The EMSA-Werke were a factory for shoe articles and orthopaedic accessories that the merchant Max Samuel (1883-1942) took over or founded in Güstrow in 1906 and ran from 1916 at Friedrichstraße 28 in Rostock, at times employing more than 150 people [1][2][3]. From 1923 Samuel chaired the Jewish community of Rostock [3]. After 1933 the firm came under pressure and around the turn of 1938/39 was placed under a trustee, sold and continued as "Voß-Werke". For the "Aryanization", however, the sources give different dates (spring 1938, or January to April 1939) [1][2].
Foundation and rise
Max Samuel was born on 9 January 1883 in Argenau (today Gniewkowo, Poland) [2]. He trained in a shoe shop in Güstrow and developed orthopaedic articles and shoe accessories there [2]. According to English Wikipedia his brother Isidor ("James") Samuel handed him control of the Güstrow shoe business on 1 June 1906, which Max renamed "EMSA-Werke" [1], whereas German Wikipedia and the Federal Agency for Civic Education speak of a foundation in 1906 [2][3]. A patented brush for suede shoes contributed to the success, which according to English Wikipedia [1] was a rubber brush, and it was sold in Germany and abroad (Russia, Scandinavia, England, USA) [2]. The German patent was granted in 1926 and the US patent in 1931 according to English Wikipedia [1].
As the firm outgrew Güstrow, Samuel rented a plot at Friedrichstraße 28 in Rostock (Kröpeliner-Tor-Vorstadt) in 1916 according to English Wikipedia [1]. It was entered in the Rostock commercial register on 16 May 1916, and in 1919 he bought the premises from the owner Kurt Orth [1]. On 23 June 1930 the business was converted into a stock company whose shares remained entirely with Samuel [1]. Exports went, among others, to Austria, Czechoslovakia, Palestine, Sweden, Switzerland, Great Britain and the USA [1]. The brush and brush-wood factory B. J. Bernhard in Rostock also supplied brush-wood to the EMSA-Werke [5].
The firm after 1933
From 1933 to 1936 the number of employees rose from 54 (according to German Wikipedia: 55) to 64, whereby many Jewish workers dismissed elsewhere found work here [1][2]. Samuel's son Herbert emigrated to England in 1934 and founded Herbert Foot Appliance Ltd. there to distribute EMSA products [1]. According to the Max-Samuel-Haus [4] he built a branch of the EMSA-Werke in Blackburn, while according to English Wikipedia [1] the firm moved to Blackburn only in 1938; the audit report for 1934 also records RM 19,000 of "loans" to support fleeing Jews [1][4]. On 30 September 1936 the son-in-law Hermann Kaiser, who had been authorised signatory and supervisory board member since about 1933, left the supervisory board, and the Rostock lawyer Paul Bernhard succeeded him; the source gives as reason that under § 248 of the Commercial Code (version of 1936) employees could not sit on the supervisory board of their employer [1]. A ban on Jews working as manufacturers' sales representatives, issued in August 1938, finally cut the firm off from its distribution channels [1]. On 18 September 1938 Samuel commissioned Dr. Paul Hoffmann with the liquidation, but whether he actually acted is unclear [1].
On 3 January 1939 the Mecklenburg state administration placed the firm under the trusteeship of the auditor Karl Deutler, who was to sell it and satisfy a Reich flight tax demand of RM 200,000 [1]. On 21 January 1939 Deutler sold EMSA-Werke AG to the newly founded EMSA-Werke KG, whose foundation was concluded on 17 April 1939; the buyers were the Rostock department-store owner Erich Voß and the bank director Harry Helmers, who paid RM 146,000 for it, while the firm had been valued at RM 900,000 in 1932 according to the account [1]. The details on trustee, buyers and price, however, come from a single source [1]. In 1941 it was renamed "Voß-Werke KG", keeping the EMSA trademark [1]. After 1933 Samuel himself stayed in Rostock for the time being and devoted himself to the leadership of the community and to social work, securing the Jewish cemeteries, hiring dismissed Jewish workers and helping people emigrate with papers or travel money [3]. After 1933 he was no longer allowed to hold his functions in the merchants' corporation and the Landes-Universitätsgesellschaft [3].
"Aryanization" and emigration
According to German Wikipedia the works were "Aryanized" in spring 1938 and afterwards continued as "Voß-Werke KG" by a co-owner of the Zeeck department store [2]. The Federal Agency for Civic Education states that Samuel followed his children into English exile in spring 1938 only after the firm had been seized [3], while the foundation gives no date and says only that he went into English exile after the EMSA-Werke had been seized [4]; the villa at Schillerplatz 10 was also "Aryanized" and fell to the German Reich [4]. English Wikipedia, in contrast, gives the trustee and the sales of 1939 (see above) and states that Samuel left Germany in 1937 and arrived in Southampton on 27 November 1937 [1]. Samuel died in Blackburn on 2 September 1942 and is buried in the Jewish section of the cemetery there [1][2]. The date of the "Aryanization" thus remains unclear, since spring 1938 appears as a date only in German Wikipedia [2], while the Federal Agency for Civic Education [3] dates only the departure, the Max-Samuel-Haus [4] gives no date and English Wikipedia [1] names the trusteeship from 3 January 1939 and the sale in 1939; likewise Max Samuel's emigration is placed in 1937 according to English Wikipedia [1] but only in spring 1938 according to the Federal Agency for Civic Education [3].
After 1945
According to English Wikipedia [1] the Soviet occupation administration expropriated Voß and Helmers in 1945, whereupon the firm was called "Rostocker Schuhfabrik" and later became part of a state-owned combine. In 1966 the plot at Friedrichstraße 28 went to VEB Stadtbeleuchtung Rostock. On 7 July 1991 Herbert Samuel received DM 200,000 as compensation for the loss of the plot [1]. Herbert Samuel handed the residence at Schillerplatz 10 (today the Max-Samuel-Haus) over to the foundation in 1991 [3].