Ehret

In faded gilt, on the wooden facades of turnpike hotels, and on the signs of gloomy but unclosed saloons near the dockyards and railway stations of cities, one still encounters the words "EHRET'S BEER ON DRAUGHT." Last week George Ehret, 92, died in Manhattan of pneumonia. He left $40,000,000.

George Ehret had kindly little eyes and a wedge-shaped bald head, spreading out at the neck. His stiff collars, always too big for him, were immense, low and broad; he tucked the ends of his black bow tie up under the flaps of his collar. His figure was square, his legs a little bowed.

He was born at Hofweier, County of Offenberg, in the Grand Duchy of Baden, Germany. His father, a prosperous brewer, came to the U. S. in 1857. George Ehret learned his trade young. He knew all about brewing and cooperage when he went to work for Anton Hupfel in Manhattan. In six years he became Hupfel's master brewer, and Hupfel lent him enough money, combined with what he had saved, to start a brewery of his own. George Ehret called it the Hell Gate Brewery. It was his ambition to make the best lager beer in the U. S. Fire burned down the Hell Gate Brewery. George Ehret built it up again. To get pure water he drilled an artesian well through 700 feet of rock. He would not defile good hops with city water. In 1871 he put out 33,512 barrels, and knew that he would be a rich man. He made up his mind to work harder. He had eight children. Every evening, coming home hungry, he tucked his napkin in his neck and filled his stomach with good food. His stein was always refilled several times. When he became fabulously rich a reporter asked him what was the secret of his success. George Ehret smiled vaguely and, with a big hand on the table, seemed to lose himself in memories. "Ja . . . ja. . . ." The reporter quoted him as saying "Good beer, good health." But George Ehret did not say that. Life was more than food and drink. In the evenings, perhaps, a game of dominoes. No better game. . . . About half-past nine a band was sure to come round. All the German street bands in the Bronx called at George Ehret's house. He would send the butler down with a glass of beer and a dollar bill for every man. The butler grumbled because he knew the tricks of these foxes of bandsmen. "The Blue Danube" at nine o'clock. A glass of beer and a dollar bill. Then around the block. At half past nine, "Die Wacht am Rhein." Another bill, another glass. Upstairs, with his feet on a rocking chair, Herr Ehret paid no heed to his butler's complaints. Sometimes, if no band came, he played to himself on the flageolet, a sad and wandering air. Then to bed. He had bought real estate with his money--Manhattan real estate was good, and at one time he owned more than anyone except John Jacob Astor--but he never raised a rent or put a tenant out for not paying the rent. When the War came, the government took all his property under the Alien Property Custodian's Act. George Ehret got it back again. When Prohibition came he could not quite believe it. That it should happen, such a craziness! . . . He refused to shut up his brewery. He would not let any man leave him until the man had a new job. The old brewers, who like him would rather have lost money than mixed their materials with dirty city water, who were proud of their lager, and who had grown fat and raised families, these men George Ehret set to work making near beer.