Adolph Alexander

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Adolph Alexander (birth name Adolph Bernhardt , born on September 20, 1799 in Plau / Mecklenburg-Schwerin ; died on September 27, 1869 ) was a German politician and member of the Hamburg parliament .

Life and politics

Adolph Bernhardt Alexander was of Jewish descent. He moved to Hamburg and was active as a partner in the textile trading company AJ Saalfeld & Co. until 1847 with Alexander Julius Saalfeld (1794-1860) and Lewis Heymann (1802-1869) , who were also from Mecklenburg . After that Alexander and Heymann worked under the name Ad. Alexander & Co. (based in Hamburg) and Heymann & Alexander (based in Nottingham) with further branches in Leipzig , Bradford , St. Pierre les Calais and Caudry .

Memorial stone Adolph Alexander (left), Ilandkoppel Jewish Cemetery

Alexander was chairman of the German-Israelite Congregation from 1851 to 1866 and from 1864 to 1869 as a tax appraiser. In Hamburg he devoted himself to politics as well as business. One of his main concerns in the 1840s was the demand for Hamburg to join the German Customs Union . He was also elected as a member of the commission set up by the Patriotic Section of the Patriotic Society . In support of his opinion, he also published papers and also wrote essays for the weekly newspaper Hamburger Nachrichten .

From 1859 to 1862 Alexander was a member of the First Hamburg Citizenship .

Alexander also remained connected to his hometown Plau. He donated money for the expansion of the port on the Elde , for street lighting (gas lamps) and for equipping sick rooms in the new city hospital. His (baptized) grandson, Captain Adolf Ludwig Alexander, acquired the Müsselmow and Holzendorf estates near Schwerin in 1884 .

Adolph Alexander was with his wife Sophie, geb. Meyer († May 12, 1861), buried in the Grindelfriedhof , Hamburg-Rotherbaum . When the cemetery was closed by the National Socialists, the graves were forcibly reburied on April 30, 1937, contrary to Jewish burial rites. A memorial stone commemorates Adolph Alexander in the honorary complex in the “Grindelfriedhof” area of ​​the Ohlsdorf Jewish cemetery (Ilandkoppel) .

annotation

  1. ↑ Plau as the place of birth is not certain, although Alexander considered Plau to be his hometown. The Bernhardt family actually (still) lived in Goldberg.
  2. ↑ According to a contemporary inscription, his father, Kommerzienrath Albert B. Alexander zu Hamburg , gave his dear children Adolph Ludwig Alexander and his wife Anna-Marie, geb. Howitz-Pokrent 1886 the organ for the village church in Müsselmow.

source

  • Wilhelm Heyden : The members of the Hamburg citizenship . 1859-1862. Hamburg 1909, pp. 3-4.
  • Bernd Ruchhöft: From ALBAN to ZIPPE Famous and remarkable personalities from the history of the city of Plau am See (not yet published)
personal data
SURNAME Alexander, Adolph
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bernhardt, Adolph (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician, Member of the Bundestag and businessman
DATE OF BIRTH September 20, 1799
PLACE OF BIRTH Plau am See
DATE OF DEATH September 27, 1869