Hartwig Kantorowicz Actien-Gesellschaft –
a bottle from the battlefield and its history
In the area of the German defensive system in the southern St. Mihiel salient recently, this initially inconspicuous relic from the First World War, which later proved interesting after further research, was found. A bottle of the Posen liqueur manufactory Hartwig Kantorowicz AG (pictured right).
Hartwig Kantorowicz (* 1806; † 1871) was an entrepreneur in the formerly Polish, later Prussian Province of Posen and a member of the Jewish community. The Province of Posen emerged from the historical region of Greater Poland and was annexed by Prussia at the Congress of Vienna. Posen was the only administrative region in the Prussian state with a majority non-German population.
In 1823, Hartwig Kantorowicz founded at the age of only 17 in the city of Posen (Polish: Poznan) a distillery and liqueur factory that quickly achieved nationwide fame due to the high quality of its products. Gradually, further company headquarters and branches were added, including in Hamburg and Berlin.
Already in 1832, Hartwig Kantorowicz was granted by the then Oberpräsident of the Province of Posen, Eduard von Flottwell, naturalization. Von Flottwell had fought the Polish national movement in order to, as he put it, “win the Polish province for Prussia.” He patronized the impoverished bourgeoisie and above all promoted the emancipation of Polish Jews.
In 1833, von Flottwell issued through the “Provisional Ordinance Concerning the Status of Jews in the Grand Duchy of Posen”, a regulation that was modeled on the rules for the integration of the Jewish population that had already been in force in Prussia for several years. With these regulations, which were thoroughly liberal and modern by both past and present integrative standards, many Jewish families were enabled to participate self-determinedly and successfully in social and business life.
Furthermore, and this is one of the points of connection to the topic of the First World War, the Flottwell Ordinance allowed Polish Jews to enlist as volunteers in the Prussian military service. Many young men did this with great enthusiasm, because they were grateful to the Prussian state for the freedoms and opportunities they had received. Through a military career, they also wanted to secure further-reaching equality and reputation for themselves and their families. As is well known, the latter succeeded only transitionally in Germany’s political development.
In 1885, as the fourth child of one of the company founder’s sons, the later historian and medievalist Ernst Hartwig Kantorowicz was born. With him, we find the second point of connection for integrating the find into the topic of the First World War.
Coming from a commercial apprenticeship in Hamburg, Ernst Hartwig Kantorowicz (born May 3, 1895 in Posen; died September 9, 1963 in Princeton, USA) volunteered for military service immediately at the beginning of the war. He became a Vizewachtmeister (first sergeant) in the 1. Posensches Feldartillerie-Regiment Nr. 20, a highly respected, tradition-rich Prussian unit. With his regiment, Kantorowicz was deployed from September 1914 in the Frontbogen von St. Mihiel. Until the autumn of 1916, he took part in the engagements in the area of the Grande Tranchée de Calonne, around Fort de Troyon, on the Combres Heights and in the Woëvre-Ebene. Following this, the regiment was also engaged in the intense fighting near Verdun. Kantorowicz was deployed for about two years near that sector of the front where other German soldiers had also enjoyed a bottle of liqueur from the family business’s repertoire during wartime.
Perhaps feeling bound to his gastronomic family tradition, Vizewachtmeister Kantorowicz held overall supervision during the deployment in the St. Mihiel-Frontbogen from September 1914 to October 1916 over the restaurant “Krug zum Grünen Kranz” opened by his regiment in Billy-sous-les-Côtes. Soldierly life in the small village at the foot of the Côtes de Lorraine, just a few kilometers behind the front lines, is described in a readable manner in the Regimentsgeschichte des 1. Posenschen Feldartillerie-Regiments Nr. 20.
Kantorowicz survived the war and became known, among other things, for his comprehensive literary work on Frederick II as well as the book “Gods in Uniform”, written in the 1930s and republished in 1963. His political attitude was, like that of many Jews in the formerly Polish part of the German Empire, strictly German-national and antizionist. In January 1919, Kantorowicz took part in the suppression of the Berlin Spartacist uprising and in March of the same year in combating the Munich Soviet Republic.
He studied economics and ancient history in Berlin, Munich, and Heidelberg. In Heidelberg, he shared the lecture hall with individuals such as Joseph Goebbels. There he also gained access to the circle around the writer and poet Stefan George. Starting in 1930, Kantorowicz held a professorship for medieval and modern history at the University of Frankfurt am Main. Because of his participation in the war, he was initially spared by the National Socialists. In 1934, he criticized the new rulers and asked for a leave of absence “as long as the discrimination against nationally minded Jews continues”. Kantorowicz was promptly removed from public service. In 1938, he emigrated to the USA and taught at the universities of Berkeley and Princeton. He died in 1963 in Princeton.
The bottles of the Kantorowicz company were produced in renowned Silesian, Saxon, and Czech glassworks and were mostly designed to a high quality. They bore the portrait—also found on the bottle from the St. Mihiel front salient—in the form of a hexagram with a salmon in its center as a symbol of the distillers and liqueur makers, as well as the initials of the company founder H and K. The bottle found contained one of the company’s many liqueurs with a Dutch connection.
Since the company structure and the production of spirits were fundamentally changed after the end of the First World War, such bottles are quite rare today. Hartwig Kantorowicz had to sell his company to the newly founded Polish state for 20 million Mark in the early 1920s and moved to Berlin, where he founded a new company under the management of the Schultheiss corporation. In the Jewish Museum Berlin, some bottle specimens, some of which are very delicately crafted, from the original period of the company in Posen can be admired.
Upon closer examination of its history, this local, initially inconspicuous find offers an intensive and multifaceted insight into recent German and European history.
were AI-edited (notice pursuant to Art. 50 Regulation (EU) 2024/1689).