Max Uhlfelder (6.5.1884 Munich – 4.3.1958 Munich)

Trained businessman Max Uhlfelder assumed control of the Heinrich Uhlfelder Department Store in Munich's Rosental district following his father's passing in 1928. With around 7,000 square meters of retail space and up to 1,000 employees, it was the largest department store in the city alongside Tietz around 1930. From 1933 onward, the Jewish entrepreneur was subjected to attacks and boycott measures by the National Socialists. The department store was vandalized and looted during the Night of Broken Glass on November 9, 1938. Max Uhlfelder and his son were arrested and imprisoned in Dachau Concentration Camp for two months. In July 1939, the family successfully emigrated to India. The department store was forcibly liquidated at the instigation of the Nazi Party, the stock sold off, and the property expropriated. Uhlfelder's sister and co-owner of the company, Grete Mayer, was among the first of the deportation victims from Munich. She was killed along with her husband and son in Kaunas on November 25, 1941.

Max Uhlfelder was able to emigrate to the USA with his family in 1947. From there he sought compensation. He had to conduct a total of 89 lawsuits to obtain compensation for the goods and department store stock that he had been forcibly sold off to the Munich retail trade in 1938/39. In 1953, the married couple returned to Munich, with their two children staying behind in the USA. Max Uhlfelder was no longer able to achieve his plan of rebuilding the Uhlfelder Department Store. In 1954, he sold off the plots of land in Munich's Rosental district at a preferential price to Munich's municipal authority, which used them to expand the Munich City Museum. A plaque there commemorates the former Uhlfelder store. It was not until 1971 that the family received appropriate compensation for the loss of the formerly thriving enterprise, when Uhlfelder's son Harry reached an agreement with the Bavarian state authority – 13 years after Max Uhlfelder's death and 33 years after the state-mandated and implemented expropriation. The Uhlfelder couple's tomb is situated in the Neue Israelitische Friedhof (New Jewish Cemetery) in Munich.