Pundt & Kohnert

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Pundt & Kohnert

P & K terminal Geestemünde
Formerly	Pundt & Kohn (renamed Pundt & Kohnert in 1937)
Type	(General Partnership)
Industry	Timber trade, timber import, sawmill and planing mill
Founded	1863 (1863)
Founder	F. J. S. Kohn
Fate	company liquidated due to death of owners in 1967
Headquarters	Geestemünde, Free Hanseatic City of Bremen , Germany
Key people	Franz Kohn, Hans Kohnert, Gerhard Kohnert
Products	square timber, profile strips, round bars lumber
Number of employees	150 as of February 1943
Footnotes / references Corresponding article in the German Wikipedia

Pundt & Kohn OHG (general partnership) was a German timber import and wood processing company founded in 1862 by F. J. S. Kohn in Geestemünde. Until it had been destroyed by Allied bombings in 1944, it was one of the most important and oldest companies in this branch on the lower Weser. The company was dissolved in the third generation in 1967 after the death of its last owner, Hans Kohnert. The rise and fall of the company is considered exemplary for the history of a medium-sized Hanseatic family company.^[1]

Company history[]

Foundation and first generation (1863–1879)[]

The sailing ship captain and shipowner Franz Johann Syabbe Kohn founded his own wood import company in Geestemünde in 1862. For this purpose he expanded an original old-style warehouse, two-storey and three-cellar, on the Geestemünd dike near the old Geeste bridge to the residential office and warehouse. In the summer of the same year, the merger with the timber trade of Captain Dietrich Pundt, also located on the Geeste dike, took place. Both founded the company Pundt & Kohn (P & K). Business flourished thanks to the construction of new port facilities on the Geeste river and the rapidly growing demand for pit timber, railway sleepers and construction timber for residential and factory buildings in the course of population growth and the industrial revolution of the 19th century.^[2] Since the domestic supply of wood could no longer meet this great demand, the company shifted to importing wood mainly from Scandinavia, Russia and partly from America, from where predominantly precious woods were obtained. In view of the weight of the transported goods, the waterway was by far the most cost-efficient until well into the 19th century.^[3] It was no coincidence that wood importing companies concentrated on the lower reaches of rivers, such as the Weser and the Elbe, from where the imported and processed wood was distributed to the centers of industrialization by barges and later increasingly also by rail. This also applied to the P & K company, whose first wood storage areas were in Deichstraße (later called Bussestraße) directly on the Geeste dike shortly before the confluence of the Geeste with the Weser. Here the owner's old residential and office building also stood until the Second World War. After only five years of cooperation, co-owner Diedrich Pundt left the company in 1868 due to illness. From now on, Franz J.S. Kohn continued the well-developing timber import business, connected with his shipping company with its own ships and ship shares (‘’Guayana’’ and the Briggs ‘’Marianne’’, ‘’Auguste’’ and ‘’Salia’’), until he died on August 13, 1879. Then his son, Franz Kohn, took over the family business.

Prime-age and second generation (1879–1909)[]

'Cabinet pane' (glass painting) Pundt & Kohnert, 1938

The storage areas on the Geeste soon proved to be too small. In the new industrial port of Geestemünde, there were new construction and storage areas, which were also separated from the Geeste river by a lock. Therefore, these areas were independent of the tides throughout the year and largely ice-free. On the west and north side of the cross-canal, the connecting canal between the main canal and the timber harbor of Geestemünde, inaugurated in 1877, P & K built new storage sheds^[4] over a length of 300 m. It was made up of large two-story storage buildings specially prepared for the import, as well as open storage buildings. Company storage space totalled more than 10,000 m². Around 1890 the company imported approximately 30,000 solid cubic meters of wood annually, compared to 25,000 solid cubic meters of the major competitor company ‘’Chr. Külken’’, founded in Geestemünde in 1872.

To facilitate their imports, P & K founded its own steamship shipping company at the end of the 1880s with two ships of 750 and 1,150 tons, specially prepared for timber imports. Further ships were planned in 1890.^[5] A new office building at Schönianstraße 15 was also built at this time. In 1887 the Kohn family moved into a new representative villa at nearby Borriesstraße 6.^[6]

Together with the two other large timber importing and processing companies in Geestemünde, i.e. ‘Chr. Kuelken’ and ‘Rogge’, P & K systematically expanded the timber trade until the 1890s. By inland waterway to the Upper Weser region, and by rail to the Ruhr region and other industrial centers under construction. However, the breakthrough came with the customs union of the Lower Weser towns (1888) and the inclusion of the timber harbour in a much larger spatial and economic sales area. Timber imports on the Lower Weser tripled within just a decade.^[6]

The various stages of development of industrial woodworking in the 19th century, which did not develop continuously but rather cyclically, had a decisive influence on the operational design of P & K.<ref<ref<ref^[7] The planing machines played a key role in this. .^[8] As early as 1877, a permit for a sawmill and planing mill on the cross channel was applied for. In 1890, Pundt & Kohn built a modern sawing and planing mill with round rod production at the head of the cross-canal, between Industriestraße, Kanalstraße and Sägestraße, which traded under the name ‘Geestemünder Holzindustriewerke Backhaus & Co’. In contrast to the unrealized project of 1877, the company now had a direct rail connection to Industriestrasse.^[6][9]

At that time, P & K was one of the oldest and largest companies in this branch on the Lower Weser, and P & K was by far the largest company in terms of turnover.^[10]

• 

  Backhaus Ltd., letterhead, 1930s

• 

  P & K sawmill and planing mill, 1930s

• 

  P &K planningmil, 1930s

• 

  P & K sawmill, 1930s

• 

  Sawmill extraction systems, 1930s

• 

  Sawdust extraction system, 1930s

• 

  Sawdust tower, 1930s

• 

  Timber loading ramp, 1936

• 

  SS 'Margarethe Cords', unloading of imported timber at the P &K pier, 1929

• 

  Map of the ‚Gau East Hanover‘, 1944

Expansion and third generation (1909–1945)[]

Hans Kohn in his office, 1937

Pundt & Kohn was a major creditor to the insolvent ‘’J.H. Krumnack’’, a furniture factory, steam sawmill and timber dealer in Melle.^[11] For this reason and also out of family interests, this company was taken over by Pundt & Kohn on September 27, 1909 as part of the liquidating foreclosure auction.^[12] After the death of Franz Kohn in 1909, his son, Hans Kohn, continued the business of P & K in the third generation. His older son, Gerhard Kohn, took over the management of the newly acquired factory in Melle, which was renamed Meller Möbelfabrik Ltd (trading name: MMM) in 1909. Its main business field was furniture manufacturing as had been entered in the commercial register.^[13] The sole owner was the general partnership (OHG) Pundt & Kohn in Geestemünde, in which both brothers were personally liable and authorized signatories.

In the following years the shareholders also founded the company Unterweser Holzhandel Ltd, Wesermünde (‘Lower Weser timber trade’, Wesermuende). The sole owner was their mother, Johanne Kohn, the widow of Franz Kohn, who died in 1909. The company's managing director was Hans Kohn, who, together with his brother Gerhard, had now combined four companies within the framework of a group of juridical independent businesses: the parent company Pundt & Kohn, MMM, Backhaus & Co and Unterweser Holzhandel Ltd. Last but not least, this served the purpose of tax avoidance, in particular through profit transfer as well as profit and loss offsetting between the legally independent companies, which incurred different business, wage sums and corporation tax, depending on size and economic situation. The value of P & K's timber stocks alone, for example, was 1,252,225 RM, according to the 1926 trade tax declaration. That would correspond to a purchasing power of about US$ 5.2 m or € 4.5 m (at a rate of 1 RM = € 3.60) today. Apart from that, the tax group was also vital for P & K because of the great losses in the Great Depression (1929–32), from which the furniture factory in Melle suffered less. During this time, P & K declared life-threatening losses of over Reichsmark (RM) 400,000 due to the failure of trade credit receivables of business customers who had gone bankrupt.^[14]

In 1937, Hans Kohn applied for the family and company name to be changed to ‘Kohnert'. This was approved by the ministry on August 14, 1937. The reason was growing hostility vis à vis the company and family because of the Jewish-sounding family name ‘Kohn / Cohn’ in the context of Aryanization] in Nazi Germany. In 1941 senator Kohnert was appointed Wehrwirtschaftsführer (1941–1945) and President of the newly created Chamber of Commerce of the 'Gau' of East Hanover (1943–1945). During the war, timber imports at P & K concentrated on (neutral) Sweden, and in particular on the Kramfors sawmill in the Härnösand Municipality in northern Sweden.

Reconstruction and the end (1945–1967)[]

The P & K factories, as well as the mansion of the Kohnert family, were completely destroyed during the Allied bombing raids on Bremerhaven on September 18, 1944.^[15][16]

On the contrary, the subsidiary 'Meller Möbelfabrik' survived the war undamaged.^[17] The office building at Schönianstraße 15 remained largely undamaged and was converted into the Kohnert family's residential and office building by 1948.^[18] The build-up phase after the war was delayed, however, as the American occupying power temporarily banned the company owner from his profession (1945-47) because of his activities as president of the Gau chamber of commerce and as Wehrwirtschaftsführer under the Nazi regime. In addition, parts of the company's quay facilities on the cross channel were confiscated by Allied forces for military purposes and were therefore not available as wood storage space. Moreover, the military government initially forbade the payment of compensation for war damage, applied for shortly after the war (in 1945), totalling RM 1.1 million, apart from that from an advance of RM 245,000 already approved before the end of the war by the Nazi government. The final approval under the Equalisation of Burdens Act was delayed for decades, which was why P & K no longer benefited from it. It was not until 1967, after the death of the owners and managing directors and the liquidation of the companies, that a fraction of the requested compensation - offset against the advance paid in 1945 - was paid out to the heirs.^[19]

While P & K was able to resume importing wood from 1948, the financial means were not sufficient to build up the destroyed sawmill and planing mill. Therefore, P & K had no choice but to have its wood cut to size by its major competitor, the Külken company, also based in Geestemünde, which significantly reduced its own profit. P & K was never able to really recover from this, despite the great backlog demand for sawn timber and construction timber in booming post-war Germany and times of the Economic miracle. Even the profit transfer (1956-66) by the subsidiary ‘Meller Möbelfabrik’, as part of the fiscal unity agreed in 1937, could no longer stop the decline. Therefore, the company was dissolved after the death of its owners Gerhard Kohnert (in 1962) and Hans Kohnert (in 1967). It closed on October 13, 1967 and was deleted from the commercial register.

The company owners in three generations[]

Hans Kohn with one of his grandchildren, March 1944

With the establishment of his own timber import company in Geestemünde in 1862, the captain of sailing vessels and ship owner Franz Johann Syabbe Kohn (1828-1879) opened up a new business area for himself and his family. In addition, he secured the Kohn family a new, secure source of income. His family heads had been captains and owners of emigrant sailing vessels from Brake, a small town at the lower Weser in the grand duchy of Oldenburg, to the Americas and the Caribbean for generations. Then, he and his mother had looked for new, commercial activities in view of the uncertain future prospects of a sailing ship owner at the end of the Age of sail and the dawning age of steamships. After his death, his son Franz Kohn (1857-1909) took over the company. He was followed by his two sons Hans (Johannes) Kohnert (1887-1967) and Gerhard Kohnert (1882-1962). The latter mainly built up the subsidiary ‘Meller Möbelfabrik Ltd', Melle (MMM) starting in 1909. Within a few decades it developed into an important furniture factory in what was then the Grönegau. In accordance with the economic and regional political validity of P & K, both its managing director Franz Kohn, as well as later-on his son Hans, were Senator for life in Bremerhaven as well as members of the Bremerhaven Chamber of Commerce and Industry (IHK). Hans Kohn was also elected its president in 1933, against the votes of the NSDAP. Later-on he was elected president of the ‘Gauwirtschaftskammer Ost-Hannover’ (Chamber of commerce of the NS-Gau East Hanover, 1943-45), into which the cities of Wesermünde) and Lüneburg, including their chamber of commerce, were incorporated (1939). Finally, he was appointed Wehrwirtschaftsführer (1941–45). In his reign the company experienced its heyday, but later-on also its decline.

Nevertheless, in 1951, the chamber of commerce of Bremerhaven recognized Hans Kohnert's services to the development of trade in Bremen and beyond with the award of the honorary presidency. His brother Gerhard Kohnert was one of the founders of the ‘Meller Volksbank’ (Credit Union, Melle) in 1921 and for a short time (1946) also mayor of Melle, installed by the British occupation force that had confiscated his manison but allowed to continue his business.^[20] In 1953 he was awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany for his services to building-up the domestic furniture industry.^[21]

Literature[]

• Paul Hirschfeld: Hannovers Grossindustrie und Grosshandel (Hanover's large-scale industry and wholesale trade), eds.: Deutsche Export-Bank, Berlin. Publisher: Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig, XVI, 1891, 412 p.
• Julius Marchet: Der Holzhandel Norddeutschlands ('The timber trade in Northern Germany', in German). Publisher: F. Deuticke, Leipzig, Vienna, 1908
• Richard Zimmermann: Deutschlands Holzbedarf ('Germany's need for wood', in German). Zeitschrift für die gesamte Staatswissenschaft / Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics. vol. 50, issue 4, 1894, pp. 573–582

References[]