(Messel, Alfred).
Berlin: A. Wertheim, n.d. [c. 1905]. Tall quarto, 32 pages. First edition.
A promotional photographic brochure for what was the largest department store in Europe at the time, designed by Alfred Messel. Illustrated with black and white photographs throughout, depicting the exterior of the store and the many interior rooms holding various departments. The massive kaufhaus covered 106,000 square meters, and offered a bounty of shopping experiences our modern day retailers can't comprehend. Wertheim had its roots in brothers Abraham and Theodor, who opened their first store in 1852, and eventually had branches in Straslund and Rostock. Over the years the number of stores grew, but the company's highest achievement was this behemoth of a shop on Leipziger Strasse. The glory age of Wertheim waned with the rise of national socialism, and eventually the store was placed on the list of Jewish businesses, and the managers fired. During WWII, the Leipziger Strasse store was bombed by Allied bombers and lay fallow during the Soviet occupation. Following the fall of the Berlin Wall, the steel bank vaults below the ruins of the store became an apocalyptic styled home for Tresor, for some time the leading club in Berlin and a hot bed for the growth and development of Techno and related musics. Finally, Tresor was evicted in 2005 to make way for commerical construction of a tower to house an insurance company, part of the huge Potsdammer Platz redevelopment. Internally fine, with a light bit of darkening to one section of the publisher's gold and black printed wrappers, otherwise a fine copy. With the original, slightly worn, printed publisher’s mailing envelope. Scarce.
$500 -
A. Wertheim G.M.B.H. Berlin. Leipziger Strasse, am Leipziger Platz. Weitere Verkhaufshauser in Berlin.
