Clothing factory - Clothing store - M. Heilbronner & Co.

Michael Heilbronner was born on December 2, 1833 in Ichenhausen.He was married to Henriette, née Wimpfheimer, born on October 7, 1837 in Ichenhausen.Michael Heilbronner lived in the USA for several years before his marriage in 1857.The newly married couple lived in Zweibrücken for the first few years of their marriage.Their first three daughters were also born there.The family moved to Augsburg in 1868. In 1868 the family moved to Augsburg, where their fourth daughter Karolina was born in 1869.Michael Heilbronner was active in the textile trade, first founding a clothing factory and then registering a clothing store with his brother-in-law Jakob Wimpfheimer in 1871.A few years later, this joint company became the well-known company „Wimpfheimer & Cie" in the region and beyond. After the death of Michael Heilbronner on October 22, 1891, son-in-law Hugo Steinfeld became a partner in the company, and daughter Lina and businessman Hugo Steinfeld were married in a civil ceremony in Augsburg on October 29, 1890.After acquiring a plot of land in a prime location at 18 1/5 Bahnhofstrasse in April 1896, Hugo Steinfeld and Jakob Wimpfheimer had a commercial and residential building built there in the neo-Renaissance style, which, with its copper-covered towers and bay windows, combined with modern technology such as electricity, steam heating and an elevator, was a sight worth seeing in the city. In 1907, 27 commercial employees and 37 blue-collar workers were employed in the business premises on the first floor. Before the First World War, the company was regarded as the largest cloth export business in southern Germany. The first calls for a boycott of Jewish businesses in Augsburg were made as early as 1931, and the company was forcibly sold on 15 October 1938 as part of the so-called "Aryanization" process. The couple, who had been awarded the King Ludwig Cross in 1917 during the First World War and were now socially isolated and ostracized, saw no other way and committed suicide on 6 November 1941.