The story
The association was founded on 13 March 1919 as the main association of the German retail trade. Oscar Tietz is considered to be one of the initiators of the foundation. From 1925 to 1933, Joachim Tiburtius was a managing board member and the Provisional Reich Economic Council member. In 1932, the large companies 'Verband Deutscher Kauf- und Warenhäuser' and the 'Reichsverband der Filialgeschäfte des Lebensmitteleinzelhandels' were forced out of the main association by radicalised forces of the middle class. From 1933 to 1935, Joachim Tiburtius was chief executive of the HDE. In 1934, the association's activities were stopped by the National Socialists' with the enforced conformity, in which all independent associations were replaced by Reich or economic groups of the Reich Chamber of Commerce. All retail businesses became compulsory members of the newly introduced Retail Trade Economic Group within the Reich Trade Group, and the Main Association of the German Retail Trade was dissolved in 1936.
On 12 September 1947, the Hauptgemeinschaft des Deutschen Einzelhandels was newly founded in Bonn by the state retail associations of Bavaria, Bremen, Hamburg, Hesse, Lower Saxony, North Rhine-Westphalia, Schleswig-Holstein, Westphalia and WürttembergBaden in West Germany. In 1949, the association moved to Frankfurt am Main. In October of the same year, the delegates' meeting decided to change the name to Hauptgemeinschaft des Deutschen Einzelhandels e. V. Three other regional associations joined the main association. Cologne became the headquarters of the main association on 1 June 1950. Until the fall of the Berlin Wall, no trade association activities took place on the territory of the GDR. In 1990, the organisation was renamed the Hauptverband des Deutschen Einzelhandels (HDE).
At the end of 2009, the association was renamed Handelsverband Deutschland - HDE e.V. The name change was intended to reflect the restructuring of the retail organisation in the regions and federal states. At the same time, following the dissolution of the trade association BAG (Bundesarbeitsgemeinschaft der Mittel- und Großbetriebe des Einzelhandels e. V.) on 9 December 2009, its large member companies were to be offered a new professional interest group at federal level. The Federal Association of Chain Stores and Self-Service Department Stores (BFS) was merged into the HDE on 1 July 2002 as an interest group representing well-known chain shops and discounters in the food retail sector.
Since 2017, the association has also been one of the founders of the Stiftung Zentrale Stelle Verpackungsregister (ZSVR) in accordance with Section 24 of the German Packaging Act, based in Osnabrück.
Name
1919: Main association of the German retail trade
1990: Main Association of the German Retail Trade
2009: German Trade Association - HDE
From Wikipedia’s article on German Trade Association, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5