When I was a little girl visiting my grandparents in Berlin, I often trailed my relatives around vast emporia known as "department stores". They were myriad: Karstadt, Wertheim, Hertie... When you went into them, you felt as though you were walking into Ali Baba's cave: they were crammed full of delights, lots of them glittering and sparkling. You name it, you could find it in one of these places. They were packed with people.
Many branches of Wertheim were either closed or converted to Karstadt. Hertie was also taken over by Karstadt in 1994. In the German town where I now live, they used to have Kaufhof, which itself gradually took over Horten, the fourth largest German department store chain at the time. But even Kaufhof, established in 1879, was merged with Karstadt in 2020 to form Galeria Karstadt Kaufhof.
Now... although Galeria is still the third largest chain of department stores in Europe (after El Corte Ingles in Spain and Marks & Spencer in the UK), on 2 October 2026 the company filed for insolvency proceedings for the FOURTH (!) time in seven years. As some people have commented to me, the company keeps getting bailed out by means of taxpayers' money. And that's despite the fact that since 2020, 47 branches have been closed down. They just can't seem to make a go of it [etwas zu einem Erfolg machen].
And why is the company struggling so much? Well, yes, it is convenient to order stuff from the comfort of your own sofa. But it's harder to compare stuff online; it's much easier to go to a shop, place things side by side and then compare them. And the colour on the screen might look very different in daylight. And you can't feel the fabric. Many's the time I have been attracted to some item of clothing in a shop and when I went over and touched it, I recoiled [zurückweichen]. It felt too synthetic - or looked too cheap. Finally, you can't try it on until it arrives through the post and then if it's not the right size, then there's the hassle of returning it. No thank you.
Last week, I went to Karstadt's haberdashery [Kurzwaren] department - my favourite bit of the shop. What was once a magnificent section of the store now looks a shadow of its former self. About half the variety of bales of cloth [Stoffballen] for one thing. Large gaps where tables used to be. I had a list of things I needed, I got only one.
And embroidery threads? For years and years, I've been going there to "feed" my cross-stitching habit. I've been buying Anchor embroidery floss since they were priced at 75 cents each. They now cost €1.75. Karstadt had the whole array of colours - over 300 of them.
Not any more though. "Oh, no, we now only offer Rico embroidery thread." Who on earth wants that? They might be cheaper, but the colour range is much smaller and the quality is lower. The end result of your embroidery has no sheen [Schimmer]. And all my patterns specify either Anchor or DMC - for which I have a conversion chart.
While I was there, trying to track down ribbons (also on my list), another woman came in and asked for heading tape to make curtains (that's the strip that goes at the top and which you can pull together to make pleats and where the curtain hooks go into). "We don't stock that." Off she went, muttering under her breath - something about taxpayers' money going to waste.
But she's right. It is frustrating. You go to an actual bricks-and-mortar shop - rather than shopping online - only to be told that they don't offer that any more.
Over the years, Karstadt has dwindled. No longer a "box of delights", selling goods that ranged in price from cheap to expensive via "reasonable", it has closed the following departments:
- pet and gardening equipment
- photography
- printers
- picture framing
- curtains (ready-made and material)
- books
- lighting
That's all I can think of at the moment...
The less one offers, the less reason people have to come to you.
And that's why Galeria Karstadt is in trouble... yet again.
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