Circulation and representation: Jews, department stores and cosmopolitan consumption in Germany, c.1880s–1930s

Abstract

This essay looks at the problem of Jews and cosmopolitanism from the perspective of consumer culture in modern Germany. It focuses on German department stores, the great majority of which were owned by Jews, and which were stationary sites for the convergence of goods, styles, people and capital from all over the world. The essay then traces discourses on and representations of circulation across a variety of media and genres, including department store advertisements, economic writings, anti-department store propaganda and fiction, showing how department store owners and their harshest critics drew on a common set of terms and symbols to represent modern mass consumption. While department stores used cosmopolitanism to promote their goods and create enticing product displays and consumer spectacles, their critics charged that these stores, because of their cosmopolitanism, were insufficiently rooted in German traditions and mores and represented a threat from the Jewish East.

Keywords:

• Jewish
• Cosmopolitanism
• consumption
• department stores
• German Jews
• Germany

Notes

 1. Buchner, Warenhauspolitik und Nationalsozialismus. Buchner, Dämonen der Wirtschaft: Gestalten und dunkle Gewalten aus dem Leben unserer Tage. On Nazi approaches to mass consumption, see above all Baranowski, Strength through Joy; König, Volkswagen; and Berghoff, “Enticement and Deprivation”, 165–84.

 2. Buchner, Warenhauspolitik, 4. The same passage appears verbatim in Dämonen der Wirtschaft.

 3. On opposition to department stores and consumer culture in Germany, see (among others) Briesen, Warenhaus, Massenkonsum und Sozialmoral.

 4. I discuss these themes in greater detail in my essay, “Consuming Powers.”

 5. Buchner, Warenhauspolitik, 4.

 6. Marx, Zur Judenfrage; Sombart, Die Juden und das Wirtschaftsleben.

 7. Stanislawksi, Zionism and the Fin-de-siècle.

 8. For example, Hoganson, Consumers' Imperium; Binnie et al., eds, Cosmopolitan Urbanism. For an exception, see Sznaider, Gedächtnisraum Europa.

 9. See Arnholz and Osborn, eds, Das Kaufhaus des Westens; James, Erich Mendelsohn and the Architecture of German Modernism.

10. The most useful studies of department stores in Germany include: Gerlach, Das Warenhaus in Deutschland; Spiekermann, Warenhaussteuer in Deutschland; and Ladwig-Winters, Wertheim. See also the articles in Crossick and Jaumain, eds., Cathedrals of Consumption.

11. For example, see Colze, Berliner Warenhäuser, 79–81.

12. The 1908, 1910 and 1912 albums were entitled “Die Hygiene im Wandel der Zeiten,” “Die Frau und Ihre Welt,” and “Unter und Über der Erde,” respectively.

13. Ladwig-Winters, Wertheim. Geschichte eines Warenhauses, 31.

14. Douglas and Isherwood, The World of Goods; Williams, Dream Worlds; Heimbüchel, Erlebniswelt Kaufhof.

15. Zola, The Ladies' Paradise. See also Nelson, “Zola and the Counter Revolution,” 233–40.

16. Göhre, Das Wahrenhaus, 21.

17. On tourism and travel in the modern period, see Koshar, German Travel Cultures; Koshar, ed., Histories of Leisure; Furlough and Baranowski, eds., Being Elsewhere.

18. Colze, Berliner Warenhäuser, 11.

19. Typescript dated 14.5.1928 (no author), Israel Family Collection; AR 25140; Box 1; Folder 10, Leo Baeck Institute.

20. David, The Patron, 45, 145.

21. Letter from Der Reichsorganisationsleiter Hauptamt NS-HAGO to Reichsbahn-Haputverwaltung, Berlin, (3.7.1935), Bundesarchiv Berlin: R5/22951 Reichsverkehrsministerium, Reklamegesellschaften.

22. Undated article from between 1933 and 1935, cut-out with no citation information. Schocken Archive, Jerusalem, Box 115/111: Zeitungsausschnitte zum Thema ‘Kampf gegen die Warenhäuser’ 7.3.1933-2.2.1935.

23. “Wertheim Triumphator!” Die Staatsbürger-Zeitung, November 27, 1906, newspaper clipping in Landes Archiv Berlin A Pr. Br. Rep. 30, Tit 94, Nr. 14311 (Wertheim).

24. Franz and Osborn, Das Kaufhaus des Westens, 118.

25. Ladwig-Winters, Wertheim. Geschichte eines Warenhauses, 66.

26. See the section “Imperial Panorama,” in Benjamin, Berlin Childhood around 1900. See also Friedberg, Window Shopping and Schwartz, Spectacular Realities.

27. For example, Bowlby, Just Looking.

28. Kläger, Zwischenfall im Warenhaus.

29. Köhrer, Warenhaus Berlin, 23.

30. Siwertz, Das Große Warenhaus.

31. Siwertz, Das Große Warenhaus, 28.

32. On this topic, the idea that Jews were simultaneously represented as economic modernisers and as economically backward, see Penslar, Shylock's Children; Karp, “Economic History and Jewish Modernity: Ideological Versus Structural Change,” 249–67.

33. Colze, Berliner Warenhäuser, 11–2.

34. Quoted in Ladwig-Winters, Wertheim, 41. On the idea of the irrational consuming crowd, see Lamberty, Reklame in Deutschland, 1890–1914.

35. Roth, “The Very Large Department Store,” 121–3.

36. Schocken Archive, Jerusalem, Box 185/228/1 Propaganda und Information. Verschiedene Einzelfragen.

37. Wagner, Über die Organisation der Warenhäuser, Kaufhäuser und der großen Spezialgeschäfte.

38. Harry Jandorf, “Erinnerungen an meinem Vater Adolf Jandorf.” ME335, Leo Baeck Institute Archive.

39. “Der Warenhaus-Unfug,” Hammer: Blätter für den deutschen Sinn 11, January 15, 1912, 43–5.

40. Stoltheim, Das Rätsel des jüdischen Erfolges, 109. See Lerner, “Consuming Powers.”

41. Dehn, Hinter den Kulissen des modernen Geschäfts, 6.

42. Stoltheim, Das Rätsel des Jüdischen Erfolges, 109.

43. See also Buchner, Warenhauspolitik and Hauschildt, Der Kampf gegen die Waarenhäuser.

44. Stoltheim, Rätsel, 128-9.

45. For example, “Der Harem im Warenhaus am Andreasplatz,” 1–2; and “Die Geheimnisse des Teesalons im Warenhaus Wertheim,” Die Wahrheit 3 (1907), 1. For a discussion of this theme, see my essay, “Consuming Pathologies,” 46–56.

46. See Frei, Tempel der Kauflust, 67.

47. See, e.g. Baranowski, Strength through Joy; Semmens, Seeing Hitler's Germany: Tourism in the Third Reich and König, Volkswagen.