Adolf Vinnen

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Friedrich Adolf Vinnen

Friedrich Adolf Vinnen (born April 19, 1868 in Bremen ; † May 11, 1926 in Bremen) was a Bremen shipowner , entrepreneur and politician. He was best known as the owner of the shipping company FA Vinnen & Co.

biography

family

Adolf Vinnen, as he called himself all his life, was the second eldest son of the Bremen shipowner Johann Christopher Vinnen (1829–1912) and Jenny Friederike Vinnen, nee. Westenfeld (1841-1870). His older brother was the Worpswede painter Carl Vinnen (1863-1922), who was supposed to take over the family business, but became a painter.

In 1903 Adolf Vinnen married Magdalene Volkmann (1884–1963), the daughter of the businessman and partner in Lahusen, Johann Heinrich Volkmann and Alwine Kommallein. The Bremen merchants Johannes Daniel Volkmann and Wilhelm Volkmann were his wife's brothers. Adolf and Magdalene had three sons; the son Werner Vinnen was a shipowner and later President of the Bremen Chamber of Commerce (1904–1981). The Vinnen couple were buried in the Vinnens family grave in the Riensberg cemetery .

education and profession

The Adolf Vinnen stranded in front of the Lizard Peninsula
The Magdalene Vinnen

Vinnen completed a commercial apprenticeship. After a long stay in England and America, he joined the E. C. Schramm & Co. shipping company, which had been in the family since 1797, in 1896 .

He was an important representative of the German and international shipping industry. He was elected to the Union's Steering Committee in 1904 at the establishment of the Sailing Ship Owners International Union in London, in which the sailing ship tonnage of Germany, France and England with ships over 1000 NRT contributed over 85%.

Horst Adamietz wrote in his book Gezeiten der Schiffahrt u. a .:

“When sailing worldwide in 1909/1910 was down and its future prospects were generally judged to be extremely poor, Adolf Vinnen bought the entire Hamburg shipping company Aktiengesellschaft“ Alster ” with its sailing freighter fleet at an extremely low price, renaming the“ Alster ”to“ Bremer Stahlhof AG ” 'and put the fleet in motion. In 1911, as in general, things suddenly started to pick up again with sailing. The new Vinnen ships were now worth ten times as much and brought in 35,000 English pounds of net profit on an annual round trip, so that the shipping company F. A. Vinnen & Co was wealthier than ever before and afterwards in a short time. "

The Bremen biography 1912–1962 from 1969 further details him and his shipping company:

“Originally an import house, which was primarily dedicated to the trade in tobacco from the USA, it had developed into an important shipping company since the Napoleonic period, which operated both freight and passenger transport, but gave up the latter again with the advent of steamers. The decline in cargo loads for sailing ships also prompted Vinnen's father to turn to the import of petroleum in the mid-1970s, for the discharge and storage of which he acquired land in Nordenham from 1879 and built extensive sheds.

Although he had to withdraw from the petroleum business, which was no longer profitable for him, as early as 1887, his investment activities, which had given the impetus to develop Nordenham into a port and industrial location, subsequently proved to be a success. When he joined the family company in 1896, he was able to found the Deutsche Dampffischerei-Gesellschaft und die Nordsee , which rose extremely quickly and at times maintained the largest deep-sea fishing fleet in the world.

In 1905 he founded the "Midgard" Deutsche Seeverkehrs-AG , which took over, managed and expanded the port facilities in Nordenham that had been built in the meantime, as well as managing a number of larger fish steamers. With the establishment of the Nordenhamer Terrain-AG (1906) and the "Visurgis" Heringsfischerei AG (1907) he contributed to the economic boom of the place.

While Vinnen managed all these companies as a board member or as chairman of the supervisory board, since the turn of the century he has mainly devoted his work to the company EC Schramm & Co. Initially a partner, after his father left in 1909, he ran the shipping company that he owned Renamed FA Vinnen & Co. in 1912.

When the First World War broke out , he fought with the Bavarian Chevauxlegers in the campaigns in the Balkans and in the west.

Their ships sailing under the white and blue house flag formed the last large sailing fleet still resident in Bremen. The loss of his four-masted barque caused by the First World War had to hit him all the more painfully. But he went to the rebuilding of the company with unbroken courage and still saw that it resumed the overseas freight service with modern motor gliders. "

With the renewed construction of cargo sailing ships after the First World War, in view of the technical development towards steam ships, Vinnen initially caused heads to shake in specialist circles, but was then brilliantly confirmed in view of the enormous economic success of his sailing ships, which sailed faster and cheaper than the fuel-consuming competition. His four-masted barques, named after family members, were huge. The second Magdalene Vinnen , built in 1921 at the Krupp Germania shipyard in Kiel , was in the process of construction and is still the largest sailing ship in the world at 3,709 GRT. Today it sails under the Russian flag and goes by the name Sedov .

He lived in a large house on the Contrescarpe and built the shipping company's office building at number 20 Altenwall .

Politics and offices

Vinnen was in the plenary session of the Bremen Chamber of Commerce , on the board of the Association of Shipowners of the Lower Weser Area (since 1917: Bremer Rhederverein eV), on the administrative board of the Association of German Shipowners, on the board of the executive committee of the German Training Ship Association and on the board of the German Sea Trade Association .

Vinnen was a member of the supervisory board of Adler Kaliwerke Oberröblingen and the superphosphate factory Nordenham AG . He was an honorary member of the Bayern Association in Bremen.

From 1918 to 1926 he was the Bavarian Consul General in Bremen. In 1925 he became head of the Seafaring House . He was a deacon of Our Lady Congregation and administrator of the girls' orphanage.

As a representative of the 2nd class, the conservative Vinnen was a member of the Bremen citizenship from 1900 to 1918 as well as in the deputations for the schools, for the lighting and for the water works.

From December 9, 1918, he was chairman of a conservative citizens' committee to represent the interests of the bourgeoisie during the Bremen Council Republic . He was therefore part of a delegation that demanded in Berlin at the end of January 1919 that military measures be taken against the established Socialist Republic of Bremen . The Reich government followed the request and on February 4, 1919, the Gerstenberg Division bloodily crushed the Soviet Republic.

Vinnen was elected to the Bremen National Assembly on March 9, 1919 . He was the list leader of a conservative / bourgeois state electoral association, consisting of the German National People's Party (DNVP) and the German People's Party (DVP). The Bremen Constitution was passed on May 18, 1920. Vinnen then withdrew from parliamentary work.

Honors

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Inscription with full name on the tombstone in the Riensberg cemetery
personal data
SURNAME Vinnen, Adolf
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Vinnen, Friedrich Adolf
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Bremen shipowner, company founder and politician, Member of the Bundestag
DATE OF BIRTH April 19, 1868
PLACE OF BIRTH Bremen
DATE OF DEATH May 11, 1926
Place of death Bremen