“I am Jewish and I am Danish”

On the occasion of our two new beers named after the Heyman couple, we bring you a little dive into their family and history.
by curator Sara Fredfeldt Stadager (2025)

Once again, the Danish Jewish Museum has bottled history. In May 2025, the museum presented two new beers that will help to convey Danish Jewish history. They are named after Philip W. Heyman and Hanne Emilie Heyman (née Adler), respectively. It is no coincidence that these are exactly the two that we have put on the labels. The family, and especially the Heyman couple, have strong ties to Danish beer history, as Philip was one of the founders of Tuborg.

Philip W. Heyman

Philip W. Heyman was born in 1837. His father was bill merchant Wulff Philip Heyman (1794-1866), and his mother was Jacobine Meyer (1812-1873). Philip was the second of six children. It was his father's second marriage, and from the previous one there were two older siblings, who were, however, about 6 years older than the children from Jacobine's family.

Phillip was sent to Melchior's civic school, which was one of the better ones in Copenhagen at the time. Although the name Melchior might lead one to believe that it was a school founded and run in a Jewish environment, it was not. After school, Phillip, as was customary, received an office education through his father's network. Phillip was then employed by the colonial wholesale company MC Levysohn in 1853. The company was owned by Michael Cosman Levysohn (1821-1879), who himself had been an apprentice in a number of larger trading houses in Copenhagen. It was a young company that, unfortunately for Phillip, had a short life. After just 4 years in the company, it went bankrupt in 1857, and Phillip had to find other employment. He founded his own company, which traded in grain and butter. In 1861 he obtained citizenship as a wholesaler. In 1857 the Trade Freedom Act had come into effect, and Copenhagen's commercial life began to flourish in earnest. Phillip knew how to take advantage of this. In 1862, he began exporting butter to England, as one of the early pioneers in the export and marketing of Danish butter with great success.

Hanne Emilie Adler

The year after he obtained his citizenship in 1862, he married Hanne Emilie Adler (1839-1917). Unfortunately, we do not know how they met, but posterity has noted that she came from more humble circumstances than Phillip, with a father who worked as a dyer.

In 1864 she gave birth to the family's first son Otto, and over the following 13 years she gave birth to a total of 9 children, 4 boys and 5 girls, all of whom survived their parents. According to Esther Kvetny Jarløv, who has written about the family, there was a 10th child who did not survive.   

In 1866, Hanne gave birth to the couple's second child, Ellen, and Philip built the Copenhagen Swine Slaughterhouse, supported by the company H. Puggaard and Co. From here, the export success to England continued, now with Danish bacon. By 1884, Denmark had become too small, and Philip became involved in a number of slaughterhouses in Sweden. By then, he had already established slaughterhouses and exports in both Jutland and Funen. It was all part of the family business that Philip had built up.

Tuborg

But for an entrepreneur like Philip, that wasn't enough. In 1873, he founded Tuborgs Fabrikker together with financier CF Tietgen and other investors. Phillip's older brother Isaac from his father's first marriage had already founded the Svanholm Brewery, located in Frederiksberg, with his father Wulff Heyman in 1853. So beer production was no stranger to the family.

It is not known why Phillip entered the Tuborg project, but it is likely that he saw another product with potential for export. He is at least sitting on the sidelines to begin with. Philip formed a consortium with CF Tietgen, Rudolph Puggaard, who had supported Heyman's first pig slaughterhouse, and lawyer G. Brock. They bought an area on the coast at Hellerup north of Copenhagen. The area was named after Jonas Thue, who owned a pub in the area. There was a small harbor and the area was called Thuesborg. After the purchase, the harbor became known as Tuborg and quickly expanded and a number of factories were founded, including a glass factory that would produce bottles, but also a fertilizer industry. The idea was to export beer and import fertilizer. The consortium transformed itself into a limited liability company with Philip as the main shareholder and CF Tietgen as chairman of the board.

A number of experts were brought in for the project. Philip found a brewmaster and an engineer to get the factory off to a good start. Tietgen insisted on hiring Leopold August Damm (1841-1901) as managing director. But the project went poorly, and beer production was at a loss. It turned out that it was not possible to run all the factories planned in the area (beer, glass, sulfuric acid and fertilizer factory). Damm had difficulty finding direction with the many businesses.

In 1880, Damm was forced to resign after years of pressure, and Philip took over the management. He switched the brewing to factory-made bottled lager beer for the Danish market. He sold the glass factory and began to focus the business on the brewery. From there, the company grew both in Denmark and internationally. Unlike the other breweries in Copenhagen, which sold beer in kegs, Tuborg sold beer in bottles with its own labels and uniform production and bottling. Once again, it was Philip's sense of marketing and the importance of the name as a seal of quality that ensured success.

While the businesses were booming, Hanne ran the household. As mentioned, she came from somewhat humbler circumstances than Philip. While Phillip had grown up in an entrepreneurial Copenhagen family that could afford to educate the children, Hanne came from a family that had lived in Denmark for almost a hundred years, which in the context of a minority has given the family a certain weight. But there was also a family where the father worked as a dyer and had only found permanent residence in Copenhagen from around 1830. On her mother's side, she was a great-cousin of the two Goldschmidt brothers, the author Meir Aron and the major entrepreneur Moritz Aron, who founded Crome and Goldschmidt. The two gentlemen, like Hanne, came from somewhat humbler circumstances, but worked their way up the social ladder; one in capital and the other in the cultural elite. Whether they associated with Hannes' family is not known, but the Copenhagen Jewish community was not large, and given the family relationship it is not impossible. Regardless of whether they associated with each other, the mere fact of being able to name a relationship to a recognized Danish (Jewish) writer, could bring some social capital to the equation.

The public sources for the private sphere in the Heyman couple's home are spartan. What is available describes Phillip as a disciplined and strict man, while he was also generous. As an example of the latter, it is often mentioned that he built workers' housing and initiated a number of social projects and poor relief. Very similar to his colleague over at the Carlsberg brewery. Very much in line with other entrepreneurs of the time, he also seems to have supported generally and not unlike the generation before him primarily Jewish charities. In the newspaper "Dags-Telegraphen" on December 17, 1884, you can see on p. 6, for example, that he also supported the Østerbro Christmas collection with 200 kr.

According to Jarløv, Phillip came from an Orthodox home, but he himself seems in his memoirs to have valued traditions more than the strict Orthodox kosher lifestyle. In Jarløv's article, Shrove Tuesday is mentioned as a favorite holiday, with invitations to the entire neighborhood and celebrations with music and barrel-beating with over a hundred participants.  

Philip once stated to one of the newspapers of the time that "I am a Jew and I am Danish, - and the more often I have the opportunity to confess my faith and my nationality, the happier I am!"

The national aspect was in vogue at the time, and is repeated in accounts from other Jewish and non-Jewish entrepreneurs of the time. Outwardly, however, he did not show his Jewishness. On Jewish holidays, he nevertheless took a hired cab to the Stock Exchange, because it had to run anyway, as he said, while his own horses and carriage were given time off. However, he stopped a short distance from the Stock Exchange so as not to offend his fellow believers. Heyman was both appointed consul and made a Knight of the Dannebrog for his efforts for Denmark.

The family socialized with the established Jewish community and from letters preserved from Heinrich Hirschsprung (1836-1908), another of the great entrepreneurs of the time, we know that the two families socialized. The daughters Ellen Hirschsprung and Asta Heyman even vacationed together in the late 1800th century.

In 1891, Philip's older brother Isack's brewery, Bryggeriet Svanholm, was incorporated into the newly established De Forenede Bryggerier. Philip kept Tuborg out of the association, which was created to have the muscle to resist Carlsberg's dominance in the market. In 1893, Phillip Heyman died, and shortly afterwards the board invited his son-in-law, Benny Dessau, who was already working in the company, to take over as director. Benny Dessau was married to the Heyman couple's daughter Paula (1870-1951). Benny's brother Martin also owed his fine career to Phillip, who had made him director of one of the countless slaughterhouses. In 1894, Benny Dessaus ensured the brewery's further development by joining De Forenede Bryggerier, of which he also became director in 1899.

In the meantime, the Heyman family's export and butchery business was without clear leadership. However, it was not long before Hanne came into her own and, together with her son Aage (1869-1960), ran the business. However, the contact with Tuborg remained strong, and before long they were also responsible for the export of Tuborg beer abroad.

art

As was fashionable at the time, we know that the Heyman couple also collected art. This can be seen, among other things, in interior pictures from the home at Strandvejen 11. It is difficult to see exactly what is hanging on the walls from the old pictures, but landscape paintings and portraits are common. The same is found in other upper-middle-class Jewish homes from the period. If you want to go a little deeper and get examples, the best source is the exhibition catalogue for the Danish Art and Crafts Association's Jewish exhibition in 1908. It was a large exhibition with a long list of loans from Danish Jewish families as well as the Mosaic Faith. In that catalogue, we can see that Hanne contributed two objects from the home: an Elijah shroud for circumcision, which was embroidered with silk, and a Kristian Zahrtmann (1843-1917) painting of the Heyman couple in Rome (Kr. Zahrtmann's painting. The Monsignor's Visit, 1876). Zahrtmann was a much sought-after but also controversial artist at the end of the 1800th century. A Zahrtmann picture was both a sign of taste, but also a bit bold and modern. Unfortunately, it has not been possible to track down the picture. But it is possible that the Elias seat is one of the two that are now part of the Danish Jewish Museum's collection. However, it has not been possible to finally verify this.

When Hanne Emilie Heyman died in 1917, an auction of the estate was announced, which featured, among other things, pictures by Wilhelm Marstrand (1810-1873). Where Zahrtmann was a bit daring, Marstrand had more classic 'good taste'.

The couple did not choose, like many other art collectors of the time, to donate their collection to a museum, and the collection with all its history was therefore dissolved. It is therefore difficult to draw a real portrait of them as collectors and patrons. What remains most are the companies and the popular and popular expressions that came through the advertisements for Tuborg. For example, it was Phillip who launched the easily recognizable red and white striped Tuborg umbrella.

It was therefore also obvious to draw a portrait of them on the labels of our new beer, which therefore contains a central and important part of Danish Jewish history.