The "Colonial Goods" Trade in Kreuzberg

From around the turn of the century, colonialism became increasingly noticeable in the overall economy of the empire, both in terms of the import of raw materials and new dimensions of consumption. Thus, European and global colonialism was also reflected in the local economy of Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg and involved these urban regions in the global exploitation of colonial resources: On the one hand, there was a commercial district in the area of Ritterstraße known as the "Golden Mile", an important district until the Second World War with manufacturing towns and model houses, some of which also worked with colonial raw materials and often produced high-priced goods for export. On the other hand, merchants from Kreuzberg and Friedrichshain played a not insignificant role in the development of the colonial goods retail trade.

Colonialism was not merely a discursive construction for the creation of a "white" or "European" superiority and hegemony in the world, which was also intended to simplify the domination of subaltern milieus in the colonizing societies. Rather, this hegemony served to open up sales markets and raw materials and, in this capitalist interest in exploitation, established a global unequal distribution of power and wealth that continues to this day. It also pursued and promoted the long-term globalization of human mobility and the flow of goods, including significant expansions of the supply of food, beverages and other goods in the metropolises. ^[1] In this context, it promoted a socio-cultural integration of social classes mediated by goods despite continuing social inequality. A major driver of this was the distribution of natural wealth and goods made from it from its own and other colonies, even in socially disadvantaged districts such as today's Kreuzberg and Friedrichshain.

It is true that the large colonial institutes and associations (mostly run by city dignitaries) were located in the wealthier western districts of the city, as was the largest department store specializing in colonial goods. In the German Colonial Society, for example, with its 43,000 members and 170 local groups, not a single member of the Berlin Committee or even of the extensive board lived east of Mitte^[2] in 1914 – with the exception of a few residents of the westernmost end of Kreuzberg around Dessauer Straße. The colonial exhibitions also tended to take place on the outskirts of the city on suitable, still undeveloped areas. The trade exhibition in Treptower Park of 1896 had a certain spatial connection to Kreuzberg. This offered the paying public an exhibition area called "Cairo", created in coordination with the Egyptian government, which, in addition to a 30-metre-high pyramid, a street scene and culinary delights, offered enjoyable and serious demonstrations and lectures. There was also an extensive colonial exhibition with several village replicas (Dualla, New Guinea, South Seas, East Africa and), for which a special ticket was required. ^[3] It can be assumed that people living in Kreuzberg and Friedrichshain also visited the attractions of this exhibition. In addition, there were more direct connections to German colonialism and expansive globalization in Kreuzberg and Friedrichshain, on two different levels.

From the 1850s onwards, a district with mixed commercial and residential development developed in the neighbourhood around Ritterstraße, in which large buildings with several backyards dominated. After the construction of the Ritterhof in 1905, a specific mix of production facilities developed in the backyards and showrooms and sample warehouses in the front buildings. Since these sample shows were increasingly advertised in large, elaborately designed shop windows, Ritterstraße itself was nicknamed the "Golden Mile". The main industries were glass and porcelain, household and kitchen appliances, paper and leather goods, toys, metal goods, etc.^[4]

Colonial raw materials were processed, especially silver and ivory, especially in the field of gallantry and jewellery. Since elephants could be killed at that time (and until the restriction of the ivory trade in 2013) without regard to ethical or ecological considerations, ivory was initially an exotic and aesthetically pleasing, but quite inexpensive material. The tusks, most of which came from Africa, were processed by the workshop for ivory art Preiß & Kassler, among others. Until the mid-1920s, the company had produced ivory roses and similar decorative elements from old billiard balls in Boxhagener Straße. In Ritterstraße, it produced internationally quite successful, high-priced figurines made of ivory, bronze, silver and cellulose lacquer. The motifs had little or nothing to do with the colonial place of origin of the raw material: mostly young women, girls or boys were depicted in the Art Deco style. It is rare to find a dark-skinned, as always extremely slender lady who is shown as an American-European revue dancer and who seems to be based on Josephine Baker, who was also extremely popular in Berlin in the 1920s. In addition, figures of "oriental servants" were offered. Colonial motifs in the true sense of the word are otherwise completely absent, but were sometimes used in the sample exhibition for the presentation and exotic enhancement of the products. In 1930, the company procured wood carvings and ivory roses for the renewed interior design of the Sarotti showrooms. Several other companies in the export district around Kreuzberg's Ritterstraße also used colonial raw materials: Wild & Wessel had been producing patented kerosene lamps for domestic use since 1855, first in Alexandrinenstraße and then on Prinzenstraße; in the 1860s, the company also supplied lanterns for street lighting in Moscow, and the Alexander Heinrich company exhibited jute carpets and silverware in the sample warehouse at Ritterstraße 84.

The connection to Kreuzberg and Friedrichshain was limited here: as befits the term export district, the companies and model warehouses located around Ritterstraße were primarily aimed at external German and foreign buyers. Preiß & Kassler, for example, delivered primarily to England and the USA; to this day, used pieces and copies can be found mainly there. However, there were also manufacturers in the district who processed colonial raw materials for domestic needs. For example, away from the export district on the banks of the Spree in Friedrichshain, there were a number of rubber goods manufacturers working on Mühlenstraße around 1900, processing rubber from Parà in Brazil and, before the First World War, from Togo and German East Africa. ^[5] In addition, there were two companies in Köpenicker Straße that produced buttons and other objects from Polynesian corozo, shells and mother-of-pearl:^[6] Germans and other colonies supplied new raw materials in a global flow of goods that could be processed into a wide variety of luxury and consumer goods. In addition, Mühlenstraße also played a role in the use of the imperial expansion areas in the east: from 1856 onwards, the Cäsar Wollheim company operated a coal warehouse on Mühlenstraße; from 1895 onwards, the company operated a briquette factory in Zabrze, Silesia. ^[7]

A little-known (and so far not designated as such) architectural monument with reference to colonial exploitation is Dessauerstrasse 28/29. Until 1914, several companies dedicated to the exploitation of resources in German East Africa (today Rwanda, Tanzania and Burundi) had their headquarters here. The building was built in 1908/09 as a front building with two rear courtyards and was one of the first Berlin office buildings whose premises were rented out to interested companies. In 1912, it was expanded by a side wing and a second street front on Schöneberger Straße. In addition to a merchant bank for East Africa and another German-East African bank, as well as the German-East African Company founded in 1885, a trading company for sisal, rubber and cotton, the German Timber Society for East Africa and the Usambara magazine operated here. The latter company traded in coffee, which was grown under its direction by German colonists with local workers – some of them forced laborers – in the Tanzanian mountains. The situation was similar with East African cotton cultivation. ^[8]

Since German workers were given preference for the control of the local workforce and for certain work, human resources were also traded in Dessauerstraße: since 1908, there had been a workers' recruitment company here, which placed German workers in the colonies. In addition, there was the East African Gasthausgesellschaft Kaiserhof, which operated an establishment of the same name in Dar es Salaam. ^[9] Several of these companies were linked to each other or had been founded by the same people – namely Caesar Wegener, Julius Warnholtz (banks), Wilhelm Holtzmann and Fritz Greiner (inn and coffee). Warnholtz, who ran a shipping company in Hamburg, had also founded Gibeon Schürf- und Handelsgesellschaft mbH, which was active in German South West Africa (Namibia), at the same address in 1903. He was also a member of the supervisory board of the German Colonial School for Agriculture, Trade and Industry in Wilhelmshof, North Hesse.

Dessauerstraße 28/29 was also home to mining companies operating in German Southwest (which were also in liquidation in 1914), namely the Nama Land Prospecting and Guano Syndicate, founded in 1905, and the Sphinx Mining Syndicate, founded in 1910. As early as 1914, these latter companies were in liquidation. This indicated the end of hopes of being able to locate and exploit significant mineral resources in Namibia. Because of its character as an early typical Berlin office building, the house, which was rebuilt and rebuilt in 1990, is now a listed building; however, the list of architectural monuments does not mention the colonial past of some of the first tenants. It is therefore ironic that the building is now used by the embassies, the Dominican Republic and Costa Rica as well as Senegal.

The trading companies of Dessauerstraße indicate the extent to which the exploitation of one's own and other colonies flowed into the expansion of the range of goods and thus into the development of the consumer society. The retail trade played another important role in this: while until the early 19th century rural and urban populations were largely self-sufficient in food and consumer goods or through barter, the triumphal march of capitalism with the transition to mass wage labor and the associated immigration into the cities necessitated the necessity of a commodity-like distribution of essential goods. In the "second retail revolution" in the second half of the 19th century, the daily or weekly market was replaced by stationary retail. ^[10] The developing consumer society made a significant contribution to the colonization of non-bourgeois social spheres – as sales markets, as mission areas for bourgeois values and behaviors, but also as places of production of new cultural goods that could be transformed into commodities. In this context, European – and from the 1880s onwards German – colonialism as constituents of modern globalization brought about a significant expansion of the range of goods, and increasingly also for mass consumption. From the outset, the sometimes scandalized term "colonial goods" was vague and insufficiently separated from "product goods," i.e., products of domestic agriculture, and "material goods," i.e., products of crafts and industry. ^[11] According to Meyer's Konversationslexikon of 1887, "colonial goods" were roughly "the raw products of warmer countries, namely coffee, sugar, tea, rice, spices, dye and furniture woods, pharmaceuticals, and cotton." ^[12] The term was used from the late 19th century until the 1970s by the food trade, especially the delicatessen trade, and referred to a whole range of luxury foods and consumer goods from sugar and tobacco to coffee, chocolate, coconut, cotton, jute and sisal products. Although they were shops with a certain quality and luxury standards, as "corner shops" they primarily served the local needs of the middle and lower classes for food and beverages. They were usually run by working-class women and workers whose families had saved enough money for a small self-employment or engaged in a precarious trading activity to supplement meager wages. In addition, there were companies such as Butter-Klawe, a merchant based at Mauerstraße 85, which already operated two branches in Kreuzberg around 1906 and offered self-roasted coffee and unspecified colonial goods in addition to wine and butter. ^[13]

The expression and motor of this development was the founding of a "purchasing cooperative of colonial goods merchants in the Halle Thor district", with its headquarters at Mittenwalder Straße 12, in 1898:^[14] More than 20 local colonial goods, delicatessen and food dealers joined forces in order to jointly buy goods at lower prices and to sell them correspondingly cheaper, and in this way to be able to hold their own against both the emerging large department stores and the consumer associations coming from the Christian workers' movement. ^[15] The Kreuzberg cooperative had a pioneering character: in 1901, the addendum to the Berlin address book listed a second foundation "in the east and the adjacent districts of Berlin" at Gubener Str. 56 in Friedrichshain,^[16] the addendum mentioned another one for the north. ^[17] The concept was so successful that it quickly moved to the better districts of the city: as early as 1907, a purchasing cooperative of the Berlin colonial goods merchants in Berlin operated at Kürfürstendamm 113; ^[18] in the same year, a nationwide business association was founded in Leipzig, whose name Edeka ultimately went back to the Kreuzberg foundation. A Berlin cooperative continued to exist as a purchasing centre and sales association of the Berlin colonial goods dealers, now with its headquarters at Teltower Str. 46.^[19]

The association of retailers, especially in these lower-income districts, makes clear the extent to which the consumption of goods or their raw materials originating from European colonies or nation states of the Tricontinent became mass consumption that included all sections of the population. It should be taken into account that the colonial goods shops, which were often run by untrained merchants, sold their less well-off clientele on credit – i.e. had them "written to" – and therefore fulfilled an important social and distributive function, especially in districts such as Kreuzberg and Friedrichshain. ^[20] It is true that the everyday availability of food and beverages did not mean that their consumption was a matter of course: cocoa, chocolate, spices and tobacco were more stimulants than everyday necessities. For a long time, coffee was also prepared on special occasions in the German Reich. This is evidenced not only by the continuing success of coffee and tea houses, but also by the fact that as late as 1913 more than twice as much "coffee substitute" made from roasted grain and chicory was consumed in the German Reich as "real" coffee. ^[21]

Another special feature of colonial goods was that they were offered and advertised accordingly – at about the same time as products from the domestic food industry such as Maggi and others – in sometimes elaborately designed packaging with appropriate decoration and easily recognizable company logos. Of course, tobacco products, coffee, tea and chocolate manufacturers and distributors in particular liked to use oriental-exotic motifs such as the aforementioned Sarotti Mohr, oriental motifs for "blonde" cigarettes, leaving the public in the dark about the conditions under which these goods were produced. The colonial goods store did not only sell food and beverages. It also conveyed longings for an imagined distance, a temporary or permanent exit from everyday life, which elites in colonies and dependent areas also took advantage of: a large part of the "Oriental cigarettes", which were very popular in the German Empire from the late 19th century onwards, were produced by Ottoman and Egyptian companies such as the Kyriazi brothers and provided with a sales-promoting orientalist design. It was not until after the First World War that German and later American tobacco companies took over the market. ^[22] In the 1970s, the retail trade in colonial goods disappeared in the course of economic concentration processes, in which only group-like associations such as Edeka could survive while largely abandoning the old retail form.

The supply of colonial goods as a particularly desirable commodity created material desires that enforced the principle of cash payment and laid essential foundations for modern consumer society with its promise that goods conveyed immaterial elements of happiness in addition to their use value and fulfilled longings for a somehow different life. Other colonial goods such as cane sugar, which, however, was increasingly replaced by domestically produced beet sugar, became so commonplace through appropriate advertising that they practically completely lost their exotic aspect (Wendt 2021). ^[23]

The different levels of trade in and processing of raw materials from colonized and dependent territories show the extent to which European colonialism as an element of globalization was an essential basis for a profound transformation of German (and European) societies in the late 19th and early 20th centuries: it formed the basis for new areas of production, which were also located in the mixed industrial areas of Kreuzberg and Friedrichshain. Dessauerstraße was home to companies that were or wanted to become leaders in the (sometimes failing) exploitation of the German colonies in Africa. The retail trade, which was indispensable for the basic supply of the population in Kreuzberg and Friedrichstraße in its struggle for existence against wholesalers, department stores and proletarian consumer associations, created the basis for a consumer society based on unequal development, which also included proletarian and sub-proletarian milieus, not least with its range of colonial goods.