The store and property
Hoher Weg 27 · Martiniplan 10
A clothing house founded in the nineteenth century, rebuilt beneath glass, divided into men’s and women’s businesses, and gradually stripped from the family.
Founded in 1843
The firm said so itself.
A 1936 trade listing reads “P. Reichenbach. Damenbekleidung. Stammhaus gegr. 1843.” A scholarly study independently places the long-established firm first at Hoher Weg 24 and later at No. 27.
Between 1910 and 1913, Hoher Weg 27 and neighboring Martiniplan 10 were rebuilt into a unified department store by Gebrüder Reinecke. Two tall selling floors, a curved staircase and a glass roof over the former courtyard created the Lichthof remembered in the firm’s advertising.
Family note. Hoher Weg translates literally as “Upper Road.” For forty-three years, later generations of the Reichenbach family made their home on Upper Boulevard, a coincidence the family has come to cherish.
The documentary spine
One address, several businesses
In 1905, Ludwig Reichenbach appears as merchant of J. Reichenbach, court purveyor of men’s and women’s fashions, at Hoher Weg 27—printed in the directory as “Hoheweg.” A separate full-page advertisement signs the firm “J. Reichenbach, Halberstadt, Herzogl. Hoflieferant,” identifying the title as ducal; the particular duchy remains unknown. By 1928, the directory listed J. Reichenbach for men’s and boys’ clothing and Paul Reichenbach for women’s fashion at the same addresses, naming Paul and Ernst as proprietors.
The 1917 award notice independently fixes Paul at Hoher Weg 27; the notice itself prints “Hoheweg.” The 1938 directory still shows both firms, while a printed correction deletes Paul’s women’s-clothing entry. A correction mark cannot, by itself, prove the date or mechanism of closure.
Martiniplan 10 passed through Ludwig, Kurt, Paul’s firm, and later Ernst and Margarete in the land register. The ownership chain is documented; the legal and coercive character of every transfer is not.
The surviving hangers preserve the men’s-and-boys’ side. Scholarly descriptions emphasize the women’s department. They are not contradictory: they describe two commercial faces at one house.
The Wernigerode branch · Breite Straße 7
Jeanette’s commercial house belonged to the same family story.
A civil record identifies Salomon Gustav Reichenbach as Jacob and Helene’s son and Adolf’s brother.
Gustav married Jeanette Rosenbaum in 1883. Research in Wernigerode’s municipal records identifies Jeanette as the shop’s owner: her dowry helped establish it, her initial stood in the name J. Reichenbach, and she remained at the till into the 1930s. Gustav served as managing director; their son Fritz later operated the business.
The Halberstadt and Wernigerode firms had distinct local histories. Their exact legal or corporate relationship should not be assumed—but the people behind them were one documented family.
A neighboring commercial household
The Cohn family’s linen factory and store
Lillyan Rosenberg’s oral history remembers the Halberstadt linen business owned by her father, Ernst Cohn, alongside Orthodox family and communal life. It does not establish a business or family relationship to J. Reichenbach; it preserves another Jewish commercial household in the same city.
The store’s own printed record
Twelve views from the J. Reichenbach advertising stamps
The firm’s surviving Reklamemarken show the façade, light court, staircase, sales floors, fitting room and workshops. Each appears beside a conventionally adjusted copy and a clearly labeled color visualization that makes the tiny printed details easier to explore.
Belonging in practice
A title, an address, a subscription, a workshop, a name printed among neighbors.
The record of civic life is more persuasive than any adjective.