Department store - Leonhard Tietz

Leonhard Tietz was born on March 3, 1849 in Birnbaum in the province of Posen. His career as a department store entrepreneur began in Stralsund with the opening of a small textile store (yarn, button, trimming and woolen goods store) on August 14, 1879. The store in Stralsund was followed by a similar store in Elberfeld in 1882, then another store in Schweinfurt in 1884 and in Amberg in 1888. When the store in Elberfeld became too small, Leonhard Tietz realized his long-cherished wish and built his first multi-line department store there in 1885. Six years later, on April 7, 1891, Leonhard Tietz opened a 180 m store in Hohe Strasse in Cologne. Aachen followed in 1892 and in 1899 the Tietz department store in Düsseldorf on Schadowstraße was built. In 1905 the company was converted into a public limited company. From 1907 to 1909, the company had the Tietz Alleestraße department store in Düsseldorf built according to plans by Joseph Maria Olbrich. When Leonhard Tietz died on November 15, 1914, his son Alfred Leonhard Tietz continued the business. The company continued to grow through acquisitions and employed around 15,000 people at 43 locations in the early 1930s. Together with Gerhard Tietz, his brother who was 11 years younger, Alfred Leonhard Tietz managed the large company - until the National Socialists came to power and, as a result, the aryanization efforts (expropriation of Jewish companies and businesses);The result was that Alfred Leonhard and Gerhard Tietz had to resign from the management and sell their shares for far less than they were worth. On July 11, 1933, the name was changed to Westdeutsche Kaufhof AG.  Alfred Leonhard Tietz and his family initially emigrated to Amsterdam. Shortly before the German invasion of the Netherlands in 1940, he and his family managed to flee to Palestine. Gerhard Tietz fled to England with his family in 1934