J. Otto Krakenberger

1939 Flucht in die Niederlande; dort inhaftiert im Lager Westerbork und im Anschluß nach dem KZ Bergen-Belsen deportiert, das er überlebte; er kehrte nach der Befreiung im Frühjahr 1945 nach Nürnberg zurück und baute die Hopfengroßhandlung der Familie wieder auf.

cf.: http://www.rijo.homepage.t-online.de/pdf/DE_NU_JU_krakenberger.pdf

cf: http://www.rijo.homepage.t-online.de/pdf/EN_NU_JU_jtn.pdf

In 1860 Salomon Krakenberger (1834 - 1884) founded a wholesale business in Nuremberg. Since 1864 it was dedicated exclusively to the hops trade. In the beginning of the 1880s Salomon’s nephew Max (1855 - 1911) entered the company, who became its owner after his uncle deceased, keeping the name S. Krakenberger. In the year 1890 Max’ brother Leopold (1865 - 1933) became his business partner. By mutual partnerships with the Nuremberg hops wholesale companies Hopf & Sons and the Hesselberger Brothers the Krakenbergers succeeded in creating an internationally leading hops wholesale business. When Leopold’s son Otto (1898 - 1991) entered the company in 1924 a nd soon afterwards became its CEO, S. Krakenberger had found a qualified first mate who not only stirred successfully his family’s and the affiliate d companies through the restless seas of the Weimar years’ economy, but even expanded the business activities despite the decrease of the German hops export in general. The affiliated companies, concentrated at Widhalmstraße 4 since the mid-1920s, had an annual sales volume of several million Marks, 50 % originating from the widespread export activities in Scandinavia, Western Europe, North and South America , and Asia. Like in many other cases the success story of S. Krakenberger found an end with Kristallnacht and the subsequent wave of Aryanizations of Jewish enterprises in Germany. Gentile employees took over for a fraction of the real value of the companies. In the spring of 1939 Otto Krakenberger emigrated to the Netherlands, where he ran S. Krakenberger’s branch as the now head office. After the German invasion of Holland in May 1940, Otto and his wife were arrested and deported to several concentration camps. Immediately after the end of war Otto Krakenberg er began to reconstruct his enterprise, first in Holland and by the partnership in the hops wholesale Allfeld & Egloff (Lupofresh) also in Nuremberg.

from http://rijo.homepage.t-online.de/pdf_2/EN_NU_JU_wwi.pdf:

...The hops merchant Otto Krakenberger (Nuremberg 1898 - 1991) escaped a similar fate [Auschwitz] only with considerable luck. Descended from a national-minded family, as a schoolboy he was already a member of the association Nuremberg Military Power. In active service from 1916, Krakenberger was deployed in the Carpathians, Galicia, and Belgium. After the war he participated in 1919 in the destruction of the Munich Soviet Republic as a member of the Freikorps Oberland militia. Despite official confirmation of his status as a front combatant he found it necessary to emigrate in early 1939 to Holland, where he converted the local branch of his enterprise into its main office. After the German invasion Otto and his wife Martha we-re moved successively to the concentration camps Vught, Westerbork, Bergen-Belsen, and Biberach a.d. Riss, yet they survived the Holocaust and eventually returned to Germany.