Typisch bremisch Typically “Bremish”

elts of the Ford car factories and to use them for modern
marketing of his products.
The idea of mail order coffee also came from Bremen. In
1904, Elisabeth Schilling founded the first company to
make direct mail deliveries of roasted coffee to final consumers.
She found a grateful customer base above all in
the large estates in the East of the country where it was
difficult to obtain freshly roasted coffee. To start with, the
determined entrepreneur copied addresses from adverts
in the “Gartenlaube” publication. She was so successful
that before long, together with her husband Martin
Schilling she was able to purchase the “Weserburg”
property on Teerhof in the port of Bremen. Together with
many other of Bremen’s coffee brands, Schilling was not
able to withstand the competition of self-service shops
and the large range of coffee on offer. In 1973, “Weserburg”
was sold to the city of Bremen. Today it houses the
Museum of Modern Art.
From Jacobs to Mondelez
Coffee is no longer roasted on the Teerhof island in the
river Weser at the heart of Bremen. But sometimes, coffee
aroma still wafts over from the district of Hemelingen.
The US Mondelez Group, formerly Kraft Foods with brands
such as Milka, Philadelphia and Jacobs coffee, produces
instant coffee and coffee specialities in Hemelingen for
more than 40 countries across the globe, using one of the
world’s largest and most modern freeze-drying systems.
The Mondelez factory in Bremen-Holzhafen has special -
ised in decaffeinating and raw goods inspection for all the
German factories. Jacobs, founded in 1895, has survived all
wars and market changes, if not as a company then at
least as a brand, thanks to a great extent to Walther Jacobs
in person. After finishing his training and spending a period
of time in the USA, the merchant born in Bremen in
1907 joined Jacobs & Co, the coffee business run by his
uncle Johann. He introduced modern production and
marketing methods to make Jacobs coffee a top brand.
When his son Klaus joined the company management,
Jacobs was turned into a stock corporation and the headquarters
were moved to Zurich, Switzerland.
In 1982, Klaus Jacobs took over the Swiss company
Interfood AG with the Tobler and Suchard brands (Milka
chocolate), resulting in Jacobs Suchard. This was then sold
to the American Kraft Group in 1990, which had already
taken over Kaffee HAG including the Onko brand in 1979.
Following several restructuring phases within the Kraft
Group, today the Bremen brands Jacobs, Milka, HAG, Kaba
and Onko are part of Mondelez Europe. Bremen is still
responsible for managing the Group’s German business.
One of the big names in Bremen’s coffee business was also
Eduard Schopf who founded his Eduscho brand in 1924.
Like Schilling, he also sent coffee to direct consumers.
After World War Two, his son Rolf Schopf established a
network of branches, some that served their own coffee,
some in cooperation with bread shops. Eduscho also sold
non-food items from books to bikes. Even so, Schopf failed
to survive the tough competition on Germany’s coffee
market, selling up in 1996/97 to the competitor Tchibo
from Hamburg. The real estate and properties of the
Schopf family are still managed today by the company
Siedentopf, formerly also a coffee roasting firm taken over
in 1928 by company founder Eduard Schopf.
But the Schopf family continues to play a significant role in
the coffee business: in 1996, Rolf Schopf transferred the
Coffein Companie Dr. Erich Scheele GmbH & Co. KG to his
son Bernd. After Ludwig Roselius, in 1931 Erich Scheele
has also managed to develop a patent another technique
for decaffeinating coffee. Today, the Coffein Companie that
he founded leads the world decaffeinating market. Decaffeinated
coffee and tea from Bremen is supplied among
others to Tchibo, Jacobs and retail chains such as Aldi.
149