The Fur Coat Affair - Rotes Rathaus
Berlin's red brick city hall was the stage for the Weimar Republic's biggest corruption scandal: in 1929 the Sklarek brothers' invoice fraud cost the city over ten million Reichsmark, and a discounted fur coat for the Lord Mayor's wife toppled Gustav Böss himself.
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The Rotes Rathaus at Rathausstrasse 15 owes its name to its red bricks, not its politics, and its 94 metre tower was built between 1861 and 1871 to stand taller than the royal palace across the river. In the late 1920s its corridors became the backdrop of the Sklarek scandal. Brothers Leo, Willi and Max Sklarek held the monopoly for supplying clothing to Berlin's hospitals and welfare institutions, courted officials of every party with cut price suits and coats, and billed the city for goods that never existed, financed by credit from the municipal bank. By the time they were arrested on 26 September 1929, the damage exceeded ten million Reichsmark. The press then discovered that the wife of Lord Mayor Gustav Böss had acquired a fur coat worth around one thousand Reichsmark through the brothers for a fraction of its price. Böss, who had just returned from a triumphant trip to America, resigned on 7 November 1929. Nazis and Communists turned the affair into propaganda against the democratic city government, and the brothers' trial, which opened on 13 October 1931, ended in 1932 with four year prison sentences for Leo and Willi. Today the building is the seat of Berlin's Governing Mayor.
Fatti principali
- 10 million Reichsmark — The estimated damage caused by the Sklarek brothers' false invoices to the city of Berlin before their arrest on 26 September 1929.
- 1000 Reichsmark — The approximate real value of the fur coat that Lord Mayor Gustav Böss's wife obtained through the Sklareks for a fraction of the price, ending his career on 7 November 1929.
- 4 years in prison — The sentence handed to Leo and Willi Sklarek in 1932 after a trial that had opened on 13 October 1931 and produced thousands of pages of court files.
📍 Rathausstraße 15, 10178, Berlin