Paul Isenberg

Paul Isenberg (born April 15, 1837 in Dransfeld , † January 16, 1903 in Bremen ) was a German sugar manufacturer in Bremen and Hawaii .

biography

Isenberg was the son of a pastor and superintendent in Wunstorf . He attended the secondary school in Braunschweig . From 1858 he trained as a farmer in Hawaii . After that he was an administrator on a cattle ranch and finally on a sugar plantation. He married the daughter of the plantation owner and became its director. In 1867 his first wife died. He made connections with the sugar merchant Hinrich Hackfeld .

In 1869 he married Beta (Wobetha Margaretha) Glade (1846–1933), the daughter of a Bremen merchant. At first they both lived in Hawaii and his company had considerable economic success. In 1878 they both moved to Braunschweig and in 1879 to Bremen. Here they lived in house Contrescarpe No. 3 (later the location of the theater ). In 1881 Isenberg became a partner in the Heinrich Hackfeld sugar factory. When Hinrich Hackfeld handed over management to Isenberg in 1886 at the age of 70, H. Hackfeld and Co. was one of the largest sugar factories in Hawaii. Isenberg supported some social projects in Bremen, especially the Ellener Hof, created by Georg Treviranus in 1846/1847, a home for neglected children in Bremen- Osterholz (Ellener Feld). He set up a Paul Isenberg Foundation , which received a legacy of 100,000 marks for the Ellener Hof on his death . The Isenberg Foundation was dissolved in 1966.

In 1895 Gut Kamp (formerly Gut Travenort) in the Segeberg district near the border with Ostholstein in Holstein Switzerland came into the possession of Isenberg. Until 1897 he built the estate for his family, which has since remained in the family's possession and on which the breeding of Schleswig draft horses began after 1945 .

In 1903, after Isenberg's death, the company remained with Beta Isenberg and Hackfeld. The third and final head of the company was consul Johann Friedrich Hackfeld .

Beta Isenberg continued the generous support of the social measures. She lived in Bremen, Contrescarpe 19, in what is now the Institut Français. She was chairman of the association for a refuge for women and girls and built the Isenbergheim in the Neustadt , Kornstrasse 209/211 , in 1914/15 according to plans by Abbehusen and Blendermann .

Isenberg's wealth in Hawaii was initially lost in the First World War in 1917/18 and decreased considerably in Bremen during the inflation of 1923/24.

Clara Isenberg, Isenberg's daughter, was her second wife in 1907, Hermann Sielcken , a German-American businessman who made a fortune as a coffee importer.

literature

• Biography of Bremen in the nineteenth century . Published by the Historical Society of the Artists' Association, Verlag von Gustav Winter, Bremen 1912, pp. 239–240.
• Friedrich Prüser:  Isenberg, Paul. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 10, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1974, ISBN 3-428-00191-5 , pp. 190 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Herbert Black Forest : The Great Bremen Lexicon . 2nd, updated, revised and expanded edition. Edition Temmen, Bremen 2003, ISBN 3-86108-693-X .