“Anyone who knows Berlin knows Leiser.” That’s how the company put it in 1955. The legendary shoe store on the corner of Tauentzien and Passauer Straße will soon be closed. The branches in Tegel, Spandau and Potsdam remain open, but where the glorious rise began 116 years ago, shoe sales will end on July 16th at the latest.
In 1906, the Kaufhaus des Westens was still under construction. But you could already guess what it would bring: lots of walk-in customers. Where, if not here, could one dare to do something economically?
At least that’s what Julius Klausner thought, who opened Berlin’s largest shoe store with his uncle Hermann Leiser in 1906. Address: Tauentzienstrasse 20.
However, the success story began much earlier. Julius Klausner, the eldest son of a Jewish merchant family from Galicia, came to Berlin in 1891.
The then only 17-year-old presented his uncle Leiser, who was an egg dealer, with a business idea: Everyone needs shoes, but made-to-measure shoes are expensive.
Let’s sell comfortable, cheap shoes for the common people.
Klausner and Leiser started with a shop at Oranienstrasse 34 in Kreuzberg. The business idea caught on, and branches were soon added. Leiser offered rare service.
Example: If a pair of shoes was not available in the right size, the apprentices would get it from another branch in no time at all and anyone who was not a friendly seller had no future at Leiser.
Quote from company founder Klausner (who lived at Fasanenstraße 83): “The success of our company is based on the value for money and quality of our goods and the courtesy that our employees show our customers”
The Tauentzien store became a flagship store in 1906 (today it is called a “flagship store”). The shoe shop was quieter in the golden 20s, but since 1925 the 300 employees have been making shoes themselves. Brand “seal of value”.
At that time, the young Marlene Dietrich lived on the Tauentzien, she was also a Leiser customer.
During the Nazi years, Klausner was able to hand over his company to an “Aryan” business partner and save himself to Buenos Aires. After 1945 he came back and found only three branches undamaged. The company founder died in 1950, but his partner Dietrich Bahner successfully continued the company.
The comeback in the 1950s was brilliant. Leiser also swallowed up some famous Berlin competitors, including Stiller in 1975. At that time, the Berlin Leiser empire consisted of 18 Leiser shops, 16 Neumann branches, 14 Stiller shops and nine Schuhhof sales outlets.
At the company’s 100th anniversary in 1991, Leiser was at its peak with 150 branches in Germany. But since then, trade has changed – mainly due to the Internet. “Due to online trading, the competitive pressure increases massively. The wide range with many individual branches will become a competitive disadvantage over time,” says Leiser, a company with a long tradition.
It’s bitter that the shoe legend from Tauentzien is disappearing from Wilmersdorfer Straße like it did in 2018. Because Leiser belongs to Berlin and to City-West like the KaDeWe and the “Kranzler”.
