Bundesarchiv, Berlin, SAPMO Bildarchiv
over Golluber’s position as managing director of Baugesellschaft Zentrum. Both companies were under close observation by the NSDAP. In February 1937 the Reich treasurer demanded the “hand-over without delay of the register files concerning 1. Baugesellschaft Zentrum GmbH [and] 2. Jonass & Co. KG Berlin”. Just one month later the company Baugesellschaft Zentrum GmbH which owned the site at Lothringer Strasse 1 was changed into a civil-law partnership. Hermann Golluber had no other alternative but to admit Johannes Horn and Else Vogdt to the company as shareholders. They now held a 40 per cent stake in the property. At this point, the site at Lothringer Strasse 1 was rented for three years by the leaders of the Hitler Youth organization and the premises converted to accommodate roughly 1000 employees. In May 1938, Hermann Golluber and his short-term business partner Hugo Halle left the partnership. The company was now no longer classified as Jewish. After the November pogroms in 1938, Hermann Golluber and his wife Rosa were hidden for a time by Margarita von Kudriavtzeff, who worked at the American embassy and probably saved their lives. In spring 1939 they emigrated to the USA. Hermann Golluber died in New York on August 18, 1939. From 1938, Johannes Horn was sole proprietor of the companies Jonass & Co. and Baugesellschaft Zentrum GmbH. He leased the premises that same year to the National Socialists and sold them in 1942 to the Hitler Youth leaders.
After 1945, the former department store was owned by East Germany’s ruling SED party and became the seat of the Zentral Komitee, party archive and Institute for Marxism-Leninism in the ZK of the SED. In the mid-1990s, the property was restored to Golluber’s heirs. In 2007 they sold the building to the exclusive British Soho House Club. Today the former discount department store, which built up a clientele in the late 1920s with the offer of price reductions and layaway purchase plans, houses Turkish baths, gyms and luxury apartments. U L L A JU N G
Bundesarchiv, Berlin, SAPMO Bildarchiv
A discount department store becomes an exclusive club
After 1945 the department store fell to the SED and became the seat of the party’s Zentral Komitee and Institute for MarxismLeninism. There was nothing to commemorate the Jewish owners or its time as headquarters of the Hitler Youth organization.
In fall 2009, the building which Hermann Golluber had built was reopened as an exclusive international club. Soho House Berlin is intended as a meeting place for artists, filmmakers, media workers and business people. The building is classified as a historical monument. 43