Jacob Fischer, a furniture and used goods dealer born in Sobotište, Slovakia, in 1832, was the founder of the sole proprietorship J. Fischer, located at Wildenmanngasse 8 (renamed Strobachgasse in 1906) in Vienna’s 5th district, , which he converted into a general partnership with his sons Ignaz (born in 1870) and Adolf (born in 1872) in 1899. After Jacob Fischer's death in 1904, his son Ferdinand, born in 1877, who was already working as an authorised signatory in the company, became a partner. Originally a collection of worn out of carpenter’s and upholstered furniture, the range also included furnishings used in theaters and restaurants and coffee houses, for example from the Venice theme park in Vienna's Prater. From 1919, the company was authorised to offer goods for sale by means of a further trade licence. As a licenced and officially certified auctioneer, the Viennese auction house J. Fischer organised numerous large auctions in the interwar period. In November 1920, for example, the furnishings from the city apartment and villa of an automobile director general H. who had emigrated to Brazil came under the hammer, in December 1926, those from Pottenbrunn Castle in Lower Austria and in April 1935, the furniture and works of art from the estate of the Viennese lawyer Imanuel Brüch. Between 1928 and 1938 alone, at least 26 auction catalogues were published. In 1937, Ferdinand Fischer, chairman of the Association of Viennese Auction Houses founded in 1931 and a commercial councillor since 1933, acquired further trade licences for the brokerage of buying and selling orders in auction companies and the credit brokerage as well as advice on auction matters. The last auction took place in February 1938 - a few weeks before the annexation of Austria to the National Socialist German Reich. An auction announced for mid-March 1938 is unlikely to have been held.

In their Declaration of Assets of July 1938, Ferdinand and Ignaz Fischer each listed half shares in the residential and commercial building at Strobachgasse 8. Since, according to their own statements, they had already given up the business licence of the company J. Fischer located in the building, it no longer represented any material value. Ferdinand Fischer used the sale of securities to finance the family's living expenses and the travel and shipping costs as well as the landing money for his son Kurt Anton Fischer (later Kurt A. Fisher), born in 1908, who had worked in the auction house and fled to the Caribbean state of Haiti in July 1938. In September of the same year, S. Fischer was deleted from the commercial register. Ferdinand Fischer and his wife Rosa, née Teichtner, converted from Judaism to Catholicism in October 1938; in May 1939, they were also de-registered from their apartment at Linke Wienzeile 14/ II/18-19 in Vienna’s 6th district to Haiti, Ignaz Fischer and his wife Alice, née Spitzer, from Strobachgasse 8/II/4 to Chile. In 1938 and 1939, Ignaz and Ferdinand Fischer applied to the Central Office for the Protection of Monuments for an export permit for their removal goods, with Johann Oberndorfer acting as the forwarding agent. Adolf Fischer, who had left the company in 1933, died in the Israelite Hospital in Vienna in July 1940. Adolf Fischer's widow, Ella (Elly), née Marburg, born in 1884, was deported to Maly Trostinec on 26 May 1942 and subsequently murdered. The building of the auction house in Strobachgasse was “aryanized” by the Gesellschaft für Elektroheizungstechnik m. b. H. in 1940. Kurt Fischer opened a store specialising in local arts and crafts in the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince and became intensively involved in the archaeology of the island. He and his wife, who came from the local upper class, later moved to Puerto Rico, a foreign territory of the USA, where he died in 1987. In 1953, a settlement was reached before the Restitution Commission at the Regional Court for Civil Matters in Vienna, which provided for the restitution of the property at Strobachgasse 8. Ferdinand Fischer died in Turgeau (Haiti) in 1962, Ignaz Fischer, who probably also lived in Haiti with his wife, at least temporarily, died in 1958.