Barthold Suermondt

Barthold Suermondt

Barthold Suermondt (born May 18, 1818 in Utrecht , † March 1, 1887 in Aachen ) was a German entrepreneur , banker, art collector and patron .

Live and act

Barthold Suermondt was born in Utrecht in 1818, the son of the director of the Koninklijke Nederlandse Munt IJman Dirk Christiaan Suermondt (1792–1871) and the Englishwoman Elisabeth Twist (1796–1873). He attended from 1834 to 1836, the Berlin Academy of Architecture and rose thereafter as private secretary to that of John Cockerill guided Cockerillwerk in Belgium Seraing one on which his father already was involved as a shareholder. Only a year later, in 1837, Suermondt was entrusted with the administration of the estate of the suddenly deceased James Cockerill , his future father-in-law and a brother of John Cockerill. After he married his daughter Amalie Elisabeth Cockerill in 1838, Suermondt and his brothers were also appointed as the sole heir of the childless John Cockerill in their wills. In the same year he was one of the founders of the Metallurgical Society of Stolberg , which later became Stolberger Zink , together with John and posthumously for his late brother James Cockerill as the main financier as well as with Friedrich Thyssen , Ferdinand Pirlot and the Sal. Oppenheim bank . Suermondt was also involved in founding the association for hard coal mining in the Wurmrevier , as its president he later functioned until his death.

Due to the sudden death of John Cockerill in 1840, Suermondt took over the Cockerill works in Seraing at the age of 22 and was forced to renovate it from the ground up together with the acting director Konrad Gustav Pastor , a direct cousin of the wives of John and James Cockerill . Due to the Belgian Revolution of 1830 and the subsequent economic and financial crisis, the plant was inevitably liquidated . They managed to save the core of the company by selling off large shares and, on the basis of the Serainger facilities, to form the “Société Anonyme des Etablissements John Cockerill”, or “SA Cockerill” for short, which rose again to a world-famous company in the following years . In this restructured company, Suermondt was a member of the board of directors from 1842 to 1846 and from 1882 to 1887, and was in the meantime on the supervisory board from 1848 to 1882.

In addition, Suermondt also took over the mining concession for the Wohlfahrt pit in Rescheid from John Cockerill in 1840 . But he ended his engagement there before 1861 after the mine had been temporarily closed by the mining authority due to economic difficulties. He also set up a private bank in 1847 and also held a majority stake in the Robert Suermondt & Cie banking house founded by his son Robert Suermondt in 1870, where he sat on the board of directors until his death. In addition, in May 1870, Barthold Suermondt founded the Société Anonyme Aciéries du Rhin in Paris , which was renamed Rheinische Stahlwerke in 1872 and in which he assumed the position of chairman of the supervisory board from 1870 to 1878. In addition, he managed the lead mine in Plombières , for which the brothers John and James Cockerill had received the concession in 1825, was a member of the board of the Aachen reinsurance company founded by Friedrich Adolph Brüggemann in 1853 and a member of other industrial companies as well as the city council of Aachen.

In the last few years before his death, Barthold Suermondt was still significantly involved in the negotiations with the southern Russian government, about the Towarzystwo Warzawskiej steelworks founded in 1877/1878 by the Rheinische Stahlwerke, by Cockerill-Sambre in Seraing and by Robert's father-in-law Wilhelm Rau Fabryki Stali in Praga near Warsaw to Russia when they suffered from sales difficulties due to Russian customs policy. His son Robert brought these negotiations to a successful conclusion after his father's death.

Patronage

Barthold Suermondt was the first major donor of today's Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum in Aachen. Around 1850 he had himself portrayed by Ludwig Knaus . His standing three-quarter picture adorns the foyer of the Suermondt Ludwig Museum. In 1874 a large part of the Suermondt collection was sold to the Berlin Gemäldegalerie under the direction of Julius Meyer and Wilhelm von Bode , including important works by Jan van Eyck , Jan Vermeer , Frans Hals , Hans Holbein the Elder. J. , Peter Paul Rubens and Jan Steen . Another part of his private collection, consisting of 104 valuable paintings, he bequeathed to the city of Aachen in 1882, which made the construction of the Suermondt Museum possible. In the same year Suermondt was made an honorary citizen of the city of Aachen.

family

Barthold Suermondt married Amalie Elisabeth Cockerill (1815-1859), daughter of James Cockerill, in August 1838. In 1848 Suermondt had Karl Ferdinand Sohn paint a portrait of his wife. From this marriage six sons emerged, including the mining industrialist William Suermondt , the bank director Robert Suermondt and the manor owner, entrepreneur and successful horse rider Henry Suermondt . After Amalie's early death, he married Nancy Haniel (1843-1896), daughter of the mining entrepreneur Max Haniel , who gave birth to a daughter and a son. This son, Otto Suermondt , did the same as his half-brother Henry and achieved numerous important victories in horse racing.

Barthold Suermondt owned, among other things, a stately city palace in Aachen's Adalbertstrasse and also acquired the Heidgen forest estate with the villa “Herfs Erb” and a 13 hectare park in the south of Aachen opposite Alt-Linzenshäuschen as a summer residence in 1866 . He died in 1887 as a result of physical overexertion after a trip to Russia and found his final resting place in the family crypt in Aachen's Westfriedhof .

literature

• Eduard Arens, Wilhelm Leopold Janssen : Club Aachener Casino , new ed. by Elisabeth Janssen and Felix Kuetgens , printing Metz, Aachen 2nd edition 1964, p. 159
• Dagmar Preising : Barthold Suermondt 1818–1887. From art collector in Aachen to donor for Aachen , in: Aacheners make history, fourteen portraits of historical personalities , Vol. II, edited by Bert Kasties and Manfred Sicking, Aachen 1999, pp. 61–69 pdf
• Peter van den Brink, Wibke Vera Birth (Ed.): Permit, Suermondt! Collectors, connoisseurs, art patrons . Exhibition catalog, Belser Verlag, Stuttgart, 2018

Web links

• Genealogical and historical records of the Becker family with numerous pictures and other sources

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Fig. In: Ernst Günther Grimme : The Suermondt Museum . In: Peter Ludwig (Ed.): Aachener Kunstblätter , Vol. 28. Meyer, Aachen, 1963, p. 9.
2. ↑ Portrait of Amalia Elisa Cockerill (1815-1859), married in Aachen on August 2, 1838 to Bartholdt Suermondt, oil on canvas by Carl Ferdinand Sohn, 1848 , on RKD , accessed on May 21, 2017