Albertus Paulus Hermanus Hotz

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Albertus Paulus Hermanus Hotz

Albertus Paulus Hermanus Hotz (born February 22, 1855 in Rotterdam , † April 11, 1930 in Cologny , Switzerland) was a Dutch entrepreneur and photographer.

Life

His parents were Jacques Cornelis Paulus Hotz and Gertrude Arnolda Johanna Pino Post. His father was a co-owner of an iron foundry in The Hague . After the Persian Shah Naser al-Din visited Europe for the first time in 1873 and the Dutch consul general Keun van Hoogerwoerd in Bushehr had initiated trade relations with Persia, his father founded the Vennootschap Perzische Handelsvereeniging JCP Hotz & Zoon in 1874 .

Albertus was sent to Iran in November 1874 for the further expansion of the company and to establish trade contacts between the two countries. After the death of his father, however, he had to return to Holland in May 1875 and reorganize the company, which he renamed Hotz & Co.

In 1877 he went back to Iran and founded trading offices in Isfahan (where Hoeltzer lived in neighboring Julfa), Baghdad and Basrah. He also tried to convince Dutch and other bankers to invest in Iran. After some financial failures, however, all donors withdrew and he had to return to Holland in 1878.

In 1880 he went to Iran for the third time. In 1883 he helped organize the Persian stand at the International Exhibition in Amsterdam. During this time he moved his company's European headquarters to London. For the next few years he had trade agencies in Bushire, Shiraz, Isfahan, Burujird, Sultanabad, Yazd, Baghdad and Basrah. He expanded his entrepreneurial interests further, participated in a coal mine, in the establishment of the Imperial Bank of Persia (1889) and in the opium and carpet industry. He explored transportation on the Karun River . In March 1884 the governor of Isfahan, the eldest son of the Shah, granted him a concession to extract oil in Daliki in the province of Chuzestan . But he did not find any oil with the drilling rig. In 1885 he became the Dutch consul in Iran, based in Bushehr . After international trade collapsed in 1895, his company and many other European trading houses went under. In 1903 he ended the trade.

In 1893 he married Lucy Helen Woods, the daughter of Henry Woods, Pasha , a British naval officer who worked as aide-de-camp for Sultan Abdülhamid II (1876-1909) in Istanbul. They had three children.

In 1906 he became a member of the Commissie van Advies voor 's Rijks Geschiedkundige Publicatiën in The Hague and wrote about the role of the Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie in Persia. 1909-16 he worked at the Dutch consulate in Beirut, in 1917 he became consul and on April 21, 1921 he retired.

In poor health he went to Lugano in Switzerland to be close to his son Hendrik, who was sick in the sanatorium in Davos and died in the same year.

Albertus was buried in the Rotterdam suburb of Crooswijk after his death.

In 1890–91 he traveled through Persia, the Caucasus and Russia, during which he also visited his trading offices. On the trip he made and bought over 2,700 photographs of all kinds of products and trading activities. He had the pictures developed by the English photographer John Thomson (1837–1921). He also collected a large number of books, atlases, geographical works and all kinds of documentation on Persia. He donated his atlases and geographical works to the Royal Geographic Society in London, where they can still be seen today. Its library contained 10,000 works. In 1835 his widow bequeathed everything to the University of Leiden.

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personal data
SURNAME Hotz, Albertus Paulus Hermanus
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Dutch entrepreneur and photographer
DATE OF BIRTH February 22, 1855
PLACE OF BIRTH Rotterdam
DATE OF DEATH April 11, 1930
Place of death Cologny , Switzerland