F. W. Woolworth Company yesterday denied having any connection with stores of the same name in Germany. Whatever relauonship does exist is “by commercial arrangement.” The company here, however, is not supporting the boycott of German goods.
This was the upshot of a communication which reached the offices of the Jewish Daily Bulletin yesterday in which there were enclosed photographs of a window display of an F. W. Woolworth in Leipzig, Germany. The photographs proclaimed the fact that “This is a Christian establishment.”
Paul Hofer Jr., secretary of the F. W. Woolworth Company here, told the Jewish Daily Bulletin that the German stores are entirely “independent.”
He said that the German stores and the American stores are virtually different companies and have little to do with each other.
Asked by what right the German firm uses the Woolworth Company trademark, Mr. Hofer said that there is a financial arrangement between the German and American officials of the stores.
He said that the German stores determine their own policies and settle their own decisions. Regarding the boycott of German products by the company, Mr. Hofer said that no stand has been taken on the matter, which means in effect that the stores are selling German goods.
LARGEST DEPARTMENT STORE
The F. W. Woolworth stores in Germany constitute perhaps the largest department store interest in the country. During about a decade of their existence they haxe expanded rapidly. Throughout the country, particularly in the larger cities, they met with popular approval.
Today in Germany no large department store is as well patronized as the Woolworth chain. From casual observation, it might be said, the floors of Germany’s Woolworth stores are more packed than those of the United States. So rapid has been the expansion of the Woolworth stores in Germany, that during recent years the German government saw fit to restrict further growth of the concern. For a period of years no new Woolworth stores may be built, according to governmental decree.
At the time of the one-day boycott of Jewish merchants, storm troops considered putting the Woolworth interests in the category of Jewish-owned shops, contending that the stores were owned in part by American Jewish interests. The matter was brought to the attention of the American acting commercial attache in Berlin at the time.
On March 21, 1932, at. the trial of the Nazi leader Hcino Ballhoefer, it was revealed that the W’oolworth Company was subsidizing the National Socialist Party. On April 22 of that year the Berlin head oftice of Woolworth said that the branch store in Erfurt contributed 1,000 marks to the Nazi fund, but explained that the money was not for political activity but for relief.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
