Kitzingen - town of a hundred wine merchants?
Kitzingen is picturesquely surrounded by vineyards in the middle of the Franconian wine-growing region. The former nickname "town of a hundred wine merchants" nevertheless evokes disbelief and raises questions...
In 1835, 20 Christian wine merchants and 32 Büttner were listed among Kitzingen's tradesmen, in 1906 there were actually 50 Christian and 52 Jewish wine merchants! The Büttner trade also expanded, but remained in Christian hands.
When the wine trade, which had traditionally been the town's key industry along with winegrowing, fell into crisis, Mayor Andreas Schmiedel (1859 - 1881) made a concerted effort to attract Jewish tradespeople after the revocation of the "Jewish edict" in 1861. For the first time, Jews could now freely choose their place of residence and profession and the trade in agricultural produce, which included the wine trade, was a trade for which the magistrate did not require proof of qualification.
In 1864, the first Jewish wine merchant, Emil Hellermann from Rödelsee, settled in Ritterstraße. In 1865, the grain and wine merchants Aron and Nathan Gerst from Frankenwinheim moved to Würzburger Straße.
In the same year, Kitzingen was connected to the Nuremberg - Frankfurt a.M. railroad line - a prerequisite for new sales opportunities, which the wine merchants knew how to exploit.
In addition to establishing their business and trade, this generation was also committed to founding an Israelite religious community from the very beginning. A prayer room was provisionally set up in the Hellermann house, the ritual bath in Mainstockheim could also be used, religious instruction for the children and the weekly service initially took place in the small Sickershausen synagogue. The community offices were filled and the planning and financing of a representative synagogue for a growing community of the future was immediately initiated.
The prospering Jewish wine trade provided an increased income for winegrowers and farmers, new jobs in wine sales, attracted further businesses and the establishment of factories, e.g. barrel production, printing works and transport companies, and greatly increased the town's tax revenues.
The transport company H. Hausmann developed from 1900 under Simon Hausmann into the Deutsche Weinkesselwagen-Gesellschaft with its own goods wagons.
Jewish wine merchants were not only financially, socially, culturally and ideally committed to the welfare of their community, but also attained the highest offices and titles in the town society through skill, education, discipline and diligence. Emil Hellermann, for example, became the first Jewish juror at the Kitzingen district court, and Max Fromm and Isidor Ullmann were elected as town councillors.
The Meuschel company had become the industry leader in the Christian wine trade. In 1826, cooper and wine merchant Johann Wilhelm Meuschel from Buchbrunn, under pressure from a saturated wine market and the loss of previous bulk buyers, had developed the groundbreaking idea of driving out in a commercial wagon and selling his wine personally. His equally successful successor, now a wine merchant from Kitzingen, Wilhelm Meuschel, founded the Franconian Wine Merchants' Association in 1900, which was to influence wine legislation and export regulations and offer its members commercial protection.
The most prominent Jewish wine merchant personality was Max Fromm (1873 - 1956), whose father Nathan had opened a wine shop at Wörthstrasse 12 in 1892, coming from Großlangheim.
"Max Fromm, Royal Bavarian Purveyor to the Court since 1911, was a leading wine expert and entrepreneur in his sector. The basis for the enormous rise of the company was the wine-technical expertise of its owner, combined with an exceptionally good commercial aptitude. This was complemented by a decidedly 'gifted wine tongue'. Fromm was regarded as an 'artist of taste' and a master in blending wines to suit the tastes of his customers. He was constantly working on improving cellar technology and the storability of the wine. Despite the difficult times during and after the First World War, he succeeded in constantly expanding the company and increasing turnover through innovations in cellar technology and improvements in the business environment. At this time, the Nathan Fromm wine wholesale business was the largest company in Kitzingen with 89 employees and was one of the largest Jewish wine merchants in Germany. Fromm's turnover in the 1920s is estimated at more than half of all wine sales in Kitzingen. Max Fromm's company grew steadily, so that the cellar capacity in and around Kitzingen was no longer sufficient. His major customers included Mitropa and German Lloyd. To the chagrin of many Kitzingen residents, he moved his company headquarters to the center of the German wine trade, Bingen am Rhein, in 1929. The Nazi dictatorship forced Max Fromm to emigrate to London in 1939 and finally to the USA in 1941 to join his son Alfred, who founded one of the very early Californian wine trading companies with Franz Sichel in 1936." (E. Schwinger)
Like the rest of the Jewish population, the Jewish wine merchants in Kitzingen, but also in Franconian wine villages and the city of Würzburg, were constantly exposed to anti-Semitic tendencies and activities. The surging popular anger is described as early as the planning and construction of the synagogue, and there is also documentation of an occupational "local statute" issued by the town magistrate in 1907, which was co-authored by the ultra-nationalist "Handelsgehilfenverband". It imposed massive restrictions that permanently damaged the competitiveness of Jewish wine merchants.
When Max Stern, a wealthy and generous wine wholesaler and estate agent born in Mainstockheim in 1876, sought to succeed Max Fromm as Kommerzienrat, the Jewish candidate could no longer find a majority on the town council. He and his wife Rosa were perfidiously caught up in the bureaucratic mills of the Nazi state and were deported to Lublin/Izbica in April 1942 and murdered there.
Triggered by the pogrom of November 10, 1938, the wine merchant Salomon Sonder died of shock, while his colleague Adolf Kahner survived a suicide attempt by only a short time. The previous summer, wine merchant Moritz Reich had fallen into the Gestapo's deadly net in Hildesheim. The last Jewish community leader, wine merchant Gustav Gerst (1871 - 1944), son of Nathan Gerst, did not survive deportation to Theresienstadt. The trained religious teacher and later wine merchant Emanuel Katzmann (1889 - 1942) took on the bitter burden of leading the remaining Jews of Kitzingen through the pogrom and deportation.
To this day, many stately residential and commercial buildings (with huge wine cellars) bear witness to the life, work and business of the Kitzingen wine merchants in the townscape, while the Jewish cemetery in Rödelsee also contains numerous and stately memorials to the deaths of their ancestors in times of peace. Surprisingly, only one of these gravestones is decorated with a grape motif, as wine is also a symbol of new beginnings and new blessings in Judaism.
