The ‘grande dame of Dusseldorf’s consumer temples’ is one of Europe’s most imposing department stores. Its imposing Art Nouveau (Jugendstil) frontage, with ten pilasters, vast areas of glass and five dormer windows, dominates the city’s principal street. Behind it is a towering atrium surmounted by a vaulted glass room and illuminated by massive cylindrical lights suspended from the roof. The store was built for the company that grew from a haberdashery shop opened in Stralsund in 1879 by a Jewish retailer, Leonard Tietz (1849-1914), who, with many successful entrepreneurs of the time, offered quality goods at fixed prices, for cash rather than on credit, and prospered from a high turnover with modest profit margins. Tietz developed a chain of stores and in the 1890s established his head office in Cologne. After being favourably impressed by the Galeria in Milan, he built several spectacular stores in the first decade of the twentieth century. The shop in Dusseldorf was designed by Joseph Maria Olbricht (1867-1908), an architect born in Opava (then Troppau), in the present-day Czech Republic, who had worked with Otto Wagner (1841-1918) in Vienna. The Tietz family were forced to flee from Germany in the early years of the Third Reich, and were subsequently indemnified for the loss of their property. After successive changes of ownership the shop is now part of the Galeria Kaufhof group.
Tietz Department Store
Galeria Kaufhof
Königsallee 1
40212 Düsseldorf
Germany
+49 (0) 211 - 13910
Homepage