Wertheim was a large department store chain in pre-World War II Germany. It was founded by Georg Wertheim and operated various stores in Berlin, one in Rostock, one in Stralsund (where it had been founded), and one in Breslau. It was Aryanized under the Nazis. Founding and early years In 1875, Georg's parents, Ida and Abraham Wertheim (who sometimes went by the name Adolf), had opened a modest shop selling clothes and manufactured goods in Stralsund, a provincial town on the Baltic Sea. An extensive network of family members ensured a low-priced supply of goods. In 1876, one year after the shop opened, the two eldest sons Hugo and Georg (aged 20 and 19 respectively), went to work in the shop following their apprenticeships in Berlin. Three younger sons later joined them. Expansion and growth The two brothers quickly brought new ideas into the shop: customers were allowed to replace goods, the price of a good was no longer debatable but reliable, and purchases were made strictly with cash. This concept was successful, and after the opening of another branch in Rostock, the first branch in Berlin (Rosenthaler Straße) was founded in 1885. Wertheim quickly realised the changing demand of the growing city in the period of industrialisation and in 1890 opened the first real department store on Moritzplatz/Oranienstraße in Berlin-Kreuzberg. The shop floor was more generous in size and permitted more elaborate presentation of products for sale, products were put on display, and longer runs allowed lower prices. However, it increasingly appeared that the limitations, which arose due to the shops' locations within an older-style structures with rooms that were not especially large and this made further expansion difficult. A store was established in Leipzigerstrasse in 1892, and in 1894 began the sale of goods in the first purpose planned and built department store on the Oranienstraße. The flagship Wertheim store on the Leipziger Platz opened in 1896 and attracted an upmarket clientele, who until then had held back from patronising his department stores, with all their needs satisfied under one roof. In the following years, Messel had to constantly expand the building. Other stores on Rosenthaler Straße (1903), Königsstraße (1911) and, again, on Moritzplatz (1913) were rebuilt or expanded. The Moritzplatz Wertheim store helped to finance the redirecting of the U-Bahn (Underground) (copying the model of his competitor Rudolph Karstadt) in order that customers could go directly from