Adolph Hertz

Adolph Jacob Hertz (born June 16, 1800 in Hamburg ; † November 6, 1866 there ) was a German overseas merchant , shipowner of Jewish - Lutheran denomination and, in 1848, President of the Hamburg Chamber of Commerce .

Life

Adolph Hertz was born in Hamburg in 1800 as the son of the private banker Jacob Hertz (1752-1833) and Fanny Bacher (1777-1829) from Potsdam.

After having been an apprentice at the I. Messe in Hamburg for a while, he worked for JH & GF Baur for several years. Finally, from 1826, he began his own business with sales of goods to Scandinavia . In 1837 Hertz acquired a small fleet of sailing ships , which he used to transport his own goods to Scandinavia, but he also made them available to other businessmen. Based on travel reports , geographic and nautical studies, he planned business in regions that were still undeveloped for Germany . At first he only traded with China and the east of India , and since 1844 with countries in Africa , the Arab world and the Maldives . He exported metals , cotton fabrics , weapons , glass beads and Maria Theresa thalers . Goods that he imported to Germany were coffee , hides , natural rubber , copal , ivory , ebony , mother-of-pearl , coconut oil , dates and myrrh .

Grave slab “Adolph Jacob Hertz”, family burial site in Ohlsdorf cemetery

From 1850 to 1854 he sent his son Adolph to East Africa, the Arab world and the East Indies. He sent his second son, John, to the trading post established in Zanzibar in 1851 . The two sons joined the father's company in 1856, which from that point on operated under the name “AJH & Sons” and later under the name “AJH Sons”.

When competition entered the trading business, the transport of palm oil became more difficult due to the lack of its own trading post in Palma, Nigeria . Due to the growing competition, Hertz gave up imports, apart from rice, from Africa in 1858. During a period of food shortage in 1871, his sons resumed large-scale imports of rice from Africa. After his death in 1866, his sailing fleet increased to 20 ships, most of which went to America and Asia .

Volunteering

From January 1848 to December 1848 Hertz was President of the Hamburg Chamber of Commerce and in 1848/49 also a member of the Constituent Assembly for Hamburg . In 1858/59 he represented the Hanseatic city as a member of the German Maritime Law Conference.

family

Adolph Hertz had been married to the Hamburg merchant's daughter Emma Dina Beets (1801–1891) since 1822. Together they had four sons and six daughters. His eldest son Adolph Ferdinand Hertz (1831–1902) followed him in 1866 as President of the Chamber of Commerce and in 1872 became Hamburg Senator. In the area of ​​the Adolph Hertz family burial site , Ohlsdorf cemetery in Hamburg, grid square Y 11 (south of Nordteich ), there is a vertical white marble grave slab for “Adoph Jacob Hertz”.

swell

• Hans W. Hertz:  Hertz, Adolph Jacob. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 8, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1969, ISBN 3-428-00189-3 , pp. 708 f. ( Digitized version ).