L. Bauernfreund & Co.

The brothers Leopold (b.1850-d.1920) and Nathan Bauernfreund (b.1853-d.1925) came from Ellwangen in Middle Franconia, where a Jewish community had existed, with interruptions, since the Middle Ages. Leopold and Nathan Bauernfreund moved to Munich as young men and together opened a dry goods and fashion accessories business in 1876. In 1883, the two brothers were jointly registered as the owners of the cast-pewterware factory "Zinngußwarenfabrik L. Bauernfreund & Cie." at Frauenstraße 4c. Leopold Bauernfreund left the company in 1892 to focus on the manufacture of pea soup stock and canned food, and later on the publishing of a journal. His brother continued to run the company until it was deregistered in 1911. 

The company specialized in elaborately designed character steins, sourced largely from the stoneware manufacturer Hauber & Reuther of Freising. These were painted and fitted with pewter lids by Bauernfreund. The Bauernfreund company did not have its own outlets but sold its wares primarily through salesmen working on commission. Three Jewish, Munich-based merchants-Samuel Liebschütz (1860-1930), Jakob Neumark (1850-1907), and Heinrich Uhlfelder (1854-1928) were most probably the main takers. 

After his brother left the company, Nathan Bauernfreund carried on the decorating and assembling of character steins. He also managed to open up a new business area, manufacturing pewter lids for beer steins, with breweries' logos on them, for several of the large breweries in Munich, such as Löwenbräu, Bürgerbräu, and Eberl-Bräu. 

In 1911 Nathan Bauernfreund closed the pewterware factory in Frauenstraße. He died in Munich in 1925, aged 72. His brother, Leopold, had died earlier in 1920. Both were buried in the New Jewish Cemetery in Munich. Nathan Bauernfreund's second wife, Charlotte, née Bernheim, who was born in 1867 in Buchau in Württemberg, was deported to Theresienstadt in 1942 and murdered. His son, Wilhelm, born in 1908, managed to emigrate to the USA. He returned to Munich in the 1960s where he died in 1995.