Frankfurt Stories Wronker family
Zeil 85, 60313 Frankfurt am Main
Hardly anyone still remembers the name Wronker or the importance for Frankfurt am Main of the Hermann Wronker AG company and the family who owned it from 1891 to 1933. Hermann Wronker came from a well-known merchant family (department store owners Leonhard, Oscar and Hermann Tietz were his uncles) and opened his own department store in 1891 at the age of twenty-three. In 1907, in conjunction with a building contractor and a renowned architect he succeeded in realizing his visionary concept of a much bigger, American-style department store on Frankfurt’s Zeil.
The department store street front was 8o metres long, which was unique at the time, and stocked a wide range of goods at moderate prices. It also contained an art salon with changing exhibitions and a music shop. From 1910 to 1933, the company steadily increased its turnover and at times provided jobs for up to 3 000 employees
Even before 1933, there were personal attacks and hate speech. Once the National Socialists had seized power, calls for a boycott followed. Paradoxically Hermann Wronker and his son Max were banned from entering their own department store – and finally expropriated through ‘Aryanization’.
The Wronker children, Max and Alice, managed to flee abroad. Their parents’ delayed plan to emigrate to America with a visa failed: Hermann and Ida Wronker were deported from France and probably murdered in Auschwitz in 1942.
© Dieter Mönch
The book Vergessene Namen – Vernichtete Leben. Die Geschichte der jüdischen Frankfurter Unternehmerfamilie Wronker und ihr großes Warenhaus an der Zeil (Forgotten names – destroyed lives. The story of the Jewish Wronker merchant family of Frankfurt and their large department store on the Zeil) is self-published and can be ordered directly from the author via d_moench@t-online.de for €14,80 plus postage.
