Charles Louis Fleischmann

Charles Louis Fleischmann (November 3, 1835 – December 10, 1897) was an innovative manufacturer of yeast and other consumer food products during the 19th Century. In the late 1860s, he and his brother Maximilian created America’s first commercially produced yeast, which revolutionized baking in a way that made today’s mass production and consumption of bread possible.

Life and work

A native of Jägerndorf (Czech: Krnov), Moravian Silesia, Charles Fleischmann was the son of Alois (or Abraham) Fleischmann, a distiller and yeast maker, and Babette. He was educated in Budapest, Hungary, Vienna and Prague. He was Hungarian and spoke Magyar, and married Prussian girl Henriette Robertson in New York. He then managed a distillery in Vienna, where he produced spirits and yeast. In 1865, Fleischmann came to the United States, and was disappointed in the quality of locally baked bread in the Cincinnati, Ohio region. The brothers, along with another business partner named James Gaff, founded what became the Fleischmann Yeast Company in Riverside, Cincinnati, in 1868.

In 1876, they exhibited a Model Vienna Bakery at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, which brought international publicity and sales exposure to the fledgling company, and yeast sales dramatically increased. Eventually, Fleischmann would own 14 manufacturing facilities. Max commuted to New York headquarters from his home in Santa Barbara, California by private railcar.

The company still exists today as a St. Louis-based producer of yeast and other products. The Fleischmann Yeast Company eventually became the world's leading yeast producer and the second largest in the production of vinegar. It was also a commercial producer of gin, under the Fleischmann brand name. When Prohibition interfered with liquor sales, the Fleischmanns developed a new market for yeast, investigating its possible health benefits for skin and digestion, and promoting it as a good source of vitamins. They hired the J. Walter Thompson Company, who created a health food fad for yeast cakes.

Charles Fleischmann is responsible for numerous mechanical patents involving yeast production machinery. He helped to organize the Market National Bank and became its president from 1887 until his death in 1897. He was buried in Spring Grove Cemetery in a mausoleum based on the Parthenon. His son, Julius Fleischmann, later served as the mayor of Cincinnati. His great-great-great-granddaughter is businesswoman Elizabeth Holmes.

Legacy

Charles Fleischmann was inducted into the American Society of Baking’s Baking Hall of Fame on March 3, 2008, at the Society’s annual meeting in Chicago, Illinois.