Adolph Dattan

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Adolph Dattan (ca.1890) in the clothes of East Siberian natives (fish leather boots and kuchlyanka)

Adolph Traugott Arthur Dattan ( Russian Адольф Васильевич Даттан , Adolf Wassiljewitsch Dattan , born October 22, 1854 in Rudersdorf ; † August 14, 1924 in Naumburg (Saale) ) was a German-Russian businessman and partner in the large trading company Kunst & Albers in Wladiwost . He was also active as a patron and promoter of science. During the First World War he was banished to Inner Siberia on suspicion of espionage.

Life

Adolph Dattan was the tenth and youngest child of a Protestant village pastor in Rudersdorf near Buttstädt. The family's material circumstances were modest. He received his ten-year schooling exclusively at home, as was not uncommon with German pastors' children at the time. As a young man, his father had worked as a private tutor for a Prussian baron in southern France.

Vocational training and first employment

Dattan completed a four-year business apprenticeship in his brother-in-law's shop in Naumburg, where he also had to live very modestly. At the age of 18 Dattan went to Hamburg because he wanted to emigrate to South America. Initially, however, he worked for two years in various positions, mostly as an accountant, and completed his schooling at the same time. As a sideline, he also kept the books of a Hamburg jeweler named Fritz Albers. This was the brother of Gustav Ludewig Albers, who founded the trading company Kunst & Albers together with Gustav Kunst in 1864 in Vladivostok.

Promotion at Kunst & Albers

The tour of Kunst & Albers 1880 in Vladivostok. Sitting at the table from left. after right Gustav L. Albers, Gustav Kunst and Adolph Dattan

Dattan was hired by Albers during his first home vacation as an accountant and the first German employee for the Vladivostok company Kunst & Albers . The agreed wages were 50 rubles a month with free board and lodging. In December 1874, the only 20-year-old escorted a load of goods in the three-master “Saturnus” for East Asia and after two stopovers in Shanghai and Nagasaki reached Vladivostok in the summer of 1875.

In 1879, Dattan was granted power of attorney for the Vladivostok company by the company owners. In fact, Dattan took over the management from 1881, as the owners rarely stayed there. Dattan initially received a profit sharing of ten percent, but at least 5,000 rubles annually, guaranteed. He also received an annual salary of 2,000 rubles.

Dattan knew how to adapt to the customs and circumstances in the still little cultivated new Russian territory and at the same time to build up good relationships with the authorities and the influential positions in the military in Vladivostok:

“It makes a displeasing impression on us Germans when two tall, bearded guys fall around the neck and kiss on the mouth; as much as I admired Mr. Dattan if he made all Russian customs his - I would never have acquired that habit. As a merchant one certainly likes to earn money, but at no cost in the world would I have kissed a general or an admiral on the cigar mouth, even not to get an order of great importance. "

- ?

Under Dattan's leadership, the company grew rapidly, both economically and geographically: In the 1880s, the first branches were established in the hinterland and in the Amur region. By 1914, Kunst & Albers had a network of over 30 branches in the Russian Far East and neighboring Chinese regions. The management of the company also involved extensive journeys in the still inadequately developed region - even in winter, when only horse-drawn sleighs were available.

In 1886, Dattan was already a partner with a profit share of 33 percent. In the same year he took on Russian citizenship, as a new law banned foreigners from buying land in the border regions of the Russian Empire. In the future, the company will therefore acquire real estate in the Russian Far East in the name of Dattans.

In 1904, after Gustav Kunst left the company, Dattan became a 50 percent partner in Kunst & Albers in Vladivostok and in the company of the same name in Hamburg. This was primarily responsible for the financing and dispatch of goods purchases from Europe to the Russian Far East.

In 1924, shortly before Dattan's death, his property in Russia was transferred to his partner Alfred Albers in order to prevent the company from being expropriated due to Soviet inheritance law.

family

Family grave of the Dattans in Naumburg

As a wealthy young merchant, Dattan returned to Germany for the first time in 1887 on a home leave. The journey is made by land, although there was no railway line through Siberia at that time . During this stay in Naumburg he married Marie Fendler, with whom he then returned to Vladivostok. There were seven children from this marriage. In 1901 Dattan and his family settled in Naumburg, but he continues to travel to Vladivostok for long stays year after year. During the First World War, the eldest son Alexander (* 1890) died as a Russian officer, while Adolf (* 1894) was killed as a German officer on the Western Front.

Title and honorary positions

In 1887 Dattan was appointed German commercial agent for Vladivostok and the Amur region. In 1904 he received the title of Vice Consul from the German Kaiser. In 1908 he signed his reports to Berlin as "Imperial Consul". In 1911, with the conversion of the German representation into a professional consulate, Dattan was dismissed from his office, but was allowed to continue his title of "Imperial German Consul" for life.

At the same time, Dattan also rose in the Russian hierarchy: in 1900 he was appointed by the tsar to the council of commerce, in 1904 to the council of state, and in 1911 the real council of state. At the beginning of 1914, Dattan, along with his wife and children, was elevated to the hereditary Russian nobility by the Tsar. Above all, his role as patron and honorary curator of the Oriental Institute, the first university in Vladivostok, was recognized.

In addition, Dattan received a total of 24 medals, twelve from Russia and twelve from other countries. Five of Dattan's orders were established with his role as a promoter of science.

Supporter of ethnology and zoology

On his business trips through eastern Siberia, Dattan primarily collected ethnological artifacts from the indigenous peoples or had them collected by emissaries. From this collection he formed collections that he donated to various European museums. An important motive for his patronage was the desire to receive medals from various countries in return for donations. Dattan later expanded his collecting activities to include zoological exhibits. There are no indications of Dattan's own scientific activity.

Dattan's collections, some of which were very extensive, were donated to the following museums:

Banishment time

With the beginning of the First World War , competitors from Kunst & Albers used the anti-German mood to spread rumors in the press about the company's alleged espionage activities for Germany. The company, which was already badly damaged by the war between Germany and Russia, was thus on the verge of decline.

Adolph Dattan was arrested for nine days in October 1914 after a house search. He was released again, and officially no charges are made against him. Completely unexpected for him, Dattan was then exiled to the Tomsk Governorate in central Siberia in January 1915 on the orders of the Governor General . He had to settle in the village of Kolpashevo . In 1917 Dattan was allowed to move to Tomsk. During the exile, Dattan had to watch the decline of his company from a distance, practically powerless. It was not until the winter of 1919/1920 that he managed to return to Vladivostok and then to Germany with a train journey across Siberia, which was torn by civil war.

Awards

Movie

In the report “Adventure Siberia” about Germans in Siberia, which was broadcast on arte for the first time on November 17, 2012 , Adolph Dattan is one of the historical main characters in the plot.

literature

  • Lothar Deeg : Art & Albers Vladivostok. A German trading house on the other side of Siberia (1864-1924). Books on Demand , Norderstedt 2020 ISBN 978-3-7504-2588-0 ; in particular: Dietrich Bernecker: Adolph Wassilewitsch Dattan on his 150th birthday. (in the appendix)
  • Mis, Nelly.G., Sidorow, Andrej J., Turmow, Gennadi P.:, Russki nemez Adolf Wassilewitsch Dattan. Vladivostok, 2002 (Russian)

Web links

Commons : Adolph Dattan  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Egon Kunhardt, Traveling Years of a Young Hamburg Merchant , Berlin 1898; quoted from: Lothar Deeg: “Kunst & Albers Wladiwostok. The history of a German trading company in the Russian Far East 1864-1924 ”, Essen 1996, p. 88
  2. ↑ Unless otherwise stated, the awards and their order are based on: Handbuch für das Deutsche Reich .. 1908, p. 119
  3. ^ Sabine Ahrens, Dietrich Bernecker: Two hundred and fifty years of the Natural History Museum in Braunschweig. Braunschweig: State Natural History Museum 2004 ISBN 9783925538117 , p. 123
  4. ↑ Handbook of the very highest court and the court state ... 1913, p. 373.
personal data
SURNAME Dattan, Adolph
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Dattan, Adolph Traugott Arthur (full name); Dattan, Adolf Wassiljewitsch; Даттан, Адольф Васильевич (Russian)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-Russian businessman
DATE OF BIRTH October 22, 1854
PLACE OF BIRTH Rudersdorf (Buttstädt)
DATE OF DEATH August 14, 1924
Place of death Naumburg (Saale)