The Schocken department store
The museum building, which is now listed as a historic monument, was designed by the famous architect Erich Mendelsohn and opened as the Schocken department store on 15 May 1930. After Stuttgart and Nuremberg, this was Mendelsohn’s third department store for Simon and Salman Schocken. The Schocken company, which was based in Zwickau, ran one of the most successful department store chains in Germany until it was expropriated by the Nazis at the end of 1938.
Until 1945 the store operated as “Merkur Verkaufsstätte”, was later renamed HOWA and Centrum Warenhaus before finally, from 1990 until 2001, being part of the Kaufhof department store chain. Thus, the building can look back on a 71-year history as a department store.