Kaethe Danziger (geb. Halberstaedter) spells the family name "Zwicklitzer"; however all the records in familysearch.org and JRI-Poland use "Czwiklitzer", as does Johanna and David's tombstone. David himself used a number of spellings in his advertisements.



His tombstone says he died on 06.10.1916 in his 74th year, so he was born in 1842-43. It also names his father in Hebrew as SLOM (a cognate of Salomon).



The Pless family records include the family of a Salomon Cwicklitzer whose children include David born 27.11.1842 and Simon; a Simon Czwiklitzer lived in Katowice at the same time as David.

David is listed in the 1910 and 1914 Kattowitz address books at Grundmannstrasse 18, which he shared with his son Adolf. Ernst's birth certificate (1874) gives the same address. The same address appears in an 1877 advertisement in the name of D. Czwicklitzer.



David founded a factory and shop making and selling soap in Kattowitz in 1867; his 1868 marriage record describes him as a Seifensiedermeister (master soap boiler). According to BM, a historian of Załęże district it was his son, Adolf, who expanded the family business by opening the factory making toilet soaps and soap powder in the Załęże region of Kattowitz in around 1923. Certainly in the era from 1907 to 1914 David appeared frequently in newspaper advertisements as an agent for other manufacturer's soaps and is often described as an apteka (apothecary or dispensing pharmacist) rather than a manufacturer. An advertisement for workers in his soap factory appeared in 1915; by this time David was in his 70s.

An appeal for rice starch for the Czwiklitzer steam laundry appeared in December 1816, a few weeks after David's death; the advertisement is in the name of G. Czwiklitzer and gives the address as Grundmannstrasse 8; both of these details are likely typographic errors since I have not found any record of an adult G. Czwiklitzer at this time and, according to the 1914 Kattowitz address book, Grundmannstrasse 8 was half of a property spanning buildings 6 and 8.

Numerous advertisements for both Czwiklitzer soap and the firm's steam laundry appeared from the early 1920s.

One Robert Bienias was appointed director of the firm in June 1929; his tenure lasted only until December of the same year. A 1930 directory of Polish businesses lists the firm, with Bienias as its director and no family members are mentioned.



David is claimed to be the first soap manufacturer in Upper Silesia. In 1946 the firm was nationalised, Adolf and his family having having fled to England to escape Nazi persecution. The business's successor is Katowickie Zakłady Chemii Gospodarczej "Pollena - Savona".

An article on page 2 of the November 2009 edition of "Nasze Katowice" about Katowice's Jewish cemetery claims that David and Adolf were the inventors of Nivea Cream. However, beiersdorf.com does not mention either of them in its history of the product.