Philipp Rosenthal

Philipp Rosenthal (6 March 1855 – 30 March 1937) was a German designer and industrialist of Jewish descent. Rosenthal founded the company Philipp Rosenthal & Co. AG in 1897 for the production of ceramic wares. Biography Philipp Rosenthal was born on 6 March 1855 in Werl, Germany. He was born to a German Jewish family, the son of the porcelain merchant Abraham Rosenthal and Emilie Rosenthal (born Meyer). Rosenthal was educated in his father's company and went to the USA at the age of 18, where he became the porcelain buyer of the Detroit-based porcelain import company Jacob Meyer Brothers. On his business trips looking for painted porcelain, he realized painted porcelain was a scarce commodity. So he decided in 1879 to return to Germany and open a porcelain painting shop. He started with two painters in Erkersreuth Castle using white porcelain from the porcelain factory Lorenz Hutschenreuther in neighboring Selb . The unexpected breakthrough, however, succeeded commercially with the ashtray "little resting place for burning cigars". After a short time, Rosenthal employed 60 employees, moved the company to Selb, and opened its own porcelain factory there in 1889. Rosenthal expanded the company through new start-ups and acquisitions and converted it into Philipp Rosenthal & Co. AG in 1897. In 1916, Rosenthal introduced the eight- and twelve-sided dodecagon porcelain dinnerware set "Maria," which Rosenthal named after his second wife, Maria Franck, who was the daughter of the royal lawyer Josef Frank. She had divorced Frank in 1916 in order to be able to marry Rosenthal, who was much older.  Rosenthal had two sons from his marriage to Maria, Philip Rosenthal and step-son Udo Franck-Rosenthal. With the rise of Hitler during the 1930s ushering in the (Nazi) era, many harsh penalties and discriminatory laws targeting Jews were enacted by the Nazi German regime, these anti-Jewish discriminatory actions by the German government of the time culminated in the Holocaust, in which over 6,000,000 Jewish people were killed by the Nazis and their supporters. As Rosenthal was Jewish, he was ousted from the company he had founded in accordance with the German laws at the time which expropriated all Jewish companies and a property into the hands of the German Nazi elite. Rosenthal was forced to resign the presidency in 1934 due to his Jewishness. Soon, fostered by family quirks, an opportunity presented itself to Rosenthal more inconspicuously.