Melitta Bentz and the Coffee Filter

Melitta Bentz invented the coffee filter in 1908 and changed coffee culture forever. Through the decades and after reckoning with its relationship with the Third Reich, the company she founded in her Dresden apartment endures today. Research: “The Weimar Republic 1918-1929 - EdexcelChanges in society, 1924–29.” https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/z9y64j6/revision/8#:~:text=Hourly%20wages%20rose%20in%20real,crisis%2C%20such%20as%20the%20hyperinflation DEUTSCHES REICH REICHSPATENTAMТ PATENTSCHRIFT. “Melitta-Werke Akt.-Ges. in Minden, Westf. Filterpapiereinsatz für Kaffeeaufbrühfilter u. dgl.” https://www.dpma.de/docs/dpma/veroeffentlichungen/de653796a_melitta1937.pdf German Patent and Trademark Office. “The invention of the coffee filters.” https://www.dpma.de/english/our_office/publications/ingeniouswomen/110jahrekaffeefilter/index.html “The History of Leipziger Messe.” https://www.leipziger-messe.de/en/company/portrait/history/ KOSSACK, KRISTAN. “Betriebsalltag und Unternehmensentwicklung eines NS-Musterbetriebs im Spiegel seiner Werkzeitung.” Westfälische Zeitschrift 155. 2005. http://www.westfaelische-zeitschrift.lwl.org “Melitta Bentz - the woman who invented the coffee filter.” Europeana. https://www.europeana.eu/en/stories/melitta-bentz-the-woman-who-invented-the-coffee-filter “Melitta Bentz KG - coffee filter.” Deutsches-Kunststoff Museum. https://www.deutsches-kunststoff-museum.de/sammlung/virtuelles-museum/k-2002-00982/ Morris, Jonathan. “Coffee: A Global History.” Reaktion Books. 2019. Moses, Claire. “Overlooked No More: Melitta Bentz, Who Invented the Coffee Filter.” New York Times. Sept. 5, 2018. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/05/obituaries/melitta-bentz-overlooked.html “Our History.” Melitta Group. https://www.melitta-group.com/en/unternehmen/unsere-geschichte Wierling, Dorothee. “Coffee.” International Encyclopedia of the First World War. https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/coffee/ See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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• 2:03Holly Frey?

  Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeart Radio.

• 2:14Holly Frey?

  Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Frey.

• 2:16Tracy V. Wilson?

  And I'm Tracy V. Wilson.

• 2:18Holly Frey?

  So recently, we did our episode on drug use during World War II, which talked a lot about Nazis and their drug use. And I thought, hey, you know, just in the interest of being kind to Germany, a place we are traveling later this year for the show.

• 2:35Tracy V. Wilson?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:35Holly Frey?

  Wouldn't it be great to do a nice episode on German history? Ha ha. I tried so hard, but it didn't work out 100% that way. And I apologize. Uh, if you are a coffee hound like I am, we're going to talk about that a lot on Friday. You probably have benefited from the ideas of the woman that we're going to talk about today and her early 20th century invention. Melitta Bens's story is usually framed in this sort of quaint way about a housewife who ended up a captain of industry because she loved coffee so much. Listen, that's not entirely wrong, but the company that she founded also has a very dark spot in its history when it comes to Nazi Germany.

• 3:20Holly Frey?

  I promise you, I didn't know this until I was so far in it that I couldn't really backpedal out of it and start a new episode.

• 3:27Holly Frey?

  So today, we are going to talk about this very formative moment in coffee culture history. We are going to talk about some ugly wartime collaboration and, you know, kind of where that company is today.

• 3:41Holly Frey?

  Germany, I like you heaps. I'm sorry. But we're going to start, as usual, at the beginning.

• 3:47Tracy V. Wilson?

  Amelie Augusta Melitta Liebsher was born on January 31st, 1873, in Dresden, Germany. Her father, Karl Liebsher, had a bookstore and her mother, Brigitte Reinhardt, also helped out at that bookstore when she was not keeping house. Melitta's grandparents also had a business of their own. They ran a brewery and so she had this multi-generational set of examples of family members owning their own businesses. We really don't know anything else, though, about Melitta's childhood besides those very basics. We do know that when she was in her twenties, Melitta met a man named Johannes Emil Hugo Benz, who went by Hugo. He worked in retail and they got married. They went on to have three children,

• 4:33Tracy V. Wilson?

  two sons named Vili and Horst, and a daughter named Herta.

• 4:38Holly Frey?

  And the story goes that Melitta, like many people, liked to start her day with a cup of coffee. But according to an interview that her son Horst gave in the late 1940s, Melitta got frustrated with the coffee grounds that made it into the cup and interrupted the otherwise pleasurable beverage. The flavor was also inconsistent from cup to cup because of that, and it could also leave a bitter aftertaste. Because as the grounds got into it and sat in it, they continued to steep and they eventually turned bitter. And she also was not the biggest fan of cleaning the coffee pot and kind of having to chase after all of those grounds.

• 5:17Holly Frey?

  The one that she used, the coffee pot that she used, has been described as a copper pot in some accounts and as a porcelain percolator in others. But it could have been any number of designs that were in use at the time.

• 5:30Tracy V. Wilson?

  So one style that was popular in Germany at the time, in the early 1900s, is sometimes called a flip burner. It had a vessel for water at the base, and that was placed directly on the stove. And then on top of that was usually a mirror vessel, and that had a section in between the two parts that held the coffee grounds. When the water started to boil, you flipped the whole thing over so that the boiling water passed over the coffee grounds in that central compartment, and it passed into the mirror vessel. That part also had a pour spout, so when your coffee had all passed through the grounds, you could pour it out from that bottom section, now bottom, since you had flipped it over.

• 6:11Tracy V. Wilson?

  The central holding section for the grounds had a slim gap around this connecting point between the two parts so that the coffee could slowly flow into the side that you poured from. And that kept most of the grounds from dumping into the coffee, but not all of them. Some were still sure to get through.

• 6:32Holly Frey?

  Another common style of coffeemaker that was used in the 1800s and early 1900s involved a pot that had a long straw-like, usually metal tube that ran from the center of a small basin at the top of the pot down into the water reservoir below. And these could be metal or porcelain, and they were placed directly on the stove. And when the pot was heated, that heated water would move up the tube and spill into that small basin, which was where the grounds were placed. And like the flip burner, this basin also usually had a narrow gap around it that allowed the coffee to then drip back into the main pot. But it had the exact same problem of grounds always going with it, at least

• 7:12Holly Frey?

  some of them. Other methods that were in use at the time included the basic of just boiling water with loose grounds in it and then letting those grounds settle to the bottom of the pot before pouring, or using a cloth bag, kind of like a tea bag, to hold the grounds in the boiling water. But that meant that the weave of that fabric had to be loose enough to let water flow easily. The kind of paper that we use today for tea bags didn't exist yet, or wasn't common. That also meant that grounds could slip through. It is unclear if Melitta was using one of the pots we have described here, or something else, but whatever she was using was definitely letting grounds get into her cup of coffee.

• 7:54Tracy V. Wilson?

  I gotta say, that is unpleasant when you have a nice cup of coffee and then you take that last mouthful and get a mouthful of grounds. I don't like that.

• 8:05Holly Frey?

  It's not my favorite.

• 8:07Tracy V. Wilson?

  No. So she said to have tried a few different solutions to this problem, and none of her early attempts fully worked. Her coffee would still have some grounds in it. Some of her solutions involved punching holes into the basin where the grounds went, but the holes, if they were big enough for the coffee to get through, they were also big enough for some of the grounds to slip through. Then, one morning, she's described as having just a bolt of inspiration. According to pretty much all of the accounts of this, she tore a page of blotting paper out of her son's notebook and cut that in a circle, and then placed that over the holes in the basin where the grounds went.

• 8:49Tracy V. Wilson?

  Blotting paper is not as common today as it was in 1906, so in case you don't know, it's this thin porous paper that people would put in between the pages of a notebook when writing with something like a fountain pen. The blotting paper would absorb the extra ink and just keep it from smearing. So when Melitta poured hot water over the coffee grounds with blotting paper covering the holes in her pot, the coffee filtered through the paper into the cup, and then none of the grounds went along with it. Then she found she could just pull out that blotting paper and toss it and the grounds into the trash altogether, and that made a significant reduction in cleanup time.

• 9:30Holly Frey?

  Once Melitta had tested this method herself a few times, she expanded her test to include her friends. She started hosting small afternoon gatherings with her friends, where she would have them over and serve them coffee that she had brewed using her new method. She wanted to see if they agreed that her preparation resulted in a smoother blend and an overall better drinking experience. And they apparently did agree because Melitta decided to patent her invention, which she submitted under the title, "Coffee Filter with a Domed Underside, Recessed Bottom, and Inclined Flowholes." I will say that is a translation from the original German, so whether or not it feels as, you know, sort of lacking in poetry in the German, I don't know.

• 10:15Holly Frey?

  But her patent was granted by the Imperial Patent Office on June 20, 1908, and it was included in the Patent Bulletin, the Patentblatt, that the IPO published the following month. This was a pretty significant moment because Melitta Benz became one of the first women in Germany to hold a patent.

• 10:33Tracy V. Wilson?

  The Melitta Pour-over apparatus that was patented was really similar to ones you can still get today. It was metal and shaped a lot like a mug, but also designed to sit on top of the coffee cup or mug that you would drink out of. It stood about nine centimeters or three and a half inches tall, and it had a rounded base that fit inside of the rim of a standard cup. The models she worked on after that first one had a saucer-like base of about 11.5 centimeters or four and a half inches wide. They had a lip on the underside that kept it centered in a drinking cup. There were actually two components that had holes punched in them.

• 11:13Tracy V. Wilson?

  The base of this cup-like reservoir had a lot of small holes. And then there was another metal topper, which had several dozen holes that sat snugly into the top and had a small tab-style handle for easy removal. A photo of this original version is on the German Patent and Trademark Office website. The filter papers that she packaged to use with her metal apparatus were just discs of round blotting paper. These were just the exact diameter and circumference of the interior of the main reservoir. So the paper was placed inside the reservoir, over the holes, and then the ground coffee and the hot water

• 11:55Tracy V. Wilson?

  were added. The top, which had holes to allow steam to escape, was placed over all of that. The coffee dripped through the apparatus in the cup, and then voila, pour-over coffee.

• 12:07Holly Frey?

  So for clarity, the nomenclature for all of this, as it's discussed historically, is a little different from the way that people talk about coffee supplies today. While you or I might mention, you know, going to the store to pick up a pack of coffee filters, and we would mean the papers, Melitta's metal invention was called "the filter" in a lot of documentation, and the disposable part was called "filter paper." This gets even more complicated because this nomenclature changed over time, not always necessarily purposefully, it seems, with discussion and even advertising of the Melitta products. And sometimes, both parts of the equation, both the metal thing and the disposable paper

• 12:50Holly Frey?

  parts, were called "the filter" even when referring to those two things separately. We're going to always try to be really specific about which is which as we go to avoid confusion, but just know, there is some amoeba-like word usage that goes on historically here.

• 13:07Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 16:51Holly Frey?

  Patent-in-hand, Melitta and her husband started their new business right out of their home. It started out with the name of the business being M. Bent's, but the products were made under the label of simply Melitta. When the company began, the capital in its ledger was a mere 72 fennings. And a fenning was 1 one hundredth of a mark, similar to how a penny is 1 one hundredth of a dollar. So they had very little cash involved in this startup. They had 50 of the metal filters made and 100 cartons of the filter paper, and they started to sell these to their neighbors. Their sons, Vili and Horst, delivered orders around the neighborhood with a little hand cart.

• 17:32Holly Frey?

  Hugo, who recall worked in retail, made use of his experience in that field. And he went around to local shops and he got them to not only carry the filters, but to also let him set up displays in the windows that would show potential customers how the filter and the filter paper worked to make what the benses called "perfect coffee enjoyment." They really needed these displays because otherwise people had no idea how this new product was supposed to work.

• 17:59Tracy V. Wilson?

  In 1909, Melitta and Hugo took their coffee filtering system to the Leipzig Trade Fair. And this was a huge moment for their new business. The Leipzig Trade Fair was and still is a big deal. And it's historically significant in regard to European commerce. So here's a brief story. This trade fair traces its roots all the way back to 1165, when Leipzig was granted the rights to operate as a town and have a market. That right was granted by the Margrave of Meissen at the time, Otto II, also known as Otto the Rich. But Leipzig really got a boost during the reign of King Maximilian I and the beginning of the 16th century.

• 18:42Tracy V. Wilson?

  The trade fair became a more official event rather than just the town's market. It turned into a place for both consumers and businesses to find things for personal use and for resale. In the 19th century, this started to look more like a trade fair the way you might think of one in modern terms, with a lot of hopeful wholesalers bringing presentations and samples to show prospective retailers so that they can place orders for full runs of the product. This continued to grow in this way until 1942, when it stopped completely until the end of World War II. Then after the war, the trade fair got started again,

• 19:23Tracy V. Wilson?

  and it continued to grow, including through major events like the reunification of Germany.

• 19:29Holly Frey?

  Yeah, this is still a big event. I think they do two shows a year now. Showing the metal filter and papers that Melitta had invented at the fair enabled this small cottage company to get the attention of retailers that ran housewares shops and general stores all around Germany. No longer were they selling only to their neighbors directly or in local shops. Retailers from all over the country wanted to carry these metal filters, which were priced at 1.25 marks. So it was not clear to me in the research if that is the wholesale price or not. Several different sources about Melitta Benz's life mentioned that specific number of 1.25 marks.

• 20:09Holly Frey?

  So presumably that is what she was bringing in from each sale, but I can't say that confidently.

• 20:16Tracy V. Wilson?

  In the year that followed that first trade show, Melitta sold 1,250 of her metal filters and things just kept climbing from there. They not only gained popularity, they also gained accolades. In 1911, Melitta took the filters to the International Hygiene Exposition. This was a medicine and public health expo that Dresden hosted and the Benses took a range of inventions with them, not just the coffee filter system. In addition to the standard filter, there was a miniature version for small cups, a version for tea, and a device called an uber-cook for Hutter. Holly and I each went on little adventures, figuring out exactly what this product did

• 20:59Tracy V. Wilson?

  and what it was for, because that term is used today for things that are boil-over preventers, but Holly also found a translation that described it as preventing overcooking. It looked kind of like a big old chimney that would go on top of the pot. Their range of products won them a gold and a silver medal.

• 21:20Holly Frey?

  Yeah, it reminded me a little bit of like a Moroccan tajine.

• 21:23Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 21:24Holly Frey?

  But also could stop water from boiling over. We don't know.

• 21:28Tracy V. Wilson?

  Maybe.

• 21:28Holly Frey?

  The only picture that we found of it just shows it. It doesn't show it in relation to like a pot or anything.

• 21:36Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 21:36Holly Frey?

  So we don't know. We don't really know how that that whole thing functioned.

• 21:40Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah, I found an ad for a different similar looking product that described it as as preventing your milk and your chocolate from boiling over.

• 21:50Tracy V. Wilson?

  So I can imagine it working a lot of ways.

• 21:53Holly Frey?

  Mysteries, mysteries. Melitta and Hugo continually sought new ways to promote their business, including hiring young women to do demos in stores and store windows to show people how this filter system worked. And that worked like a charm. By 1914, the dedicated room in their apartment was simply not working anymore. It was just too small to handle what they needed. So Melitta and Hugo opened a factory in Dresden that was in a former locksmith shop. They also hired their first non-relative full-time employees, although Vili and Horst continued to work for their parents as the company grew. It seemed like Melitta Coffey was on an endless growth trajectory

• 22:37Holly Frey?

  until World War I started in 1914. Because at that point, both Hugo and Vili were conscripted into the German army and had to leave Dresden to go fight.

• 22:48Tracy V. Wilson?

  Up to that point, Hugo had been helping with the business, but he still had his regular job. Everything the family made with the coffee filters was extra income. But with her husband at war, Melitta became the sole breadwinner. She had help from her brother, Paul Liebsher, and Melitta was the driving force of the company. She made the decision to expand the line, which sounds like a growth move. But this was more about survival because coffee had really been impacted by the war.

• 23:21Holly Frey?

  In the decade or so leading up to World War I, coffee had gone from being more of a luxury item to being more commonly consumed throughout Germany and the rest of Europe, kind of spreading throughout the socio-economic hierarchy. Kind of everybody started drinking coffee. And this was a time when Brazil was exporting an estimated 75% of all of the coffee that was drunk throughout the world. They were exporting the beans, obviously, not the coffee itself. But trade across the Atlantic was disrupted when World War I began. The coffee that remained in Germany was all purchased by the German government. Britain put laws into place that forbid any trade with central powers. So that included

• 24:06Holly Frey?

  the German Empire, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and Bulgaria. And the British also had a naval blockade in place that prevented direct shipping to those countries from anyone else. So this meant that any coffee commerce into Germany had to pass through neutral countries like Sweden, which they took advantage of and they made deals with those countries. But once Britain realized that Germany was buying coffee through those neutral countries, it actually started to pressure those governments to end those business relationships. And it worked. So eventually, Germany established what was called the War Committee for Coffee, Tea, and Substitutes to manage the limited supply they were able to get their hands on. And that organization routed most of

• 24:51Holly Frey?

  the coffee to the military, which meant that most civilian citizens had no access to coffee.

• 24:58Tracy V. Wilson?

  So even if the Melitta Company had continued to make their metal filters, people couldn't drink coffee. So there was no demand for them. Also, no demand for the paper filters to use with them. Paper was also in short supply, so making the filters would have seemed both pointless and wasteful. Instead, the Melitta Company started to manufacture paper cartons to create a new revenue stream. People still needed boxes and this did manage to sustain the family until the end of the war when Hugo and Vili returned home. Once they did, Vili became co-owner of the business and the name switched from M. Bentz to Bentz & Son OHG.

• 25:41Tracy V. Wilson?

  As coffee became part of daily life in Germany again after the war ended, the Benses faced a new hurdle, and that was imitators, because people really liked this method of making coffee. And as the market started to see more and more companies pop up selling both metal filters and filter papers, the Melitta Company protected its identity on shelves by designing packaging that would be easy for consumers to recognize as theirs and they could tout it as the original. And this was the beginning of the company's signature red and green packaging, which is still in use today. As the US was experiencing the economic crash of 1929, which impacted the whole

• 26:24Tracy V. Wilson?

  globe over the next several decades, the Melitta Company was expanding again. Demand had grown consistently since they opened their Dresden factory and it was time to move to a new facility. They moved a substantial distance to the smaller town of Minden, which is more than 400 kilometers or about 250 miles northeast of Dresden. This was a massive undertaking, but the Benses had found a former chocolate factory that was really a perfect fit for what they needed. Additionally, the city of Minden was eager to bring in new industry and offered tax incentives to businesses that moved there. All of the factory machinery had to be taken apart and loaded onto train cars, along with

• 27:09Tracy V. Wilson?

  all the existing inventory, and then everything had to be moved and reassembled once it got to its destination. But the Benses couldn't afford to shut down their entire operation for very long, so this entire thing was done in four days. At the end of that time, they were up and running in the new factory space. Fifty-five of their employees moved to Mendon to stay there with the company. Melitta headquarters is still in Mendon today.

• 27:39Holly Frey?

  And as their business grew, the Bences made decisions about the workforce in their factory that were, in some ways, progressive, at least as we perceive them, but they were also part of a nationwide trend in the post-World War I Weimar Republic. The standard of living for workers improved in general in the country during this time, although unemployment rates rose significantly. And during this time, benefits were introduced, like unemployment insurance, pension plans, and sick leave. At the Melitta factory, workers got a five-day work week, as well as 30 days of leave a year. And the Bences also gave out Christmas bonuses to employees each year. Over time, there were additional benefits added to the employee benefits package.

• 28:24Holly Frey?

  They started receiving anniversary bonuses and their own health insurance, and the company retained a doctor and a dentist that employees could see for free. In 1938, the Melitta Aid Fund was created as a mutual aid initiative for employees. This all sounds great, but there is some spin-doctoring going on when this is discussed, because that fund and some of those other benefits were implemented at a time when some deeply problematic things were happening at the factory. We're going to talk a little bit more about that in a few moments. Melitta Bentz herself is often described as being invested in the welfare of her employees and wanting to promote the idea of quality of life throughout the company.

• 29:05Holly Frey?

  This is often attributed to her own background of having been a mother and a housewife who then became a businesswoman, meaning she recognized the need for balance in her own life and tried to foster the same in a workforce with a growing number of women. It remains a little unclear to me how much of this is an idealized characterization.

• 29:25Tracy V. Wilson?

  24 years after Melitta Benz patented her invention, at the age of 59, she retired from the day-to-day running of the company she had founded. Her husband Hugo retired as well. The company's ownership was transferred entirely to their sons in 1932. That was the same year that their younger son, Horst Benz, became co-owner, and the company's name was once again changed to Melitta Work. The Benz sons ran the business from that point forward, although Melitta was still involved in the culture of the company.

• 30:01Holly Frey?

  In 1935, the company redesigned their filtering system. Instead of metal filters, they created porcelain ones that were all one-piece instead of having a drip reservoir with a filter cup on top of it. The design of the porcelain filter was still such that it sits on top of a coffee cup, though it functioned in exactly the same way. And it actually looks almost just like a coffee cup, except that the reservoir inside is an inverted conical shape. And to fit that shape, the company produced and patented a new paper filter. You probably know what these look like. These are the exact style of paper conical filter that many drip coffee makers use today.

• 30:43Holly Frey?

  And a lot of companies produce porcelain and ceramic and even plastic filters in the exact same style as this Melitta redesign from the 1930s, including the Melitta Company. This type of single-serving ceramic filter has historically been more common in Europe than in the US, but you can absolutely find them in the US as pour-over coffee has grown in popularity. Many coffee connoisseurs agree with Melitta Benz that this is the superior way to make coffee. The patent for that new filter form was granted in December 1937, and the ad campaign that went with it touted, "Melitta filters every type of coffee. Filtered coffee tastes better." Under the leadership of Willian Horst,

• 31:28Holly Frey?

  the company also expanded out of beverages and started to make sandwich paper as well.

• 31:35Tracy V. Wilson?

  Coming up, we will get into the Melitta Company's collaboration with the Third Reich. But before we do, we will pause to hear from the sponsors that keep Stuff You Missed in History Class going.

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• 34:23Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 35:28Holly Frey?

  The Second World War also impacted the trajectory of the Melitta factory as Melitta, without its namesake and her husband at the helm, became what was known as a National Socialist Model Company, meaning it stopped production of its filters and other products to make supplies for the Wehrmacht, the Third Reich's military. As early as 1936, the company had started publishing a newsletter for employees, which contained a lot of Nazi propaganda. Its earliest issue touted that the new publication would be a, quote, "faithful companion on our march into the future, on our path to the new, great, and beautiful Germany of Adolf Hitler." Nazi Germany had requested that all companies with more than 500 employees

• 36:13Holly Frey?

  produce internal newspapers like this. Beginning in 1940, Melitta produced cookware like pots and pans for the military. And then in 1941, manufacture shifted to things like ammunition belts. That same year, the company was awarded what was called the Golden Flag of the German Labor Front. This was an award that companies had to elect to be considered for. So the Melitta Company opted in. This meant that for the year following that award, the company's employees might enjoy some special perks and benefits, but it would also be even more closely overseen by the Nazi regime and the company's production goals were set higher.

• 36:54Holly Frey?

  According to a paper that analyzed the available company newsletters from this time, the company, at the direction of the Third Reich through the model company system, offered team-building activities and incentives to work hard, like potential vacation trips. And they also set up a workshar. This literally translates to factory share or work share, but it has also been translated in a truer definition as a work troop. It was like a little battalion that was pushing Nazi ideology within the company. The employees that were chosen to be in this group were responsible for keeping everyone in line and employees that were not in the group were instructed to obey them. I will do a brief caveat here.

• 37:39Holly Frey?

  On this paper that I'm referencing is written in German. I translated it through a couple of different translators and had a friend that speaks German look at the pieces that I was interested in. So just FYI, know that, just in the interest of transparency. I did not read this in English. But an issue of the company paper from 1938 also mentioned a work women's group that was organized under the guiding principle that, quote, "We work women want to fight and be brave because we have only one will to serve our Fuhrer."

• 38:09Tracy V. Wilson?

  So these are the same years that the company started the Mutual Aid Fund. At the same time, there were other initiatives to assist the workers who needed help, like the employees helped set up a company vegetable farm so food could go to the workers who needed it. It's not really clear how they assessed the idea of need, like who needed this enough to get it, but it does seem as though all of it was really about promoting the idea that all workers had to be loyal to the company and its alignment with the German government. During the same time, these programs were being touted, the editorials in the company

• 38:49Tracy V. Wilson?

  paper warned employees not to shop at Jewish-owned businesses, listing all of the ones that were blacklisted. It also included a lot of really horrifying anti-Semitic commentary, including about children.

• 39:03Holly Frey?

  And all of this was done in accordance with guidelines from the Nazi government. And the result was that Melitta continued to grow economically in Nazi Germany. This doesn't seem to be a case where company leadership was trying to save a flailing company by cooperating with the Nazi government. According to that paper that we're talking about here, written by German historian Kristin Kosak in 2005, Horst Benz had joined the SS in 1933, and he was largely in charge of this newsletter. And many of the benefits that the company was instituting in the late 1930s seemed to have been a way to make up for some very low pay that was also part of the way that Nazi Germany was running factories.

• 39:48Holly Frey?

  Simultaneously, there were threats of punishment, including taking away benefits if workers underperformed. Kosak notes, quote, "The examined newspapers showed that most of Melitta's social benefits were initiated by the new Nazi social policy or the model company competition."

• 40:06Tracy V. Wilson?

  To be clear, the Melitta Company is not at all the only company that still exists today and cooperated with the Nazi government. The list is so long, and it includes companies like Audi, Siemens, BMW, Bayer, Coca-Cola, Kodak, IBM, really on and on and on. Those are just examples. If you are thinking, why didn't they mention whatever? It's because there are many, many more.

• 40:34Holly Frey?

  We would be here for an hour if we started.

• 40:37Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah, that would be the whole podcast. Like those other companies, after World War II, the Melitta Company faced the reckoning with its collaboration with the Nazi government. Over the years, the company has acknowledged its part and at one point also prepared a report audit stating, quote, "The role of the company during the Nazi era, as well as the proximity of the company management to the regime of the time, was presented in a scientific, critical manner and published in the context of an extensive company chronicle." So that is not a document that is readily available on their website at this point. You have to email the company to get a copy of it, and it's something that Holly found out about too late to make a request for it to be part of this episode today.

• 41:23Holly Frey?

  Yeah, it's in like a weird place that I think is kind of a not actively maintained part of their company site.

• 41:32Tracy V. Wilson?

  Oh, yeah.

• 41:32Holly Frey?

  Like, I think I got to it through one of those backdoor things where you do a search for a very specific term and it churns up a link and you're like, where is this? And this guy?

• 41:41Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 41:42Holly Frey?

  And that's where I found it. So I don't even know if that request would work anymore. But per the company's website, quote, "In 2000, the Melitta Group joined the foundation initiative of the German economy for the compensation of forced laborers." So in case you did not know, a lot of companies used forced labor in the later years of the war, people that were prisoners of war. Some were very, very horrible and it was literally enslaved labor. I mean, it's all horrible. It is unclear based on what information is readily available, if that was the case at Melitta. It seems likely, given their participation in that reparations foundation, but we don't have details.

• 42:25Holly Frey?

  That same page on the Melitta site that mentions their participation in this foundation states clearly their stance today, which is, quote, "The Melitta Group is actively committed to democratic values and principles such as equal opportunities and freedom of expression. Respect for human rights is a matter of course. The company rejects racism in any form and is clearly in favor of equal rights for all people."

• 42:50Tracy V. Wilson?

  Hugo Bens died in 1946. Melitta Bens died four years later on June 29th, 1950, at the age of 77. Their descendants have continued to be active in the running of the company, and the company has grown a lot. Today, Melitta has offices and production facilities around the world. And today, what used to be called the Filter, meaning the permanent device, they call a pour-over. That's in line with what people call that nowadays. The paper, single-use item, is now called the Filter. They also sell both of these things, as well as coffee. It's estimated that they manufacture more than 50 million coffee filters every day.

• 43:35Tracy V. Wilson?

  And a portrait of Melitta Bens, who started it all in her quest for the perfect cup of coffee, without a big mouthful of grounds in it, still hangs in the company headquarters.

• 43:46Holly Frey?

  I have listener mail, and it is nice and easy breezy, because it's about cross-stitch. I love all the embroidery emails we've gotten. They make me so happy in my dark little heart. People love embroidery.

• 43:58Tracy V. Wilson?

  I also fished a bunch of them out of spam this morning, for some reason. I don't know why embroidery in particular went to the junk folder, but there was all embroidery email.

• 44:10Holly Frey?

  There's some algorithm somewhere that's like, nobody emails this much about embroidery. This has to be garbage. No. Listen, bring it on. Keep them coming. This is from our listener Heather, who writes, "Hello, I just finished your recent episode about the history of embroidery, and found it so interesting, as I have been an avid cross-stitcher for the last few years. I have found such a supportive community of fellow stitchers online, and it's really improved my mental health. I think you're correct in that the surge in popularity of granny hobbies has everything to do with political unrest. It really has helped me cope with the state of the world lately. Attached are some photos of my recently finished to enjoy." Heather makes beautiful, beautiful cross-stitch, gorgeous pieces.

• 44:54Holly Frey?

  Some of these are just the loveliest. One looks almost like a haunted house, a little, very beautiful Victorian house that is surrounded by autumnal-colored flowers. It has dark birds on it. I don't think they're ravens or crows, because they have a little red on their back, but I could be wrong. There are some spiders, my favorite. It's just absolutely beautiful. Um, there is another that is book themed and is also as cute as they come. It says books, sweet books, and it has kitties on it. It has what looks like a cup of coffee or tea. So germane to today's episode, uh, as well as a couple of others that she has sent. One that, um, reads coffee because murder is wrong.

• 45:38Tracy V. Wilson?

  Okay.

• 45:39Holly Frey?

  Listen, that's correct.

• 45:43Holly Frey?

  I love it. Heather, thank you so much for sharing these with me. They make me so happy in my, my heart. Um, and I, I love knowing that everybody agrees that having, I think you don't have to embroider. Listen, the thing that she hit on that I think is very important is that I feel like having any kind of little creative hobby, whether you're super into it and you do really, um, you know, big projects with a lot of intensive work, or if it's just a little thing where you buy like basic little kits of some kind, whether that's embroidery or something else, just to give your brain a little creative outlet when you are, you know, in your wind down at night or as a break during the day.

• 46:25Holly Frey?

  I think it's so good for everybody's mental health to engage in some kind of little creative. If you don't want to buy stuff, write yourself a little poem, play with haikus, whatever it takes to keep your mind soothed, happy, also energized. I find it very energizing to do creative things. I hope you're all doing it because we all need to take care of ourselves.

• 46:46Tracy V. Wilson?

  There are also so many affordable kits nowadays that have just enough to do one of a project.

• 46:55Tracy V. Wilson?

  A friend of mine got an assortment of them, uh, you know, kind of going through the clearance rack before having a little party with everybody coming over and we all sat around and watched TV and did little crafts. Super good.

• 47:08Holly Frey?

  The best. I love a craft party, like a crafting bee is. It will fix some stuff in you, I swear.

• 47:17Holly Frey?

  There is nothing better than sitting down with friends and just making stuff and laughing. And, you know, whether you're eating something delicious or having cocktails or coffee or whatever you'd like, it's just good for the soul. So I hope everybody is finding stuff like that for themselves during this time. It's also a good thing if you're a doer, if you're a, if you're a natural social leader, you know, don't be shy about starting initiatives like that at home. They're very good for you. Among your friend group, invite a few people over. You never know what it could lead to. If you would like to write to us and show us your embroidery, please do that. Pet pictures also still always welcome. Anything else really that you want to share with us, you can do that at [email protected].

• 48:01Holly Frey?

  If you have not subscribed to the show and you would like to, that is easy as pie to do. You can do that on the iHeartRadio app or anywhere you listen to your favorite shows.

• 48:15Tracy V. Wilson?

  Stuff You Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 48:29Holly Frey?

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