Berenberg (Hanseatic family)

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Coat of arms of the Berenberg

The Berenberg were a Hanseatic family of Dutch origin in the Free Imperial and Hanseatic City of Hamburg . The brothers Hans and Paul Berenberg founded the Berenberg Bank there in 1590 . The Berenberg belonged to the Dutch merchant colony in Hamburg. In 1684 they became hereditary citizens of Hamburg and in the 18th century they appointed several senators and presides of the Commerz deputation . The Berenberg went out in Hamburg in the male line in 1862; Elisabeth Berenberg (died 1822), the sole heir of the Berenberg trading house, marriedJohann Hinrich Gossler . The descendants of Berenberg include the Hanseatic Gossler family, later partly ennobled as von Berenberg-Gossler , the main owners of the Berenberg trading and banking house since the 1770s.

history

The merchant and banker Cornelius Berenberg (1634–1711)
Johann Berenberg (1718–1772)

The trading and banking house Berenberg , the oldest bank still in existence in Germany, was founded in Hamburg in 1590 by Hans (1561–1626) and Paul Berenberg (1566–1645). As Protestants, the Dutch Berenbergs were religious refugees from Antwerp in what is now Belgium , which they had to leave in 1585. In Hamburg they were recognized as upper citizens in 1605 and married into leading Hanseatic families, including the Amsinck family . Members of the family were from 1735 members of the Hamburg Council (or the Senate).

Elisabeth Berenberg (1749-1822)

In Hamburg the Berenberg in the male line went out in 1862; a branch from Lüneburg flourished into the 20th century. The family's banking branch died out in 1822 with Elisabeth Berenberg (1749–1822) in the male line; Elisabeth Berenberg became the sole heir of the trading and banking house Berenberg in 1768 and married Johann Hinrich Gossler . In 1769 Gossler became a co-owner of the Berenberg trading and banking house, and after the death of his father-in-law he took over the management of the house. Some of Gossler's descendants in the male line were ennobled in Prussia as von Berenberg-Gossler in 1888 and raised to the baron status in 1910 (see Goßler and Berenberg-Gossler ). In 1788 Gossler took on his son-in-law Ludwig E. Seyler as a new partner and he became a senior of the house in 1790.

coat of arms

Coat of arms, detail from painting (1710)

The coat of arms of the Berenberg family shows in the golden field on a green shield base a black bear with a golden collar, raised to the right, holding a green branch (or an uprooted fir tree) in the front paws. The same figure is repeated on the helmet, the covers are black and gold. A variant of the coat of arms shows a green tree behind the bear.

The Berenberg coat of arms was still visible in the church windows at Lier in 1699.

progeny

Descendants of Elisabeth Berenberg and Johann Hinrich Gossler can be found in various families in u. a. Germany and Norway , u. a. with the names Goßler or von Berenberg-Gossler , Seyler , Schramm, von Hosstrup, Burchard, Amsinck , Paus and von Bernstorff .

People with the name Berenberg-Consbruch are not descendants of the Berenberg family, and acquired the name by changing their name in 1976.

Members

Descendants of Elisabeth Berenberg (1749–1822) and Johann Hinrich Gossler

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hamburg State Archives
  2. ↑ a b "Die Berenberg-Gossler," in: Vierteljahrsschrift für Wappen-, Siegel- und Familienkunde , Vol. 9 p. 1, 1881

literature

  • Berenberg / Gossler , New German Biography
  • Percy Ernst Schramm , Nine Generations: Three Hundred Years of German "Cultural History" in the Light of the Fate of a Hamburg Citizen Family (1648–1948) . Vol. I and II, Göttingen 1963/64.
  • Percy Ernst Schramm , merchants at home and by sea. Hamburg evidence of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries , Hamburg, Hoffmann and Campe, 1949
  • Percy Ernst Schramm , The Ancestors of Anna Maria Berenberg, b. Lastrop (1723-61) , 1957
  • Hamburg Biography Personal Lexicon. Volume 2, ed. by Franklin Kopitzsch , Dirk Brietzke .
  • Joh.Berenberg, Gossler & Co .: The history of a German private bank , Berenberg Bank, Hamburg 1990
  • Manfred Pohl, Handbook on the History of European Banks , European Association for Banking History, p. 362
  • Renate Hauschild-Thiessen, "Johann Berenberg (1674–1749) and his Genealogies," Hamburgische Geschichts- und Heimatblätter 10.8 (Dec 1981): 183–186