Moritz Weil

Born on April 24, 1895 in Freiburg (or Mannheim), his parents are Emanuel Weil and Ida Weil née Odenheimer. He is a businessman by profession. He is married to MARIANNE WEIL 407 née Hirschler, born on August 3, 1904 in Mannheim. The couple has two children, twins Hans-Peter and Robert, who are born in 1927. The family lives (until 1935) in their own house at Poststrasse 5.

In 1922, MORITZ WEIL joined the paper wholesale business founded by his uncle Heinrich Weil in Freiburg in 1883 as equal partners with his father Emanuel. After his father’s death, he became sole owner of the company in early 1933. It was an extraordinarily successful business with two pillars: firstly, with individual consumers, book printers, ethnographic art institutes and publishers for paper of various types and qualities; and secondly, with aluminum plants, to which special papers were supplied for further processing with the raw material. The wide range of products also required two warehouses: a three-story building was located at Rosastr. 7b behind the offices, and space was rented at the freight station for another warehouse. In the best years, the owners of Papier Weil, Heinrich, Rosastr. 7b, earned an impressive income of 80,000 – 100,000 marks a year.

But in 1933, when the Nazis took power, the company began to experience a drastic economic downturn due to the rapid discrimination against the „Jewish“ population. The aluminum works business was still able to partially compensate for the losses of the other branch due to its monopoly position. But the overall business decline was unstoppable and required painful decisions:

• On February 28, 1936, the first part of the company was “Aryanized” and transferred to the Ettlingen merchant Albert Schneider, already co-owner of a paper wholesaler, for whom the Freiburg branch would in future be located as a branch in the south;
• At the end of 1936, the second, particularly productive

Company shares were forcibly transferred to the same Ettlingen company Schneider (“Aryanized”). Initially with joint business activities and taking into account customer protection for both parties (“competition clause”).

In 1935, MORITZ WEIL had purchased the Freiburg house/villa at Kunigundenstrasse 16 (today Prinz-Eugen-Strasse 26) as joint property with his wife, probably in the hope of better times. But after the complete loss of both parts of the company, the decision to flee Germany must have overturned all other considerations about their business and private future in Germany.
As a result, the family fled to Basel from February 6th to 8th, 1938. But Switzerland was only seen as a springboard for further emigration to America. Their goal was to manage the huge financial transactions associated with the WEILs‘ extensive assets with some degree of success. A small branch of the WEIL company in Basel was used for this purpose; considerable amounts of money could still be transferred there in 1937, thus avoiding further confiscation and the calculation of the due taxes (JVA and RflSt). In any case, 162,000 Reichsmarks were collected by the Nazi state for these compulsory contributions and made available by MORITZ WEIL.

In September 1938, the entire family left Basel and traveled via France to Holland. They traveled with the New Amsterdam via New York and from there with the City of Baltimore through the Panama Canal to San Francisco, where they found a new home.
MORITZ WEIL no longer worked in the USA. He and his family made a living by renting out a large house of their own, which he was able to buy in California.

MORITZ WEIL died on April 5, 1984 in San Francisco at the age of 89.

Sources: Freiburg State Archives, F 196/1-2912; Or 501/49, 165/49 and 166/49. Secondary: Brucher-Lembach, Andrea, “ …like dogs on a piece of bread „. Aryanization and the attempt at reparation in Freiburg, Bremgarten 2004.

Additions: In the area of ​​restitution of business objects, settlements were reached with the Schneider company in 1949 in recognition of the loyal contract negotiations before the war.