The Sale of the Tietz Department Store. 
 Memoirs of Julian Castle . 
 Source: Julian Castle-Stanford Reflections - the Diary of a German Jew in Hiding (Oakland 1965). 
 ...Leonhard Tietz AG, Cologne celebrated its 50th anniversary in 1930. The company had been founded by Leonhard Tietz, his two brother's in law and his two cousins. I had entered the firm in 1908 and held a leading position in the firm. In 1920 I became a member of the board, in charge of marketing. In 1930 our firm had 41 department stores in Germany and a subsidiary EHAPE that our company owned 100% and that had 75 low budget stores. We had our own factories in different industrial branches. Our retail department had many affiliated companies that handled all their marketing through us. Our turnover reached about RM 350 million. Our company was second largest in Germany in its line. We had about 20 000 employees... 
 1930 had been the best year in our history, a year of growth. The depression that had started in 1929 in the USA was felt in Germany in 1931 when the Darmstaedter und Nationalbank crashed and caused many firms to go bankrupt. The number of unemployment rose rapidly and reached seven million in 1932... In February [1933] Elizabeth and I were on our winter vacation... [in the mountains of Switzerland] with the Bachs and Ernst Baumann, our good friends. In the morning of February 28th the waiter who served our breakfast gave us the news that the Reichstag in Berlin was burning. I left for Cologne the next morning. A terrible propaganda campaign against Jews and communists was launched after the fire... Minister of Propaganda Goebbels together with the heads of the party districts and Streicher started their infamous hate-campaign against the Jews. 
 ...This campaign reached its peak on March 22nd when the government called for the boycott against all Jews and Jewish enterprises on Saturday, April 1st... On Monday, March 27th, 1933 Elizabeth and I went to Amsterdam where I had to attend a board meeting of the department store company of De Bijenkorf N.V. of Amsterdam of which Tietz held a substantial part. The Sunday before, Alfred Tietz, our chairman of the board, had left for Holland with his family to spend their Easter holidays. Elizabeth and I were dining on the train when the police came to inspect our passports. Elizabeth was lead to a special compartment where a policewoman asked her to strip completely and conducted a search on her body for smuggled money. Of course she had no money hidden on her body. On Tuesday we left Amsterdam to go home. The newspapers in Holland and reports from the USA, England and other countries were full with news the hate campaign against Jews in Germany and many organisations abroad attempted to influence the German government to call off the boycott. We arrived in Cologne at midnight. Our Cologne friend Franz Levy waited for us. He informed me about the Jewish situation, the atmosphere in the country and the unrest among the 1 500 Jewish employees of our company. He left for Berlin with the night train to see if anything could be done in co-operation with other big organisations. The whole city was in turmoil on Wednesday March 29th. Propaganda speeches were given in all the big squares and in front of big businesses. In the afternoon one of our secretaries who had connections in the passport office spread the rumour that all passports of Jews were to be confiscated on Thursday. This had a terrible impact in our circle. We called for a meeting of the management of our enterprise at our home for 8 p.m. that evening in the hope that Alfred Tietz would be back from Amsterdam. We had chosen our home and not Alfred Tietz's because he was very much in public view because of his position as chairman of the board. Alfred Tietz finally arrived at 9 p.m. with his wife. It was a very exciting meeting. Alfred called Franz Levy in Berlin and they decided that he should leave for Berlin right away with the night train. It was clear to all that if the authorities should confiscate our passports, we would all be trapped. After a discussion that lasted for hours, we decided to send our wives and children out of the country. We started packing at midnight. Our maids helped us and our dear American friend Theodore Merrill came that night to discuss all the necessary matters. 
 ....Elizabeth and Tom, our younger son, went from Bonn to Switzerland. Our eldest son, John was at that time in the boarding school in Salem. I returned to Cologne and brought my suitcase to the Merrill's, where I spent several nights fearing to go home. ...On Thursday the atmosphere in Cologne and in the shops all over the country was close to an explosion. Calls came from all our 41 stores with demands for guidelines and questions on how to handle the situation. To prevent any problems, we decided that in case that the government should go on with the boycott, all our branches should be closed as of Saturday, April 1st. On Friday, March 31, Franz Levy came back from Berlin, where he and Alfred Tietz had had meetings with different companies and government people. He told me that contact was made with Mr. Abraham Frowein, a well known industrialist and the President of the International Chamber of Commerce, and that he had been asked to become the chairman of the board of our company. It was clear that there would have to be changes in the board membership. Until that time our family held about 53% of the shares. With one exception, all the members of the board were members of the family. Franz Levy told me about the meetings they had held in Berlin with our bankers, with party members and our department store association. We knew what was to be expected. In the afternoon we had a meeting with our council, mostly bankers from Cologne. It was our intention to inform them about the meetings in Berlin and to tell them that probably the Jewish members of board would retire if they would be compensated for the termination of their contracts that were valid until the end of 1936...while we were in the meeting the radio reported heavy demonstrations in front of the Tietz stores in Berlin. We learned later that Gerhard Tietz had left the same night for Holland to join his wife and other members of the Tietz family. That evening I talked to Elizabeth in Basel on the phone. She told me that all the hotels in Basel were full. Thousands of refugees were arriving from Germany....Elizabeth implored me to leave Cologne and go to Switzerland. I was of the opinion that I should stay with the firm where over 1 500 Jewish employees were in need of help and guidance from the management. 
 On Saturday April 1st all the Jewish shops all over were closed. In front of all the small shops and doctor offices etc, there were Nazis barring the entrances. If anyone attempted to enter the small shops or offices, he was beaten, photographed and harassed in any possible way. We did not go to our offices but gathered in the office of one of our subsidiaries. Mr. Frowein arrived in the afternoon. He told us that Mr. Tietz had called for a board meeting in Berlin for Monday April 3rd. He suggested that all the Jewish board members and Jewish members of all the councils should retire. He added however that all the board members would receive management positions in the firm. This was the plan, although we had no assurance that the party and government would agree to it. I called Elizabeth twice and implored her to return home. She was sure this was a mistake and begged me to leave the country. But finally she yielded and promised to return home. I went to fetch her from the train on Sunday morning. She was very unhappy to be back home, but I could not leave the country at this point and leave the firm and parents. I also had the responsibility towards my family. Here in Germany I had the means to take care of them and to pay for the education of our sons. Maybe I could have done it in another country, but I never had the feeling that something could happen to Elizabeth and to me personally. We stayed with the Merrill's, where Elizabeth stayed dumy absence. In the evening I left for Berlin with Franz Levy, Franz Baumann and Gerhard Tietz. Meanwhile the government was under pressure from abroad and the boycott was called off by the government as of April 3rd, but the boycott by the Nazi party was still on. 
 On Monday, April 3rd, we had a meeting in the conference room of the Deutsche Bank. All the Jews in high positions retired. Mr. Frowein, the new chairman of the board promised to honour all the contracts and to give the members of the board other management positions within the firm. The only other members of the new board were bankers. The new board asked Mr. Levy and me to remain in the position of members in the advisory council in order to ensure a continuation of the business. Two “Aryan” i.e. non-Jewish board members were nominated both of them had been with the firm for many years in leading positions. Mr. Levy and I both demanded as a condition for our staying in office, that our former chairman of the board Alfred Tietz should stay in office. Thus the new advisory council had four non-Jewish and two Jewish members, and the new board had two “Aryans” and two Jews. In the afternoon Mr. Frowein and the new board member Dr. Baier went to the party headquarters to get the approval for the new arrangement and to ask the party to cancel the boycott and to remove the SA guards that were still posted in front of our stores. The party demanded the following: All boards and councils would have to have an “Aryan” majority. The shares that were still in family ownership would have to be sold to “Aryan” share-holders....The firm would have to report monthly on how many shares were still in Jewish hands. ...The capital of the firm was 31 million in 1933. Our family owned 16,300,000 of it. During 1932 the value of our shares had dropped seriously because point 16 of Hitler's platform said: “closing of all department stores and rent of spaces in the stores to small businesses.” When Hitler came to power, no one could know what would happen to the department stores. In the year 1933 our turnover dropped for over 50%. The party carried on the boycott. Men and women in brown uniforms stood in front of the stores. The officials of the city, the states and the Reich were not permitted to buy in our stores because they were party members. Although the name was changed from “Tietz” to “Kaufhof”, the popular name used was still “Tietz”. 
 In the fall Elizabeth and I went to England to find a boarding school for our son John, as it became evident that he could no longer study in a German school. We registered him for January 1st 1934 at Ottershaw College. In February 1934 Dr. Schmidt, the Minister of Economy of the Reich called Mr. Frowein to Berlin. He told him that he could not approach the Fuehrer with the question of the department stores as long as there were still Jewish members on the board... He needed to remove the Jews from the board in order to convince the party and its organisations that department stores should remain an important part of our economy and to end the boycott of the stores by the party. When Mr. Frowein returned from Berlin he asked Franz Levy and me to leave the firm as of September 30. The date was chosen so that he could find replacements. 'Of course we will honour our contracts with you till end of December 1936', he promised. He told us that he had the Ministers assurance that we could be kept as advisors to our successors, but it would be advisable if we established our own offices in Cologne. A short while later Franz Levy and I founded our own company... In a short time we were very successful. The banks and industrialists recommended their clients to use our services...The first year of our existence was very promising, but then many difficulties were created by the party all over Germany. It became clear... that if the anti Jewish policy would not change, our firm could not keep going on. Because of this Elizabeth and I decided to start to look around preparing for emigration in the future. In March 1936 after celebrating the 80th birthday of my father, Elizabeth and I went to Palestine for five weeks to see whether we could emigrate to this country. After examining all sides of the problem we decided not to go there. We felt that especially our children would find it hard to adapt to that country. So we returned to Cologne. ... After the death of my father we decided to leave Germany permanently in the spring of 1937. I informed my partner of my decision. He was one of the most talented and intelligent businessmen I have ever known, but politically speaking he was a child. He was such an optimist. He was sure that no harm would befall him or his family, and that Hitler would change his position... 
 ...It was not simple to leave the country. One had to sell one's property, shares, and holdings because one could not take anything but furniture and clothes out of the country. We bought a lot of things to spend our money, and this needed time. ... During our last stay in Berlin our lawyer from Cologne who worked with the tax officials preparing our emigration, informed me that the Gestapo were looking for me, asking for more information about my investments. The next morning we left Berlin with a heavy heart. We left the train in Dusseldorf, 30 minutes before it arrived in Cologne, to meet our lawyer. He advised us to leave Germany right away if there was anything not in order. He pointed out that we had our passports and that we were two hours by car away from Holland. But I had a clear conscience and we decided to go back to Cologne and to await the opportunity to leave our country in an orderly fashion. The next morning I went to the Gestapo with my lawyer, and was permitted to go after one hour. However one hour later two Gestapo officers came to my office to take me to prison so that they would have more time to examine my complex holdings, as they explained. I stayed in prison for two nights; was released after having to hand over my passport. The next day my lawyer gave me my passport back and advised me to leave the country right away, because the Gestapo could come back with questions at any moment. 
 [They left the next day for Amsterdam. They took only some suitcases and 10 RM each as was permitted by law. Their household was packed by their house staff and sent to Holland. Their sons were sent to school in England. Castle founded a firm in Amsterdam with his cousin. They kept their positions in the Dutch department store, which Tietz owned. Castle and his wife were in hiding in Holland during the war. The text is the introduction to a book, published after the war, with letters and a diary he wrote while in hiding.]