Horten AG (Aktiengesellschaft) was a German department store chain founded by Helmut Horten in 1936 and headquartered in Düsseldorf, Germany.
With up to 80 stores throughout Germany, Horten ranked fourth-largest among German department store chains, after Karstadt, Kaufhof and Hertie.
History
Horten company was established buying out Jewish businesses through Nazi "Aryanisation" programme. As a member of the Nazi party, he was able to profit from his connections.
Horten was one of the most modern German department store companies in the 1960s and 1970s. The stores' facades, completely decorated with the so called 'horten tiles', designed by famous architect Egon Eiermann were typical landmarks within the post-war german pedestrian zones ("Fußgängerzonen"). Many new stores were built and the traditional, long-established high street stores were renovated, modernized, and in some cases, expanded. Horten built the first department stores that included car parks and petrol stations. Horten wanted to be the department store of choice for customers from the suburbs who had their first cars and did not want to travel into the cities by bus or tram. In addition to their high-end downtown department stores, Horten built new "edge of downtown stores." Every department store featured a restaurant, mostly located on the top floor. In the 1960s they were called "KUPFERSPIESS" (Copper Kettle). Later, Horten began to reorganise them into self-service-restaurants and called them "Bon appetit" or "Horten-Restaurant," also combined together as "Bon appetit: Ihr Horten-Restaurant." In the 1990s Horten also began introducing the Galeria-concept for its restaurants and gave them a new food distribution sector and a lighter outfit. After Kaufhof took over Horten, they merged their two restaurant companies "Bel-Terine" and "Bon appetit" into one, dubbed "DINEA." Smaller restaurants with less service were called "Grillpfanne."
Horten's dark brown interiors morphed into a more modern and fresh look with the introduction of the new Galeria stores in the 1980s, with an emphasis on lighter colors such as blue, light gray and white. Some of the bigger stores added food courts called "delikatessa" and also added onsite supermarkets. After returning from a visit to the United States and returning with the concept, Helmut Horten opened Germany's first supermarkets in the basement floors of his department stores. They were innovative, modern, and much larger than most German grocery stores at the time.
In 1968 Helmut Horten sold all of his shares in the company and was not subsequently seen at celebratory occasions of Horten AG (like the 50th anniversary in 1986). Helmut Horten died in 1987, at this time his former company had been acquired by British American Tobacco plc.
Until 1988, Horten operated some of its department stores under the name of Merkur; some of the group's smaller department stores were called DeFaKa (Deutsches Familien Kaufhaus), but these had all been replaced with modern types of Horten department stores by the 1970s. In 1988 Horten introduced a new concept for their department stores called the "GALERIA" concept. This proved to be a very successful venture for Horten AG. Horten AG decided to refresh the 39 biggest stores with the GALERIA design, though this goal was never fully implemented. That year, Horten founded Horten-Extra GmbH to hold its thirteen smallest locations not branded with the new GALERIA design. Ten of these Horten-Extra stores were sold to Kaufring AG in 1993. The other three Horten-Extra stores also did not have successful histories. The location in Dortmund was closed directly after the ten Horten-Extra stores were sold; it was renovated as a mall (Westfalen Forum). The other two Horten-Extra stores became part of Kaufhof (Neuss and Schwäbisch Gmünd) and traded for a few years once again as Horten, until the year 2000, when both stores closed because they were considered too small to be renamed Galeria Kaufhof.