After the rebuilding of Schneidemühl in the wake of the Great Fire of 1834 and after the elimination of the old ghetto, many Jewish families began to live on and around the town's squares and its adjoining streets. An examination of the Schneidemühl City Directory of 1896 reveals how the new Jewish burghers clustered there as a result of the commercial upswing, brought about by the unification of the German Reich in 1871.

Nearly one third of the houses on Neuer Markt, Mühlenstrasse, Friedrichstrasse, Posenerstrasse, Wilhelmstrasse were Jewish owned, while some had only Jewish tenants. This was Schneidemühl's Jewish heart.

Ironically, the occupations that had been forced upon Jews over the centuries now helped them to excel—often to become leaders in their field—and to climb the ladders of success in this era of industrial capitalism. Fin-de-siècle Schneidemühl could boast of a petit bourgeoisie that then included some of the wealthiest and best-known Jewish families.

These surviving calling cards (below) from the last decades of the 19th and the early 20th century make for interesting reading.