Tietz, Oscar

(1858-1923)

   entrepreneur; founded Germany's leading de-partment-store chain, Warenhaus Hermann Tietz. Born in Birnbaum (now Mied-zychod in Poland*) to a wealthy Jewish home with widespread familial connections, he left school at thirteen for an apprenticeship; after holding several positions he formed a partnership in 1882 with his uncle Hermann (1837-1907) that generated the Gera-based textile shop of Hermann Tietz. Emulating Amer-ican ideas, Oscar supplied his customers with assorted clothing and linen goods at low prices. In 1896 the relatives converted the concern into Germany's first department store. Oscar soon oversaw construction of Munich s Warenhaus-palast. Chiefly competing with Warenhaus Wertheim, he trumped his rival by introducing a large food department. He opened similar stores in other large cities and constructed three in Berlin* at the turn of the century (by the 1920s he had ten stores in Berlin). He moved to Berlin in 1900 and amassed a fortune of twenty-five million marks by 1911, thus becoming the fourth-wealthiest man in Brandenburg.

   Tietz supplied war materials during World War I. As a Red Cross delegate, he used his international standing to act in Switzerland as an emissary on ques-tions of foreign trade. After Germany's collapse his contacts and clever infla-tion*-era investments helped reinstate the preeminent position of his firm. His magnificent stores on Alexanderplatz and Leipziger Strasse, each staffed by over two thousand employees, were famous in the Weimar era.

   In addition to possessing business acumen, Tietz was a leader in social policy. Although he was president of the Federation of Department Stores (Verband der Waren- und Kaufhauser) and a board member of the Employers Federation (Arbeitgeberverband) for retail trade, he was active on his firm's behalf with Berlin s Workers Councils* during the November Revolution.* Under his aegis a seminal wage settlement was concluded in 1919 between the retail-trade union and the Arbeitgeberverband; thereafter he mediated wage disputes on several occasions. Active with the DDP, he was friendly with Paul Hirsch, Prussia s* Prime Minister, and maintained contact with other SPD politicians.

   In 1923, the year of Oscar Tietz s death, Warenhaus Hermann Tietz embraced forty companies, seven textile mills, and several clothing manufacturers. Un-derstandably, Tietz and his firm were already anti-Semitic targets before 1914. Because of his prosperity amidst widespread misfortune, disgruntled shopkeep-ers intensified their campaign against him during the inflation era. In 1926 his son Georg purchased KaDeWe (Kaufhaus des Westens), Germany s largest de-partment store, from another Jewish businessman. By 1933, when the NSDAP Aryanized the Tietz chain, it had fourteen thousand employees and earned more than one hundred million marks annually. The Nazis renamed it Hertie, the name it retains today.

   REFERENCES:Benz and Graml, Biographisches Lexikon; Werner Mosse, Jews in the German Economy; Tietz, Hermann Tietz.