Carl Linga

Carl Linga (born April 20, 1877 in Altona , † October 20, 1963 in Cuernavaca ; also Carlos Linga ) was a German-Mexican sugar wholesaler and book collector.

Life

Linga was born the son of a cigarette factory worker. Until 1894 he attended elementary and secondary school in Ottensen , among others together with the later mayor Max Brauer . He is doing a business apprenticeship at Wöhler, Bartning Sucesores (WB). From 1894 to 1904 Linga was WB's agent in Mazatlán , Mexico . Since 1897 he had a close friendship with the later revolutionary general and Mexican president Álvaro Obregón . In his successful and eventful business life, Carl Linga was mainly active in the sugar trade and as a shipowner. He worked as a representative of companies and banks and was the owner of various trading companies.

During the First and Second World War, Linga's business came to a standstill. He used this time for intensive study of Mexican history and Mesoamerican studies. At the same time he began to collect works of colonial history. The bibliophile interest Lingas prove his numerous systematic antiquarian book purchases on a trip through Europe after the 1918th

In 1927 Carl Linga married Bertha Probst . From 1931 he moved to Mexico City . There he pursued his ethnohistorical and bibliophile interests and was involved in two German-Mexican cultural societies. From 1950 Linga, Linga also increasingly acted as an economic mediator between Mexico and Germany . He initiated the transfer of his now very extensive library to his native Hamburg. Here, on October 12, 1957, the Linga library was opened in the Ibero-America House. From 1957 onwards, the Lingas traveled to Hamburg every summer in order to expand the book collection and maintain contacts with German Latin Americanists. On February 14, 1958, Linga received the Federal Cross of Merit, 1st Class, for his outstanding scholarship in the field of Mesoamerican Studies and the exchange between Germany and Mexico .

The grave of Carl and Bertha Linga is in the Munich North Cemetery.

A sugar baron in Mexico

When Carl Linga married Bertha Probst in 1927 at the age of 50, he was already looking back on a very successful business life. His path led the lively Altonaer to Mexico at the age of 17. There he initially worked as a representative of his former teacher Wöhler, Bartning Sucesores in Mazatlán , before setting up on his own in 1904. He was able to establish himself primarily in the sugar and shipping business and amass a considerable fortune, although as a German he was forbidden from any economic activity in Mexico during the two world wars. From 1904 to 1939 Linga had a major impact on the Mexican sugar trade - initially in the north and later on a national level as managing director of various sugar cartels. At times he got into the sugar business himself as a producer.

At the same time, from 1902 onwards, he repeatedly worked as a local representative and consultant for companies and banks. Since 1907, he also campaigned for the establishment of various umbrella trade associations. The excess production of sugar alcohol gave Linga his first business idea as early as 1906: He imported alcohol-powered lamps, which he sold through his company "Agnil" in Mexico City . Numerous others followed this project. Among other things, he traded in northern Mexico in agricultural products, some of which came from his own production. An outstanding company, even if it was doomed to fail due to the aftermath of the trade blockade in World War I, was the entry into the shipping business. Between 1913 and 1919 Linga built a fleet of eight ships and founded three branches in the USA . Around 1920 he acquired the “Lolita” steam locomotive to transport surplus sugar between northern Mexico and the USA.

Cultural mediator between Mexico and Germany

Carlos Linga's interest in mediating cultural and economic relations between Mexico and Germany dates back to the 1920s when he began to get involved in the social life of the German colony. His cultural activities were heavily inspired by Alexander von Humboldt , whom he greatly admired. In 1934 he founded the German-Mexican Humboldt Society. After long negotiations, the latter acquired a house in the former silver mining town of Taxco, where Humboldt had stayed on his trip to Latin America. The Humboldt House became a meeting center for scientific and cultural exchange between Germans and Mexicans.

In the same year, Linga also revived the Sociedad Alemana Mexicanista. Both societies were merged in 1955 in the newly founded Instituto Cultural Mexicano-Alemán "Alexander von Humboldt". Linga did not appear as an economic intermediary until after the Second World War. In 1950 he was a co-initiator in the lifting of trade restrictions for German companies. This led to the establishment of today's German-Mexican Chamber of Commerce and the organization of the first German industrial exhibition in 1954 . He advised journalists and government representatives from both countries. The renaming of Berlin's Zehlendorfer Platz to Mexico-Platz was largely due to Carlos Linga. In 1958 he was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit for his services to the restoration of economic and cultural relations between Mexico and Germany.

Carlos Linga and Mesoamerican Studies

On his business trips through northern Mexico, Carlos Linga was impressed by Indian places where the memory of the Jesuit mission during the colonial period was still alive. He began to be enthusiastic about the history and ethnology of Mexico and used the time of his forced economic inactivity during the First World War to pursue this interest further. From 1918 he became a member of various scientific associations in Mexico City. He got to know the Mesoamericanists Hermann Beyer and Alfonso Caso , among others . The academic exchange encouraged him to collect antiquarian books on the colonial times and the Jesuit mission on his frequent trips to Europe and in Mexico.

From 1934 to 1939 Carlos Linga was President of the Sociedad Alemana Mexicanista, founded in 1919. He contributed to the fact that the magazine "México Antiguo" published by the society developed into an internationally recognized organ of the still young Mesoamerican studies. In his own lectures and publications he dealt with the biographies of the first German Mesoamericanist Eduard Seler and his pupil Beyer. He also examined contemporary forms of the Mesoamerican ball game, the drainage system in the high valley of Mexico, book printing in the early colonial period and travelogues from the 19th century. In Mexico, the Linga couple also met Franz Termer , who was director of the Museum of Ethnology and ethnology professor in Hamburg from 1935 to 1962 . Termer rated Linga's book collection as "the most complete, most valuable México library currently in German ownership". He strongly supported Linga's growing plans to move the collection to Hamburg. When an American wanted to purchase his collection during the Second World War, Don Carlos turned it down, despite difficult economic circumstances. He saw the future of his special library in his home country; he wanted to give the Germans an insight into the "fascinating world of Central and South America".

The Linga Library

→ Main article : Linga library

In the mid-1950s, Linga negotiated with various cities and then chose his home town as the library location. A few weeks later, after completing numerous formalities, the 75 long-awaited boxes could be received in the Port of Hamburg and initially deposited in the State Library . In September 1956, Carlos Linga handed over his book collection to the city of Hamburg , which provided space in the Ibero-America House on Alsterglacis. The ceremonial opening of the Linga library of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg took place here on October 12, 1957. High-ranking representatives from politics, business, science and culture took part in the ceremony and in the "Gentlemen's Evening" in the Hotel Atlantic . Federal Minister of Economics Ludwig Erhard and the Mexican Ambassador Alfonso Guerra traveled from Bonn . Hamburg mayors Kurt Sieveking and Paul Nevermann were also present. The “foundation of a real Ibero-American library” - as Carlos Linga said in his speech - was laid.

On October 12, 1957, the Ibero-America House was inaugurated in the former Villa Berenberg-Gossler. In addition to the newly established library, it also housed the economically oriented Ibero-America Association and the German Ibero-America Foundation. The Ibero-American Research Institute at the University of Hamburg and the Institute for Ibero-American Customers, founded in 1962, supplemented the profile with research in the humanities and social sciences. Thus, the house was not only an interdisciplinary center, but also offered a common roof for maintaining business, cultural and academic exchange relationships between Hamburg and Latin America. Among its most prominent visitors were Federal President Heinrich Lübke and Mexican President Miguel Alemán Valdés . This complexity of connections to Latin America is also reflected in the composition of the board of the Linga Foundation in the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg. The foundation was founded in 1967 by Bertha Probst de Linga . Your proceeds should be used to expand and research the basic stock of the book collection. The chairman of the board of the Linga Foundation is usually the respective director of the Hamburg State Library , currently Gabriele Beger . Hellmut Braun , Horst Gronemeyer and Peter Rau have held this office since the foundation was established . In addition to the library representatives, merchants and representatives from the Ibero-America House as well as scientists from the University and the Museum für Völkerkunde Hamburg were members of the board in the past few decades . The profile of the body is currently shifting in favor of the Latin America Center established at the university in 1999. It bundles the various disciplines that are involved in research and teaching in this region in Hamburg.

literature

• Uta Ahmed: Linga library of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg. In: Paul Raabe (Hrsg.): Handbook of historical book stocks in Germany. Volume 1, Hildesheim et al. 1996, pp. 252-255.
• Wiebke von Deylen: Linga, Carlos R. In: Franklin Kopitzsch and Dirk Brietzke (Hrsg.): Hamburgische Biographie. Lexicon of persons. Volume 3, Göttingen 2006, pp. 228-229.
• Wiebke von Deylen: Between books and balance sheets: the Hamburg businessman Carlos Linga and his library In: Jörn Arfs and Ulrich Mücke (eds.): Dealers, pioneers, scientists: Hamburgers in Latin America . Berlin 2010, pp. 89-107.
• Francisco Morales Padrón: El Instituto de Estudios Iberoamericanos y la Biblioteca Linga de Hamburgo . In: Historiografía y Bibliografía Americanistas (Seville) . Volume XVIII, No. 1, 1974, pp. 79-88.

Web links

• Homepage of the exhibition Sugar Cane and Book Worlds - 50 Years of the Linga Library
• The Linga library in the library system of the Hamburg State and University Library
• via Carlos Linga