In 1875, Georg's parents, Ida and Abraham Wertheim [de] (who sometimes went by the name Adolf), had opened a modest shop selling clothes and manufactured goods in Stralsund, a provincial town on the Baltic Sea.

Wertheim quickly realised the changing demand of the growing city in the period of industrialisation and in 1890 opened the first real department store on Moritzplatz/Oranienstraße in Berlin-Kreuzberg.

However, it increasingly appeared that the limitations, which arose due to the shops' locations within an older-style structures with rooms that were not especially large and this made further expansion difficult.

During construction the night-time electric lighting and steel scaffolding caused a sensation, and when the store opened on 15 November 15, 1897, the result was traffic chaos on the Leipziger Straße.

The innovative, vertically structured façade of narrow pillars extending from the ground floor to the roof and interspersed with windows received high praise, not least because it alluded to the building's function.

With the construction of the corner pavilion on the Leipziger Platz frontage, with its deep portico, in 1904, Messel created nothing less than the incunabulum of progressive department store architecture.

The traditional formal language, with the quasi-ecclesiastical sculpture employed, was described by critics as a "positive catastrophe", contrasting with the much-derided Berliner Dom (Cathedral), which was completed around the same time.

[4] The tremendous impact of the new department store on the general public as well as on architecture experts is documented in newspaper and magazine articles and statements by famous architects and their critics.

The Wertheim family attempted to avoid losing control of the company by making Georg's wife, Ursula, the principal shareholder, since she was considered "Aryan" under Nazi law.

The family was forced to sell all their shares at reduced prices to "Aryans" and in 1939 the store was renamed AWAG, an acronym for Allgemeine Warenhandelsgesellschaft A.G. (General Retailing Corporation).