The 70th birthday of Kommerzienrat Valentin Manheimer (1815-1889)

Valentin Manheimer (1815-1889), a Kommerzienrat (councillor of commerce) since 1873 and a Geheimer Kommerzienrat (secret councillor of commerce) since 1884, receives the congratulations of his daughters and grandchildren in the fountain house of the garden of his Berlin villa at Bellevuestraße 8. The successful ladies' dresser turned seventy, his wife Philippine (third from left in black dress) ordered a painting from Anton von Werner in 1885 that records this event for posterity. Manheimer, who had already achieved prestige and wealth before the beginning of the Gründerzeit, also increasingly operated on the international market in the 1870s and employed around 8,000 people.

Manheimer embodied the successful emancipation of Berlin Jews in the Empire and the considerable contribution they made as entrepreneurs. Born in 1815 in Gommern near Magdeburg as the son of a cantor of the Jewish community, Manheimer came to Berlin in 1836, where he founded a textile factory. Manheimer's achievement consisted of the industrial use and international marketing of the traditional Berlin tailoring trade. His company had the highest turnover in the industry after Herman Gerson's. Continued by his sons, the company had to be liquidated in the global economic crisis.