CARMEN VALERO Berlin

Berlin

Updated Wednesday, January 31, 2024-00:04

The sixth floor of the Kaufhaus des Westens, the most famous warehouse in Germany and symbol of Berlin's history, is a temptation for the eyes, the palate and the credit cards. In the small bars and restaurants that have sprung up in what was only a

delicatessen

supermarket , champagne, caviar, oysters, blinis with salmon and refined

patisserie

are available . What began in 1905 as an adventurous idea by Berlin merchant Adolf Jandorf has exceeded all expectations since it opened its doors on March 27, 1907. Even then, the Kaufhaus des Westens, or KaDeWe for short, offered exclusive and often unknown products for Germans.

The impressive KaDeWe building on the Tauentzien quickly became the temple of Paris fashion and a showcase for the exotic fruits of the South Seas. There was so much non-Aryan product that the Nazis expropriated the warehouses in the 1930s. Even so, the street quickly became one of the most popular boulevards in the city and also one of the most attacked by Allied aircraft in the Second World War. World War. The KaDeWe also suffered. An American plane crashed into the roof of the building and caused a large fire. The reconstruction lasted almost a decade and a half. It was not completely completed on all seven floors until 1956.

That.

The famous Kaufhaus des Westens in Berlin, where you can find all kinds of delicatessen products, have just filed an insolvency application with the Berlin district court of Charlottenburg.

Because.

The background is the exorbitantly "high" rents of the buildings they occupy.

When.

They opened their doors in 1907 and were so famous that they were even targeted by the Nazis in the 1930s.

In the 1960s, the KaDeWe lost a considerable number of employees and regular visitors due to the construction of the Berlin Wall. However, little by little, it regained its former greatness. A renovation project that lasted until 1978 expanded the sales area to 44,000 square meters and established the KaDeWe as one of Berlin's most famous landmarks. After the fall of the Wall in November 1989, the first thing many East Germans did was go to the KaDeWe, up to 200,000 in a single day, the largest number of visitors in its history.

Today, KaDeWe is a large store of exclusive brands with more than 60,000 square meters of sales area that attracts around 50,000 customers daily. The owners are, with 49.1%, the Austrian real estate group Signa, and, with 50.1%, the Central Group, backed by the Chinese-Thai billionaire Chirathivat clan. Together with Signa founder René Benko, Central Group also acquired the Globus department store in Switzerland and the British department store chain Selfridges.

All this to say that from glamor to insolvency there is a step and the KaDeWe group has just taken it with the presentation of an insolvency application before the Berlin district court of Charlottenburg. The background to the request was the exorbitantly "high" rents for department store properties. The company will now have to reorganize under the supervision of an administrator and KaDeWe may survive the process.

What is certain, however, is that the State will lose millions as a result of insolvency. In 2020, the company had received a subsidiary guarantee from the states of Berlin and Hamburg and the federal government for a loan of up to €90 million during the coronavirus pandemic. The loan expires this year.