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“My optimistic neighbor thinks we would be pegged here on Sunday!

If not, I'll be happy to see you again in Hamburg, I think I'll come on the 18th, ”wrote Gertrud Troplowitz in the revolutionary November 1919 from her Westensee estate in Schleswig-Holstein to Carl Melchior, who was on friendly terms with her.

As a partner in Warburg Bank, he advised Oscar Troplowitz's widow since she was the owner of the company P. Beiersdorf & Co.

And that was quite a challenge.

In just under 30 years, Gertrud's husband had turned a small paving factory in Altona, which he had bought from Paul Carl Beiersdorf for 70,000 marks, into a global corporation.

Brands developed by him such as Nivea, Labello and Leukoplast later made for millions in sales and corresponding profits.

Oscar Troplowitz died suddenly of a heart attack in April 1918 at the age of 55.

The Beiersdorf company survived the next 100 years - and is today the only Hamburg company in the German share index (Dax).

A thriller in the transition from Wilhelmine to Weimar times

And although his brand names are synonymous in everyday language with the products skin cream, lip care, adhesive plasters and adhesive tape, hardly anyone in Hamburg knows the story of their inventor Oscar Troplowitz and that of his wife Gertrud.

The attempt by the National Socialists to remove Jewish biographies from German history has continued to this day.

The non-fiction book "Troplowitz" by the historian Henning Albrecht now helps the deficiency thoroughly with a view to the entrepreneurial couple.

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After the early death of the company boss, Gertrud's brother Otto Hanns Mankiewicz took over the management of Beiersdorf.

But six months later, the 47-year-old lawyer also succumbed to a heart condition.

As the new owner, his sister shared the management of the factory in Eimsbüttel with a committee of authorized signatories.

With their consent, she set the course for the future by bringing Warburg Bank on board.

The company wedding was not necessarily in the interests of future heirs, but certainly in the interests of the Nivea inventor.

That would prove to be the case as early as 1920, because only two years after her brother, 51-year-old Gertrud also died.

The history of the Troplowitz and Mankiewicz families, researched by Albrecht down to the smallest detail, reads like a thriller in the transition from Wilhelmine to Weimar times.

This is not least due to the often thin sources.

Many documents were lost in the world wars.

So the author is sometimes dependent on plausible assumptions.

One thing is clear: the Troplowitzs, who liked to travel through Europe in their cars and to the USA by steamboat, were not only financially successful.

Oscar and Gertrud came from upper-class Jewish families in Silesia, converted to Christianity in Hamburg and continued the patronage cultivated in their homeland as Hamburg citizens.

Here it fitted in well with the tradition of promoting art and culture by wealthy merchants.

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Oscar and Gertrud Troplowitz not only gave money for the city's scientific foundation, which was dedicated to founding the university and on whose behalf the biographer Albrecht was now working.

Troplowitz was also a progressive social entrepreneur.

So by 1912 he gradually reduced the weekly working hours in his factory from 60 to 48 hours a week and in 1902, as one of the first company bosses in Hamburg, introduced paid vacation, a whole three days.

His greatest welfare achievement was the establishment of a company pension scheme.

In addition to the management of the company, the trained Dr.

phil did a doctorate in pharmacy as a charity in associations and as a member of the citizenship as well as two deputations in politics.

Here, too, the conservative Troplowitz appears progressive.

In the building deputation, for example, he campaigned for Fritz Schumacher's appointment as building director.

He was to exercise his office from 1909 until the National Socialists came to power in 1933.

His brick buildings still shape entire city districts today.

Franz Nölken painted Oskar Troplowitz

Source: bpk |

Hamburger Kunsthalle |

Elk

Affectionate artists and, like his brother-in-law, friends of some, Troplowitz acquired a collection of paintings that was given to the Hamburger Kunsthalle as a gift after the couple's death.

There, to the delight of director Gustav Pauli, she closed the Impressionist gap; works by Renoir, Liebermann and Sisley are part of the collection to this day.

Only Pablo Picasso's “Absinthe Drinker”, sold by the Nazis to Switzerland as degenerate art, hangs in Bern today.

The story of the painting is one of the thrillers that the richly illustrated book touches on.

Troplowitz portraits of Fritz Nöltken, who painted Oscar, and Rudolf Schulte, who held Gertrud for eternity, can also be seen in the Kunsthalle today.

Henning Albrecht: "Troplowitz", Wallstein Verlag, 488 pages, 39 euros

Source: Wallstein Verlag

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This text is from WELT AM SONNTAG.

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Source: Welt am Sonntag