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Abstract

This film, produced by the Krupp steel concern’s in-house film department in 1928, documented the range of goods offered at the company grocery store in Essen, from bread to eggs to fresh meat, milk, and butter. Krupp employees had enjoyed access to such a store since the nineteenth century, one of the many services that company founder Alfred Krupp had established for his workers and that also included a housing program, insurance plan, pension fund, and leisure facilities. These social benefits fostered employee loyalty to Krupp and—so the company hoped—militated against labor unrest. The documentary underscored the store’s strong support of German agriculture by pointedly referring to the local origins of the cheese, pork, and rye bread, thereby framing daily shopping trips as patriotic acts. Perhaps surprisingly for a film about a grocery store, this one even addressed Germany’s trade imbalance with its foreign partners, bemoaning the fact that regional farmers purchased so much equipment from abroad while selling so little of their resulting harvest there. German growers suffered from declining prices in 1928 as a result of a global agricultural crisis, and appeals to “buy German,” as well as protective tariffs, attempted to ease farmers’ economic hardships. Moreover, a Krupp subsidiary specialized in agricultural machinery, and the industrial concern rightly feared that a downturn in the country’s rural sector would directly affect its bottom line. The company had, in general, struggled to convert to civilian production in 1919, after having profited enormously from military sales during the First World War. Indeed, it narrowly escaped bankruptcy in the mid-1920s, when profits plummeted.

Film Advertising the Krupp Company’s Grocery Stores for Its Employees (1928)

Source

Intertitles:
The Bakery in the Krupp Konsumanstalt.
Even grain and flour, if the harvest is sufficient, are only purchased domestically by the Konsumanstalt.

A Konsumanstalt poster for vitality bread [Kraftbrot]. 
This is how the Konsumanstalt advertises German rye bread!

The Konsumanstalt is restricted to domestic trade for meat and meat products. If it buys meat directly from the producer, then it is only from German farmers and cattle breeders.
The slaughterhouse can process up to a thousand pigs a week.

Egg sales.
The Konsumanstalt buys as many heavy, well-sorted, stamped German cooperative eggs as it can get, even though German eggs are often more expensive than Dutch ones. However, deliveries are very low in July and August, during bathing resort season, and in winter.

Milk consumption at the Krupp company.
Posters like this one can be seen everywhere at Krupp, encouraging people to drink milk. The result: during 1927, 200,000 bottles were given out at cost price at the company's workplaces. In just one month, 100,000 bottles have been sold. Since 1925, not a single drop of milk from abroad has entered the Ruhr area!
One of the many milk distribution centers set up within the factory.

Butter packaging in the Konsumanstalt.
There is a great demand for butter in the industrial sector. Almost all of it is unsalted and of a consistent quality. However, German production is not always sufficient in terms of quantity, quality and uniformity. Therefore, the Konsumanstalt has to buy a certain amount of Dutch butter from time to time in addition to German butter.

Cheese consumption at the Konsumanstalt.
With the exception of Dutch cheese, which customers insist on, only German cheese is sold here.

An appeal! Individual producers, join together to form large producer and distribution cooperatives like in Holland and Denmark.
[Man stand next to a poster that reads "Eat German fruit" while eating a banana.]

By putting up such posters, the Konsumanstalt is supporting the joint advertising campaign for the consumption of German agricultural products. When German agriculture and German industry stand together and buy from each other, then the German harvest will be worth it, then German chimneys will billow smoke!
A question...? Foreign industry still sells many millions of marks' worth of agricultural machinery in Germany every year. What does this foreign industry buy from German agriculture? Nothing?? - Then many millions of German money flow abroad and are lost to the German national wealth.

Source: Die Konsumanstalt der Friedrich Krupp AG, Krupp-Film, 1928. Bundesarchiv Filmarchiv Filmwerk ID: 29254

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