Andreas Riegelsen Biørn

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Andreas Riegelsen Biørn , also Andreas Riegelsen Bjørn , in older German literature Andreas Riegelsen von Biörne (born January 4, 1755 in Vestre Astrupgård, Brøns Sogn ; † May 19, 1821 in Copenhagen ) was a Danish slave trader and colonial officer. From 1789 to 1792 he was governor of the Danish possessions on the Gold Coast .

Life

The Danish forts on the Gold Coast
Fort Christiansborg

Andreas Riegelsen Biørn was the 13th child of the merchant and farm owner Peder Jensen Biørn (1700–1758). His mother was Biørn's second wife Mette Christine, geb. Kraemer (1725-1812). In the late 1770s he came to the Danish possessions on the Gold Coast in what is now Ghana , where his half-brother Peder Pedersen Biørn (1739–1780) was in command of Fort Fredensborg . His half-brother Christian Frederik Sohnell Biørn (1740-1817), however, was a missionary in colonial Greenland . From the Østersoisk-guineiske Entreprenører , the successors of the Danish West India Company , he was given the authority to work in the slave trade on his own account . In the battles of 1788 he distinguished himself, so that the governor Jens Adolph Kjöge appointed him commander of Fort Prinzenstein in Keta .

On October 23, 1789, the Entreprenører appointed him to succeed Kjöges as governor based in Christiansborg (Accra) . Along with the royal confirmation, he received the character Kaptajn af Infanteriet ( captain of the infantry ). When the Danish government took over the administration, Biørn was dismissed in November 1792. He had left the colony before. His administration was exposed to various criticisms; Employees complained about wrong and illegal decisions and accused him of inhumanity against the Africans ( Umenneskelighed mod Negerne ), and in a report from 1793 his successor as Governor Bendt Olrik stated that Biørn had left everything in utter confusion .

In 1794 he lived in Hamburg . Second marriage to Marie Magdalena Christina, b. Rudolph (1778–1847), a daughter of the Lübeck merchant Amadeus Rudolph, moved to Lübeck in the late 1790s . Here he acquired Gut Neuhof, southwest of the city, in 1799, but only kept it for six months before he sold it to Wolfenbüttel captain Friedrich Leonhard von Haerlem.

At the beginning of 1803 he turned up at the Lübeck Freemasons' Lodge Zum Füllhorn and claimed that he had secret Masonic documents that he wanted to publish. The secretary of the lodge Friedrich Karl Schnoor and her master of the chair Friedrich Ludwig von Moltke questioned the authenticity of the handwriting and tried to dissuade him. In a comparison with the lodge, Biørn undertook on May 8, 1803 not to publish it. Apparently he had also written to the publisher Johann Friedrich Cotta , without success. Biørn then turned to Hamburg, where he found a publisher in the lexicographer and bookseller Philipp Andreas Nemnich (1764-1822). Nemnich published three brochures, which attracted a certain amount of attention (and criticism) to the project - but the planned publication did not take place. The Hamburg lodges, like the Lübeckers before, refused to support and called on their members not to subscribe to the work.

After this failure he must have moved to Copenhagen in 1805/06. In the archives of the Hanseatic City of Lübeck there are proceedings conducted by him for 1806 in which he, with intercession of the city of Copenhagen, seeks the surrender of court documents of the Lower Court in Lübeck. Also in 1806 in Copenhagen he published an apology for the slave trade, which had become illegal in the Kingdom of Denmark and the Danish possessions since 1803, when an ordinance of 1792 came into force. In 1808 he came into conflict with the law when he tried to forge papers of sailors in order to receive shares of their wages as their supposed guardian . On February 13, 1809, Hof- og Stadsretten in Copenhagen sentenced him to the loss of Haand, Ære og Boslod (literally hand, honor and property , probably loss of legal capacity, civil rights and property) for forgery of documents .

Works

  • Beretning 1788 om de Danske Forter and Negerier. In: Friderick Thaarup: Archives for statistics Volume 4, Copenhagen 1795–98, pp. 193–230
  • Prospectus of a major work of the entire Freemasonry. Edited by Andreas Riegelsen von Biörne, Governor, edited by Phil. Andr. Nemnich, BRL two quarto volumes on SchrbP. with many illuminated coppers. Hamburg.
  • Tankers om slave trading: results of efter hunting days and mangeaarige experiences. Copenhagen 1806
Digitized , Danish Royal Library

literature

  • Bjørn (Andreas Riegelsen) , in: Thomas Hansen Erslew: Almindeligt Forfatter-Lexicon for Kongeriget Danmark med tilhørende Bilande from 1814 to 1840. Copenhagen 1843, p. 137 ( digitized version )

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ According to Johannes J. Lund: Lidt om Familien Bjørn fra Ribe. In: Personalhistorisk Tidsskrift 2016, pp. 147–172, here p. 165
  2. ^ So Johannes J. Lund: Lidt om Familien Bjørn fra Ribe. In: Personalhistorisk Tidsskrift 2016, pp. 147–172, here p. 165; so not a Lutheran pastor from Norway (Erslew)
  3. ↑ Christian Frederik Bjørn Sohnell in Biografisk Leksikon for Greenland
  4. ↑ Erik Gobel: The Danish Slave Trade and Its Abolition. (= Studies in Global Slavery), Leiden, Boston: Brill 2016 ISBN 9789004330566 , p. 109, note 41
  5. ↑ Charles MK Mamattah: The Eve of West Africa: The Anlo-Eve and Their immediate neighbors. 1976, p. 632
  6. ↑ HW Harbou: Skibskaptajn og Grosserer Jens Jensen Berg Selvbiografi. in: Personalhistorisk tidsskrift 3 (1900), pp. 189–210, here p. 198
  7. ↑ The Lübeck address books, which have been published since 1798, identify him as living at Am Bauhof in 1803 and 1805 and with the nickname "von Riegelsen".
  8. ↑ According to the summons in the supplement to the state and learned newspaper of the Hamburg impartial correspondent of May 7, 1828 , cf. also Elke P. Brandenburg: St. Lorenz: Chronicle of the suburb in front of the Holstentor. Lübeck: Schmidt-Römhild 2001 ISBN 9783795031169 , p. 37
  9. ↑ Johannes Hennings: History of the Johannis Lodge "Zum Füllhorn" zu Lübeck, 1772-1922. Lübeck 1922, pp. 118-120
  10. ↑ Letter from Andreas Riegelsen of Biörne of JG Cotta 'bookshop, March 9, 1803 , German Literature Archive in Marbach, Archives: Cotta archive retrieved on February 10, 2020
  11. ^ Friedrich Ratzel:  Nemnich, Philipp Andreas . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 23, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1886, p. 426 f.
  12. ↑ See the unsigned critical contribution A word about secret societies, caused by so-called prospectuses that circulate in public. In: Nordic Miszellen 1 (1804), pp 326 -335
  13. ↑ See Hans Schröder : Lexicon of the Hamburg writers up to the present. Volume 5, Hamburg 1870, p. 488
  14. ^ Complaints by the governor Björne with intercession of the city of Copenhagen on the surrender of documents of the lower court Lübeck in disputes 1.) Björne ./. Brabandt, 2.) Björne ./. Zoellner (signature 0612)
  15. ↑ Ørsteds Juri Disk Arkiv 20 (1809), pp 12-15
personal data
SURNAME Biørn, Andreas Riegelsen
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bjørn, Andreas Riegelsen; Biörne, Andreas Riegelsen from
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Danish slave trader and colonial officer
DATE OF BIRTH January 4, 1755
PLACE OF BIRTH Vestre Astrupgård, Brøns Sogn
DATE OF DEATH May 19, 1821
Place of death Copenhagen