Obituary: Carl Biedermann, Co-Founder of Biedermann & Sons
By Staff -- Gifts and Dec, 3/18/2009 10:59:00 AM
San Deigo, CA — Carl Biedermann, co-founder of candle vendor Biedermann & Sons, passed away on Friday, January 30 of cancer. He was 79 years old.
Biedermann and brother Peter entered the gift industry in 1955 when they travelled to the Frankfurt Fair and met a German candle maker named Erich Kopschitz. Carl began travelling the Midwest, selling these wares and others from a trunk. He was among the original founders of the Chicago Gift Show, the first gift show in the country. Biedermann retired from Biedermann & Sons in the early 1990s, to spend summers at his and wife Anita’s home on Washington Island, WI, and winters in their home near San Diego. He was succeeded in the business by his son Martin.
Biedermann’s life prior to the gift business was eventful: Born in Lodz, Poland in 1929, Biedermann was drafted into the German army at 14 while his father smuggled food and clothing for prisoners in the Lodz ghetto. Biedermann escaped the Bolshevik incursion at age 16 only to experience the bombing of Dresden, where he cleaned up human remains and had to scavenge food from the garbage. He emigrated to Chicago with brother Peter and mother Hildegard. His father was able to escape from Poland some weeks later, as he had been served papers by the Russian authorities ordering him to report to a labor camp in Siberia for being a factory-owner.
Once in America, Biidermann delivered block ice and helped run the family drugstore before finding his calling in candles. He attended Oberlin College (where he met his wife Anita) and Johns Hopkins University for his post-graduate degree, and served in American military intelligence in Europe during the Korean War.
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