Hermann Tietz
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- See also Hermann Tietz (rabbi)
Hermann Tietz was a German merchant of Jewish origin. Tietz was born on April 29, 1837 in Birnbaum an der Warthe near Posen (today Międzychód, Poland) and died on May 3, 1907 in Berlin). He was buried in the Weißensee Cemetery.
Tietz was the first to carry out the idea of the department store in Germany and founded the chain store later known as "Hertie".
In 1882, the first department store of Tietz was opened in Gera (Thuringia, Germany) by his nephew Oskar Tietz. Oskars brother Leonhard Tietz later found his own chain store ("Kaufhof"). After stores in smaller towns like Bamberg, Erfurt, Rostock, Stralsund und Wismar had been successful, Tietz established his first department store in Berlin. In 1900, Herrmann Tietz opened a store in Leipziger Straße, where it was located close to the department store Wertheim, the biggest store in Europe at the time. In 1904, Tietz opened another luxurious store at Alexanderplatz. The impressive and palace-like stores should offer the customers a unique shopping experience. Another example is the so called Alsterhaus in Hamburg (established in 1912). With ten department stores Tietz was the largest chain in Berlin. In 1927 some 13,000 employees worked in the Tietz department stores.
The Tietz family divided the German market into two spheres of interest. Herrmann and Oscar Tietz concentrated on the South and East, while Leonhard Tietz (“Kaufhof”) was active in the West and in Belgium.
In the “Third Reich”, all businesses of the Tietz family were "Arianized" (that means seized and given to new owners) and the family members emigrated. In 1933, Georg Karg, the new owner, changed the company’s name to “Hertie Department Stores” as an abbreviation of Hermann Tietz.
