Albertus Ohlendorff

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Portrait of Albertus Ohlendorff, 1889, by Friedrich Wilhelm Graupenstein , Museum for Hamburg History
Gresse manor
Mausoleum in Gresse
Ohlendorff family coat of arms on the mausoleum in Gresse

Albertus Ohlendorff (born March 20, 1834 in Hamburg ; † January 20, 1894 at Gut Gresse ; full name: Christian Heinrich Albertus Freiherr Ohlendorff ) was a Hamburg merchant and Mecklenburg landowner who was nobilized as a baron in 1873 and who lived in the second half of the 19th century rose together with his brother Heinrich to become the largest guano importer in the German Empire.

Life

Albertus Ohlendorff is somewhat overshadowed by his younger brother and business partner Heinrich, who was more effective in Hamburg, while Albertus later set up his private life on his Gut Gresse in today's Ludwigslust-Parchim district .

The son of the landscape gardener Johann Heinrich Ohlendorff received his commercial training from 1852 in the Hamburg trading house Mutzenbecher and used the bankruptcy of his employer in 1856 to become self-employed as a businessman at the age of 22 by continuing his guano trade for his own account. At the same time he acquired Hamburg citizenship. His younger brother Heinrich worked for him as an authorized signatory in the new company. In autumn 1857 the young Hamburg trading company fell victim to the first world economic crisis and went into liquidation. The business was transferred to a company newly founded by Heinrich Ohlendorff in 1858. Albertus was accepted by his brother Heinrich after his unsuccessful first company foundation was wound up. In the course of winding up the bankruptcy of the first company, all creditors were completely satisfied. This fact contributed significantly to the reputation of the two brothers and their new company Co. Ohlendorff & at. In 1873 Albertus Ohlendorff was raised to the Prussian nobility .

In 1888 Albertus von Ohlendorff acquired Gut Gresse in Mecklenburg, which had a representative manor house in the English neo-Gothic style, which had been built by the architect Heinrich Thormann from Wismar, who was well known for his new manor houses . The brothers also used this property for chemical experiments with which their company tried to find a substitute for the guano, which was clearly limited in the available supply. The Ohlendorffs tried to make a fertilizer substitute from peat. For this purpose, the Tangstedt estate northeast of Hamburg was acquired as a precaution , but was sold again after the experiments failed. The Gresse estate was quickly rounded off by Albertus von Ohlendorff and in 1889 already covered a cultivated area of ​​2246 hectares.

In 1884 the Ohlendorff & Co. company was converted into the Anglo-Continentale Guano-Werke stock corporation in Hamburg, which had branches on the Rhine and in the major Scheldt ports. The share capital of the corporation amounted to 16 million marks and the factories employed over 1,000 workers. Heinrich von Ohlendorff withdrew from the management of the joint company against the will of his brother and turned to the prosperous office building in Hamburg, where he also operated successfully (see: Dovenhof ). For better differentiation, Albertus, who was still connected to the core business, was called Schietbaron by the Hanseatics , who are known to be ridiculous .

Both brothers belonged to the close circle of friends of Reich Chancellor Otto von Bismarck and also support his politics in the media by making it available to him as a (co-) partner in the publishing house of the Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung . As lobbyists for the integration of the Hanseatic cities of Bremen and Hamburg into the customs area of the German Reich, they were both raised to the hereditary Prussian baron status in 1888 with the implementation of the customs union.

For his funeral in Gresse in 1894, a special train was deployed between the Berlin train station in Hamburg and the Schwanheide train station. Albert Freiherr von Ohlendorff was buried in the mausoleum in front of the baroque village church of Gresse.

Awards

literature

Remarks

  1. ↑ (196) . In: Royal Prussian Order List 1877 , First Part, Berlin undated, p. 636
  2. ^ Court and State Handbook of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy for the year 1907 , XXXIII. Vol., Vienna 1907, p. 175
  3. ↑ To Hamburg . In: Court and State Handbook for Saxony-Coburg-Gotha 1890 , Gotha undated, p. 84 digitized
  4. ↑ Personal details . In: Chemiker-Zeitung , 8th volume, Verlag der Chemiker-Zeitung, 1884, p. 340
  5. ↑ Hamburg State Archives, 111–1 Senate, Findbuch 3 , Notices about awards of orders and medals, № 3854/5, p. 342

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Ohlendorff, Albertus
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ohlendorff, Christian Heinrich Albertus Freiherr (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Hamburg merchant and Mecklenburg landowner
DATE OF BIRTH March 20, 1834
PLACE OF BIRTH Hamburg
DATE OF DEATH January 20, 1894
Place of death Greetings