Loeser & Wolff
Loeser & Wolff was a large German tobacco goods factory and trade in Berlin that was Aryanized by the Nazis because its owners were Jewish.
[1] In order to meet the growing demand and to be closer to the important sales region in the east of what was then Prussia, Loeser acquired shares in the cigar factory Jean Kohlweck & Co. in Elbing (West Prussia, today Elbląg in Poland) on January 20, 1874, whereupon it changed its name to Kohlweck & Loeser.
When he joined the company in 1874, 26,700 cigars were produced by hand from imported raw tobaccos with around 40 exclusively female employees.
The cigar factory's women's jobs offered families an important additional income with far above-average social benefits.
[3][1] The share of wholesale trade and exports to Europe, Africa, Asia and Japan quickly exceeded the importance of the retail business.
On the southern shore of the Neuer See, Loeser and Wolff had its own pavilion with a tobacco museum and exhibition.
In 1890, on the occasion of the company's 25th anniversary, Kaiser Wilhelm II appointed Loeser an honorary member of the National Veterans' Association.
At the end of the 19th century, Loeser & Wolff was awarded the Royal Prussian State Medal in Gold several times.
In the same year, there were already 66 stores in Berlin, 2,000 predominantly female employees worked in the Elbing and Braunsberg factories, and around 100 million cigars were produced.
His widow Cäcilie and Loeser's son-in-law, the senior government and building councilor Alfred Sommerguth, continued to run the company, which subsequently reached the peak of its prosperity.
[11] A short UfA advertising film of the "Walter E. Beyer Cigar Factories" with Rudolf Platte and Eduard Wenck has been preserved from 1942.
In 1964, the architects Hans Scharoun and Edgar Wisniewski moved into an office on the top floor (attic) of the Berlin "Loeser & Wolff" building, which was built in the 1920s and listed as a historic monument in 1955, after they had won the "Capital City Berlin" competition in 1958 to build the Kulturforum (with the Philharmonic Hall, State Library and Chamber Music Hall), which was not far away.
Around the year 2000, "Polis AG", a real estate holding company of Bank Delbrück, acquired the "Loeser & Wolff" building.
In cooperation with the project development company Beos, it was completely renovated and converted from 2002 to 2004 at a cost of 22.5 million euros.
