The Residenz department store, popularly known as ReKa, was a landmark of modern retail architecture when it opened on October 12, 1912, on Dresden’s Prager Straße. Designed by Leipzig architect Emil Franz Hänsel, the four-story building combined reinforced concrete pillars, expansive glass surfaces, elevators, and a vast commercial interior containing 55 departments. Its fashion business included women’s clothing, corsets, shoes, haberdashery, men’s goods, and perfumery, making it part of the new mass-retail culture that transformed German shopping before the First World War. The store employed approximately 500 people and presented an unusually broad consumer world, from clothing and cosmetics to food, household goods, toys, and electrical products.
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AI concept artworkArchive Record · 1930s-1940s
The Nazi Aryanization and Destruction of Dresden’s ReKa Department Store
Residenz Department Store (ReKa), Dresden / 1930s-1940s
The Residenz department store, popularly known as ReKa, was a landmark of modern retail architecture when it opened on October 12, 1912, on Dresden’s Prager Straße. Designed by Leipzig architect Emil Franz Hänsel, the four-story building combined reinforced concrete pillars, expansive glass surfaces, elevators, and a vast commercial interior containing 55 departments. Its fashion business included women’s clothing, corsets, shoes, haberdashery, men’s goods, and perfumery, making it part of the new mass-retail culture that transformed German shopping before the First World War. The store employed approximately 500 people and presented an unusually broad consumer world, from clothing and cosmetics to food, household goods, toys, and electrical products.
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