater family happiness was not long in coming.

As early as November 1886, a few months after Adolph Behrendt had moved to Jena with his family, he and Leopold Hammerstein had the intention of founding an Israelite religious community and asked the board of the Jena municipality to give them a burial plot in the North Cemetery. After the municipal council rejected this request and thus the religious community could not be founded at first, Adolph Behrendt was co-founder of the "Israelite Religious Community" in Jena, founded in 1896, 10 years later. Other co-founders* were the merchants Georg Born, Abraham Frankenberg, Moritz Hofmann, Hermann Friedmann, Selma Saling and Arnold Laboschinski. Since the Jena cemetery could still not be used, cemeteries in the surrounding area were used, such as most notably the New Jewish Cemetery in Erfurt. 

The following year, March 1897, Adolph Behrendt was granted citizenship of the city of Jena, but still held his Prussian citizenship. While his department store continued to enjoy great popularity, the merchant and his family moved to the house at Kahlaische Strasse 1 in 1912. Just a few months later, the family man and husband of Rosa Behrendt died of a heart attack on May 27, 1913, during a stay in Partenkirchen. Just over a month later, on June 1, 1913, he was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Berlin-Weißensee.

Four years later, on July 26, 1917, Rosa Behrendt also died in Jena and was buried alongside her husband in Berlin on July 30,

After the death of their father Adolph, his sons continued the Behrendt department store on the Markt in the complex with Oberlauengasse 3a as a general partnership. In addition to this department store, Arthur and Hans Behrendt opened another department store on November 1, 1929, with a branch of the Wohlwert uniform price trading company, which was also very centrally located in the house at Unterm Markt 8. The brothers' intention was to "annex a company to the city, which would be managed according to modern principles and offer the population a new favorable purchasing opportunity..." (StadtAJ, D Ib 39, Bl. 161, quoted from: Stadtarchiv Jena 2015: pp. 152-153).

In addition to a wide range of groceries, household items and textiles could also be purchased in the department store. While the store initially covered only the first floor of the building, it expanded to include the second floor in 1931 as a result of its commercial success. In this even a snack corner found its place.

After the boycott of Jewish businesses on April 1, 1933, which also affected the two Behrendt department stores, Arthur was forced to sell the two department stores to the merchant Kurt Hepprich in April 1937. Although the Wohlwert department store at Unterm Markt 8 continued to operate under the name "Heka" on January 8, 1938, it was not spared by the SA squads who smashed the shop windows of the closed Jewish stores during the November pogrom, as it was feared that the non-Jewish Hepprich was only a "straw man" of the Behrendts.

Arthur Behrendt had after the war the wish for the reopening of the department store Wohlwert, however, a takeover of this by the relative Max Blau as a trustee dealer could not be realized. Thus, the department store was transferred into public ownership and opened on January 7, 1949 as a new Konsum department store Unterm Markt.

Both Arthur and Hans Behrendt lived with their mother at Kahlaische Strasse 1 until the beginning of 1928. However, since the institution "University Institute for Human Hereditary Research and Racial Policy" was being planned here, Arthur had a villa built for himself at Oberer Philosophenweg 62 (today Ricarda-Huch-Weg 16), while his brother moved to Hufelandweg 1. Hans, who was married to Irene Behrendt (1902-1949), died in Munich in 1934 after a serious illness.

Four years later, Arthur sold his villa and came to live with Dr. Max and Siegfried Peters at Landgrafenstieg 1 before he was arrested on Pogrom Night in 1938 and sent to Buchenwald concentration camp on November 10. However, after he was then able to emigrate to the USA together with his wife Grete, née Corth, he served as an officer in the US Army in 1945 in a leading position in the camp for German prisoners of war in Bad Kreuznach. After his efforts for restitution for the property of his former villa, it was administered by the city council in 1952 as a foreign property, owner Arthur Behrendt, New York.

A good eleven years later, on August 1, 1963, Arthur Behrendt died.