Fromms: How Julis Fromm's Condom Empire Fell to the Nazis (13 page)

Julius Fromm was busy around the clock, as a merchant, a boss, and an advertising agent on his own behalf. On top of that, he sought to advance the technology of his condoms. In view of the growing shortage of raw materials, Fromm—in collaboration with I.G. Farben in Leverkusen—conducted experiments to develop a suitable synthetic form of rubber.
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He improved the lubrication of “rubber products for rectal and vaginal use,” and filed a patent application to the Swiss Bureau for Intellectual Property in Bern on February 24, 1936. His new approach remedied several vexing problems that commonly occurred with older methods, which typically employed fine-grained materials such as Indian tragacanth or locust bean gum as lubricating substances. Although this treatment “smoothed the surface of the rubber products and improved the desired lubrication,” the rubbers would swell up prematurely in humid air, causing an “annoying stickiness” and making it “very difficult to impossible” to unroll them. Fromm therefore mixed the bulking agents “with finely powdered additives unaffected by humidity, such as talcum, mica, and other substances of that sort” and dusted the rubber products with these mixtures. This patent may well have been his most important one. It was registered in thirty countries.
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In the summer of 1936, the anti-Semitic newspaper
Der Stürmer
launched a smear campaign. Under the headline “Yet Again the Jew Company Fromms,” the paper used the form of ostensible or actual letters to the editor to inform its readers: “Dear
Stürmer!
I have before me edition no. 8 of the trade journal
Der deutsche Friseur
(The German Barber), dated April 16, 1936. This paper, I find a large advertisement for the Jewish company Fromms.” Another letter writer described the conduct of
the
Gubener Zeitung
as “an outrage” and “the height of tastelessness” for having placed an advertisement by “the Jewish company Fromms Rubber Goods … right in the middle of the text of a speech” by Rudolf Hess. Furthermore, the streetcars in Hamburg were “still full of Fromms posters.” “Couldn’t you,” the alleged reader asked “dear
Stürmer
,” “at least drop a broad hint to the management of the Hamburg streetcars?”
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Julius Fromm was bound to have realized by this point “that he had to leave Germany,” his son Edgar recalled, “but he was so successful that he did not want to give up.” By the end of 1937, he knew it was time to go. He instructed his bank, the Reichs-Kredit-Gesellschaft, and his attorney, Sally Jaffa, to sell Fromms Act.
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The managers at the Reichs-Kredit-Gesellschaft agreed in principle to lend Fromm their support. Their initial plan was to grant him a credit in the amount of one million Reichsmarks so that he could emigrate as quickly as possible, and to take interim
possession of the company on behalf of the bank. The company could then be Aryanized in good time. But in May 1938, the legal situation changed drastically. From then on, sales of companies that belonged to Jews were subject to the approval of the Reich Economics Ministry.

The boss in his office in
Köpenick, ca. 1935

Immediately thereafter, both the district economic adviser in Berlin, Professor Heinrich Hunke, and Hitler’s economic adviser, Wilhelm Keppler, began to show an interest in Fromms Act. However, Hunke (who went on to head the economics division of the finance ministry of Lower Saxony after the war, and remained in that position until 1967) was pushed aside to accommodate a far more influential prospective buyer, and he instead took possession of the Ebro Company (officially called the First Berlin Steam-Horsehair Spinning Factory, Inc.) in Berlin-Weissensee.
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On May 18, 1938, a Dr. Heuser, the assistant district economic adviser, came to the Reichs-Kredit-Gesellschaft to discuss the
Fromm situation. According to notes on the conversation, he “pointed out that managing a factory with these notorious products would not be very pleasant for a bank, even if a trustee were appointed. Criticism of the bank might be leveled by a public authority or by some other agency.” He added the ominous remark, “Lending a million to the Jew Fromm could be somewhat risky.” After all, there was no guarantee that the collateral would ever be realized, even if it had been secured in line with standard bank procedures. From “the political standpoint,” this business was “fraught with extraordinary risk.”

One of the cafeterias in Köpenick, with a
picture of Hitler over a swastika, ca. 1935

Heuser threatened the bank, which was prepared to conduct reasonably fair negotiations with its client, Julius Fromm, that he would put a stop to the allocation of natural rubber to Fromms Act. After all, he pointed out, raw materials were subject to foreign exchange and armaments regulations. This action would have bankrupted the company and rendered the bank collateral worthless. And Hermann Göring—the man in charge of foreign currency and raw materials used for armaments—already had his eye on the ultramodern factory. As a result, Heuser explained, he himself would look around for a “financially solvent candidate for Fromms.” The bank managers expressed their delight by underlining that part of the statement twice in their memo and adding three exclamation points in the margin.

The fact of the matter was that the prospective buyer had already been identified. This buyer and her associate were applying every conceivable kind of pressure to reduce the price of the business. Accordingly, the Reich Economics Ministry turned down a potential buyer whom Fromm had proposed. His name was Walter Koch, an Aryan German who lived in London. In the summer of 1938, Koch offered £50,000 for the business. The contract was even ready for signature.
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At the beginning of the sales negotiations in 1937, Fromm and the managers of the Reichs-Kredit-Gesellschaft had estimated a
market value of five million Reichsmarks as a starting point, in view of the attractive Köpenick factory and the rising sales. In the course of the next six months, Fromm cut his initial asking price in half. Eventually the Reich Economics Ministry brought in a buyer named Elisabeth Epenstein, a woman who was offering to pay 200,000 Swiss francs to Julius Fromm from a bank in Zurich. According to the official German exchange rate, this sum was the equivalent of 116,000 Reichsmarks, but in reality the offer was worth several times that amount. After all, this was “precious western foreign currency,” as people said at the time. The Reichsmark was regarded as play money abroad—just as the East German mark would be many years later—and was traded far below the official exchange rate.

Fromm was also granted the right to convert 300,000 Reichsmarks of his personal assets into £30,000 over a period of time, and to have unrestricted use of this money from abroad. That was a significant concession in those days and conferred substantial privileges on Fromm in comparison with other Jews forced to emigrate. The rest of the deal, which was approved by the Reich Economics Ministry, provided for Fromm to receive a share of 10 percent on Fromms Act export sales to British Empire countries. This share of the export sales would count as part of his personal assets toward the £30,000. He would then reimburse the now-Aryanized Fromms Act for the official equivalent value of his share of the export sales from his personal assets left behind in Berlin, which he—like all others hounded out of the country—would not be permitted to take with him. It appears likely that there had been an additional provision legally entitling Julius Fromm to sell all Fromms rubber products throughout the British Empire.
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When the war broke out, this deal essentially became null and void.

The conditions of sale listed above for Fromms Act in July 1938 were dictated by a Dr. Siegert, an ambitious assessor in the Reich
Economics Ministry. He summoned Fromm to the ministry by telephone, refused to make any concessions, and “demanded notarization the very same day.”

The compulsory contract was drawn up on July 21, 1938. On August 4, 1938, Dr. Carl vom Berg notarized the inequitable arrangement and had this to say in the preamble about the seller: “The person appearing before me is a Jew.” A few days later, the Berlin chief of police approved the sale, and it was again declared with notarial authorization “that the company is to be regarded as an Aryan company from this day forward.”
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The new owner of the company was Baroness Elisabeth Epenstein von Mauternburg, who was advised by her lover, a Viennese businessman named Otto Metz-Randa. She was the godmother of Hermann Göring, who had arranged for her to get the factory because it worked to his personal advantage.

As wretched and demeaning as Julius Fromm must have found the outcome, his compulsory sale turned out reasonably well in comparison to other Aryanizations at that time. After all, a relatively
substantial amount of foreign exchange was made available, albeit less than Koch would have paid. On September 30, 1938, the Reich Economics Ministry formally granted the transfer of 200,000 Swiss francs to the Schweizerische Kreditanstalt in Zurich, with the request “to expedite the matter.” The document stated that “Herr Julius Fromm [is] free to dispose of the funds for the purpose of emigration.”
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Julius and Selma Fromm in St. Moritz, 1937

Officials at the Reich Economics Ministry made a note in the Fromms’ passports permitting them to leave the German Reich at any time and without additional formalities. That note later proved problematic. According to Edgar Fromm’s report, the British asked: “Why were you able to leave without any difficulty when many other Jews were not?”

Julius Fromm had lost a great deal, but not everything. He was set to start a new life in England. However, Germany went to war and put a crimp in his plans.

In 1946 the Fromm family’s lawyer justifiably claimed: “The contract was signed under duress, and the payment was in striking disproportion to the value of the objects and shares acquired. Frau von Epenstein took advantage of her relationship with Göring, and at the Economics Ministry Herr Fromm was simply informed that the sale had to take place without delay under the set of conditions presented there.”
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