Jewish Moselle
Home › People › Otto Loeb

Otto Wolfgang Loeb

1898–1974 — Trier wine merchant in London exile. Ambassador of Moselle wine.

Otto Wolfgang Loeb — Trier wine merchant with a doctorate, driven into exile in London by the Nazi regime, who became Britain's leading connoisseur and ambassador of Moselle wines, set a literary monument to the region with his book Moselle, and at the end of his life returned to Trier. An exemplary biographical arc of German-Jewish history.

1. Origins and family

The Loeb family belonged to the most respected Jewish merchant families in Trier. Otto Wolfgang Loeb was born on 30 May 1898 in Trier. The family was economically and culturally deeply rooted; the family home at Johannisstrasse 10 was regarded as a cultural centre of the Jewish community.

His father Sigmund Loeb (1859–1950) came from the Hunsrück and settled in Trier in 1893 as a wholesale wine merchant. He was for decades president of the Moselle Wine Merchants' Association, a city councillor from 1906 to 1930, a member of the Chamber of Industry and Commerce of Trier from 1921 to 1933, and a co-founder of the Philharmonic Society of Trier. In 1958 the city named a street in Trier-Nord after him.

In 1915 Otto Loeb took his Abitur at the Realgymnasium Trier and then went off to the First World War. After the war he joined his father's wine business. In 1922 he took his doctorate at the University of Cologne — with a thesis on The development of the wine trade on the Moselle over the past 50 years. The work was published by the Trier publishing house N. Besselich. An academic doctorate was unusual for a wine merchant and indicates his intellectual ambition.

2. Trier — career and civic engagement (1920–1937)

The wine trade

The Loeb firm maintained extensive export connections; England and the United States were among the most important markets. Otto travelled to both countries regularly and forged personal contacts with customers and partners. At the 36th German Wine Congress in Trier in 1930 he published a contribution on the wine trade of the Moselle, Saar and Ruwer in the official commemorative volume — evidence of his standing as a recognised expert.

Civic engagement

Otto Loeb was not merely a merchant. He helped shape Trier's public life actively: with the Keßler music house he organised concerts; during the crisis around 1930 he helped save the Trier municipal theatre; he co-founded the Verkehrsverein Trier (Trier tourism association) and took on its management.

Relationship with Joh. Jos. Prüm and the Middle Moselle

Otto Loeb was one of the leading export merchants for Moselle wines. He and his father cultivated personal relations with the most important wine estates of the region — among them Joh. Jos. Prüm in Wehlen, run since 1920 by Sebastian Alois Prüm (1902–1969), of the second generation of the Wehlen branch. Under his stewardship the wines won international standing; export merchants such as Loeb were indispensable for this — they opened the British and American markets. These friendships were personal and lasting; they reached far beyond the commercial.

3. Persecution and emigration (1933–1938)

Pushed out of business life

On 30 January 1933 the National Socialists seized power. Thereafter the situation of Jewish merchants deteriorated rapidly. Otto Loeb was step by step pushed out of business life. At first the regime still needed the foreign currency that Jewish trading houses brought in; for that reason exclusion was initially gradual. From 1935 it intensified considerably with the Nuremberg Laws.

Sigmund Loeb and his wife Nelly fled to the Netherlands in 1938. Both survived internment in the Westerbork transit camp — presumably owing to Nelly's American citizenship. Sigmund Loeb died in 1950 at the age of 91.

The question of dating: 1934, 1937 or 1938?

The sources give three different dates for Otto Loeb's move to London. They do not necessarily contradict one another. A distinction must be drawn between a preliminary stay, the actual emigration, and the formal incorporation of the company:

This reconstruction is plausible but is not secured by a single primary document.

The early days in London

In London Otto Loeb was not at first permitted to operate as a merchant. As a foreigner he was subject to trading restrictions. His cousin Henry Gerson helped him; Gerson already ran a small wine business and made distribution possible in wartime. Decisive was his acquaintance with Sir Thomas Barlow, who introduced Loeb to first-class customers — among them Glyndebourne. The festival in East Sussex was even then a centre of musical soirées; the people who ran the house (Christie, Ebert, Busch) loved German wine. For Loeb this was an ideal stage.

4. London — rise to a leading house (1938–1974)

Building up and first successes

O. W. Loeb quickly became well known. The house stood for quality and personality. Ted Day — who had once delivered newspapers to Otto Loeb in Richmond and at first knew nothing about wine — joined the firm in 1951 and remained a pillar of the house for decades.

Specialist in German wines (1950s)

In the 1950s O. W. Loeb was regarded as the leading specialist in Moselle and other German wines in Britain. The house advertised in the journal of the International Wine & Food Society. That is how David Dugdale came to Loeb; he supported the company financially and became a director in 1961. Archive finds document tasting bottles from O. W. Loeb dating from 1955 — the house was firmly anchored in London's elevated cultural milieu.

Otto Loeb actively championed a rehabilitation for German wine. He promoted the reintroduction of the great German wines to England after the Second World War — by no means a matter of course. It required courage and powers of persuasion.

A snapshot: London, May 1953

How deep the connection between O. W. Loeb and the Middle Moselle remained even after the war is shown by a note in the British Wine and Spirit Trade Circular of 16 May 1953. In the column “People and Places” the paper reports, under the heading Visitor from Germany, on a tasting of “selected French and German wines” held shortly before in the premises of O. W. Loeb & Co. Ltd. at 1 Robert Street, Adelphi, London. Among the guests was the twenty-one-year-old Eckart Prüm, son of the Wehlen house Joh. Jos. Prüm, who was spending several months at a London college studying English. Among the wines highlighted at the tasting was a 1950 Bernkasteler Pfalzgraben Spätlese, estate-bottled by J. J. Prüm.

The short item is revealing in several ways. It documents Loeb's early London business address (1 Robert Street, Adelphi); it shows that the house was already in 1953 presenting top French and German wines side by side — that is, years before the formal decision to enter the French fine-wine trade on a larger scale; and it shows that the personal ties between Loeb and the Prüm family outlived the rupture of 1933: only a few years after the end of Nazi rule a son of the Wehlen house was a guest in the London business of the wine merchant expelled from Trier. The original article is available as a PDF.

Strategic opening to France (late 1950s)

Although, as the note from the Wine and Spirit Trade Circular of 1953 shows, French wines had earlier featured in tastings, the strategic decision came only at the end of the 1950s: O. W. Loeb now entered into the independent importation of fine French wines. Early sources of supply included, among others,

This decision made O. W. Loeb in the 1960s one of the most highly regarded houses in the British fine-wine trade. Anthony Goldthorp shaped this phase decisively as Managing Director.

London addresses

O. W. Loeb was successively based at various locations: Adelphi, Jermyn Street, Southwark and Bermondsey. For the Adelphi location, the exact address — 1 Robert Street, Adelphi, London — is documented by the article in the Wine and Spirit Trade Circular of 16 May 1953 cited above. Companies House confirms that the registered address was changed from 15 Jermyn Street (London SW1Y 6LT) in 1986.

Jancis Robinson on O. W. Loeb

The later wine critic Jancis Robinson worked briefly at O. W. Loeb as a young woman. She called the firm the true purists of the British wine trade and remembered Otto Loeb as a frequent visitor to the office. He regretted it when she left the company.

5. Personality, work and honours

Personality

Otto Loeb was reserved and warm-hearted. He combined commercial flair with cultural passion. Despite expulsion and the loss of his home, he kept his attachment to Trier. That is shown by his final decision: he returned.

Principal work: Moselle (1972)

Shortly before his death Otto Loeb published his principal literary work: Moselle, written jointly with the British journalist Terence Prittie. Faber and Faber brought out the 224-page book in London in 1972.

The book is dedicated to Sigmund Loeb (1859–1950). It is more than a wine guide — it is a piece of cultural history. From the pen of a man whom the Nazi regime had driven out. Dr Daniel Deckers (FAZ) honours it as the most passionate and informative work that we owe to a German Jew writing from exile.

In its contents, Moselle covers the early history of the Moselle region, its development since 1800, the sub-regions, viticulture, cellar work, terminology, vintages and the wine trade up to the 1971 German Wine Law.

It is a German Jew who has erected this monument to Moselle wine. — Dr Daniel Deckers, FAZ

Honours

The city of Trier awarded Otto Wolfgang Loeb the Ehrensiegel der Stadt (City Seal of Honour) — the highest civic distinction. Lord Mayor Dr Heinrich Raskin presented the certificate in person; the Trier City Archive documents the ceremony photographically.

Return and death

At the beginning of 1974 Otto Loeb returned to Trier. He suffered from Parkinson's disease. On 4 August 1974 he died in a Trier hospital. At his own wish he was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Trier. This return was a gesture — a reconnection with home, with the community of his ancestors. In spite of everything the Nazi regime had destroyed.

6. O. W. Loeb & Co. after 1974

In 1976 David Dugdale took over the company. He and Anthony Goldthorp carried the house forward in Otto's tradition. Shortly after Otto's death O. W. Loeb won the agency for Paul Jaboulet Aîné (Rhône). The house remained for decades a benchmark in the British fine-wine trade. Today the company is based in London (SE1, Archie Street). It supplies top restaurants and private collectors. The company's website notes: Otto Loeb was a friend of many great producers — that tradition lives on.

7. Historical context

Otto Loeb and the German-Jewish bourgeoisie

Otto Wolfgang Loeb stands for an exemplary fate: that of the German-Jewish bourgeoisie, driven out, surviving in exile — and becoming a bridge-builder between the culture of home and the wider world. As a wine merchant Loeb remained true to his origins. He loved the Moselle; he loved German wine; he made both known in England — so soon after the Second World War, no matter of course.

Significance for the Prüm family and Moselle wine

For Sebastian Alois Prüm, Otto Loeb was far more than a trading partner. Loeb opened up the British market; he made the connection between the slate slopes of Wehlen and the London fine-wine milieu. Without that connection, the international renown of the Prüm wines is hard to imagine.

8. Sources

An annotated list of sources and literature is provided on the Literature page. Particularly worth mentioning are:

Methodological note: the account is based on publicly available sources. It draws on company registers, biographical entries, contributions from the city of Trier and secondary literature on wine history. Where sources diverge, this is noted. In particular, the dating of the emigration (1934, 1937 or 1938) can only be reconstructed on the basis of the plausibility assumption set out above. Further confirmation would require archival and registry research in Trier and London.