Otto Wolff Eisengroßhandel was founded in Cologne in 1904 by Otto Wolff and Ottmar E. Strauß as a steel trading and steel wrecking company. The business expanded following World War I, acquiring a share in Phoenix AG für Bergbau und Hüttenbetrieb ("Mining and Iron Works") in 1917 and taking a 50% share in the Russo-German joint venture, Deutsch-Russische Handels-AG (Russgertorg) in October 1922 which was promoted by Lenin himself. By means of this largest Soviet joint venture he could prove that the foreign trade monopoly was not that kind of handicap as his opponents claimed. The latter project ended after 15 month as trade with the Soviet Union came under stricter state control. In the 1920s, the firm was the nucleus of a group of metals, coal, and electrical companies employing around one million men. Its chief rival at that time was a similar trust controlled by industrialist Hugo Stinnes. In the negotiations with MICUM Wolff did not support Stinnes' commission of six but decided to make some kind of “separate peace” with the French delegation.