Adler & Oppenheimer AG was a leather company with Jewish owner families that was founded in Strasbourg in 1872 and had its seat in Berlin after 1919/20 [1]. Its works in Neustadt-Glewe began in 1910/11 and, according to Wikipedia, employed about 2,000 people in the mid-1930s [1]. With the participation of Deutsche Bank the company was "Aryanized" and renamed "Norddeutsche Lederwerke AG" in 1940/41 [1]. After 1945 the works became the state-owned "VEB Lederwerk August Apfelbaum" [1][2].
The company
Isaak Adler, together with his brother-in-law Ferdinand Oppenheimer, founded the leather wholesale firm Adler & Oppenheimer OHG in Strasbourg on 6 May 1872, which was converted into a stock corporation in 1900 [1]. After France seized the Alsatian assets in 1919 and expelled the families in 1920, the company moved its seat to Berlin on 31 March 1920 and used the compensation to expand its works in Germany, among them the Lederwerke Neustadt GmbH and the Emil Köster AG in Neumünster [1]. Whether the Neustadt-Glewe works were run as a separate legal entity (Lederwerke Neustadt GmbH) or as a plant of the stock corporation is unclear. The families' shares were held by the Dutch holding N.V. Amsterdamsche Leder Maatschappij (Almi) [1].
The works in Neustadt-Glewe
In 1910 a branch of the Lederwerke Adler und Oppenheimer AG, whose owners were German Jews and which gave work at times to up to 800 employees, among them Jewish workers, settled in Neustadt-Glewe. Wikipedia gives 1911 as the start of tanning at the works, namely citing a 1986 jubilee booklet and the town chronicle, and names about 2,000 employees for the mid-1930s [1]. The number of employees is thus given once as 800 and once as about 2,000, the two figures probably referring to different dates or ways of counting and being not clarified at present. During the wage disputes of 1923/24, 50 striking workers were dismissed at Neustadt, among them the KPD functionary August Apfelbaum [1]. In 1934 a court sentenced 14 Mecklenburg communists, among them Apfelbaum, who was thereupon dismissed permanently [1].
1933 to 1940
In July 1935 three unnamed Jewish workers of the leather works were taken into "protective custody". Julius Kahn, the director of the leather works, became deputy chairman of the Landesgemeinde Mecklenburg (state community of Jewish congregations) on 14 May 1936. After the November pogrom of 1938 there are said to have been attacks on the Jews employed at the leather works. From late 1937 senior staff of the Neumünster plant moved to Wiltz in Luxembourg, while Paul Oppenheimer bought a factory in Littleborough (England) in 1936 and opened a chrome tannery there in 1937 and Clemens Oppenheimer moved his residence to Ascona [1].
The "Aryanization"
According to the Wikipedia account, Hermann Josef Abs and Walter Pohle handled the "Aryanization" for Deutsche Bank, which is said to have been the bank's largest "Aryanization" of an industrial company [1]. According to the Wikipedia account, a consortium led by Deutsche Bank acquired about 75 per cent of the shares [1]. The historian Harold James argues, in the account given there, that the bank exploited the Oppenheimers' situation, including the threat to relatives within the German sphere of power [1].
In July 1940 the company applied, on instruction of the Reich Minister of Economics, for its renaming to "Norddeutsche Lederwerke AG", which falls in the period 1940/41 [1]. According to the Wikipedia account the takeover by the consortium began earlier, while the town article gives 1940 as the year of the "Aryanization" [1]. The Jewish owners were expropriated, the former managing directors pushed out, and the factory renamed in order to erase every trace of the works' Jewish history.
After 1945
According to the Wikipedia account, the Neustadt-Glewe works were hit by Soviet dismantling in 1945/46, were handed to German administration in June 1946, came into state ownership in 1948, became a VEB and in 1951 were named "Lederwerk August Apfelbaum". Apfelbaum himself had been held in Sachsenhausen concentration camp from 7 September 1939 and died in an air raid in 1945 [1]. Records of the "VEB Lederwerke 'August Apfelbaum' Neustadt-Glewe" from 1969 to 1975 are held in the Federal Archives and the Saxon State Archives (Leipzig) [2].
From 1947 the Dutch holding company Almi demanded the return of the company. In a settlement with Relda Trading Co. (New York), which represented the Adler and Oppenheimer families, a total of DM 1.75 million was paid to the two firms, which by context are likely to have come from Deutsche Bank [1]. Leather production in Neustadt-Glewe ended in 2007 [1].