Carl Ludwig Nottebohm

Carl Ludwig Nottebohm (* July 7, 1870 in Hamburg ; † April 21, 1945 there ) was a German merchant , banker and from 1931 to 1933 President of the Hamburg Chamber of Commerce .

family

The Hamburg family Nottebohm comes from Abraham Nottebohm (1748-1814) from Lippstadt . His son Carl L. Nottebohm (1798–1870) came to Hamburg in 1819 and founded the Nottebohm and Co. company there in 1822, which initially mainly sold Westphalian linen to South America and colonial goods from Central and South America, particularly to Scandinavia and Russia. Since extensive credit, discount and insurance transactions were also carried out for this purpose, the company also acted as a merchant banker .

Carl Ludwig Nottebohm was the eldest of 8 children of Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Nottebohm (1836-1915), who had entered his father's business in 1860, and his wife Sara Maria Elise, née Weber (1851-1945), who was married to him in 1869.

Career history

Following the family tradition, Nottebohm first completed a commercial apprenticeship, then volunteered for a year in Antwerp and completed his further training at Frederic Huth & Co in London . He started his professional life in 1893 at the trading house G. Amsinck & Co of his friend, Hamburg merchant Gustav Amsincks, in New York City , from where he traveled to Guatemala in 1894 in order to investigate a lack of precious wood delivery to his parents' company. There Nottebohm recognized the opportunities in the coffee business, moved to Guatemala in the same year and entered the coffee trade with his friend Oscar Thiel by participating in the pre-financing of the harvest. Due to initial successes, on April 8, 1896, he also received the power of attorney from his parents' company in Hamburg, which was now also involved in the coffee trade, so that in the following years three of his younger brothers moved to Guatemala and started the business - Johannes in 1898, Arthur in 1903 and Friedrich 1907. After Nottebohm had acquired Hamburg citizenship in 1902 , he and his brothers founded the Nottebohm Hermanos company in 1906 to secure business in Guatemala .

In 1907 he became a co-owner of the family business Nottebohm & Co alongside his father and moved to Hamburg. The Hamburg main building now financed the coffee harvest in advance, while Nottebohn Hermanos acquired a considerable amount of plantations in Guatemala and delivered the harvest to Hamburg. When the company in Guatemala was expropriated after the end of the First World War in February 1919, Nottebohm and 36 other Hamburg merchants founded the Hamburg Association of Guatemala Firms , which, under the leadership of Schlubach & Co., was able to return it in 1921. In 1925, Nottebohm in Guatemala was granted the exclusive right to sell nitrogen fertilizers in Central America, and in the same year its own local bank was founded. In the Great Depression of 1929 and the banking crisis of 1931 Nottebohm was hit by foreign exchange losses and falling prices, but his companies survived the period without major damage. In 1931 it was possible to take over shares in the Verapaz railway and in 1934 Nottebohm Hermanos produced over 1500 t of coffee beans on its own 4,500 hectares.

During the emergence of National Socialism , despite pressure, neither Nottebohm in Hamburg nor his brothers in Guatemala joined the NSDAP or their foreign associations. Nottebohm himself was considered an apolitical businessman. When National Socialist party officials in Guatemala complained about employees in 1936, Nottebohm was even summoned for interrogation in Hamburg. In 1937/38 Nottebohm still topped the list of German coffee exporters in Guatemala with 15% of the total harvest in the country and an exported amount of coffee beans of over 8,000 t from its own plantations and holdings. As early as 1937, however, the sons of Carl L. Nottebohm's brothers, Hans (since 1931) and Karl-Heinz (since 1934), who had joined the company since 1931, together with their remaining uncle Friedrich, dissolved the Nottebohm Hermanos company from the headquarters in Hamburg by paying in $ 270,000 to Carl Nottebohm.

In June 1944, as a result of the Second World War, the Nottebohm Hermanos company was expropriated by the Guatemalan government at the instigation of the USA. Due to his death in 1945, Carl L. Nottebohm was spared the need to experience the family's unsuccessful claims for return in the post-war period.

Volunteering

From December 17, 1928 to March 31, 1937 he was a member of the Hamburg Chamber of Commerce . From 1930 to 1933 Vice-President and Deputy Chairman of the Chamber's Section for Trade, Shipping and Customs , he held the office of President of the Chamber of Commerce from January 2, 1931 to June 15, 1933 and as such represented the Chamber in the Deputation for Trade, Shipping and Industry.

On February 5, 1933, in the Hamburger Nachrichten, he took part in a critical note by Hamburg entrepreneurs against the National Socialist economic policy: We in Hamburg in particular are increasingly feeling the one-sidedness with which a misguided trade and economic policy seeks to safeguard domestic and agricultural interests Without taking into account the fact that Germany, if it wants to regain its leading position in the world, cannot achieve this through a closed trading state . Four months later he was replaced as President by NSDAP member Hermann Hübbe , but remained Vice President until he left the Chamber of Commerce in 1937.

From 1918 until his death he was a member of the supervisory board of the Deutsche Schiffsbeleihungs-Bank Hamburg . He was also a member of the supervisory boards of Commerzbank , Hamburgische Bank from 1923 , Hamburger Freihafen-Lagerhausgesellschaft and Hamburgische Elektrizitäts-Werken . Nottebohm was a member of the Central Committee of the Reichsbank in Berlin, an alderman of the Hamburg District Committee of the Reichsbank and a member of the Provisional Reich Economic Council .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Detlef Krause: The Commerz- und Disconto-Bank 1870-1920 / 23: Bankgeschichte als Systemgeschichte , S. 114f.
2. ↑ Hildegard von Marchthaler (arrangement): German gender book vol. 128 (10th Hamburg gender book) , Starke, Limburg / Lahn 1962, p. 89
3. ^ Christiane Berth: From Hamburg to the coffee worlds of Central America. The Nottebohm Hermanos in Guatemala , In: Ulrich Mücke / Jörn Arfs (ed.): Traders, pioneers, scientists. Hamburger in Latin America , LIT-Verlag, Berlin 2010, pp. 67–88 (72) online
4. ^ Christiane Berth: From Hamburg to the coffee worlds of Central America. The Nottebohm Hermanos in Guatemala , In: Ulrich Mücke / Jörn Arfs (ed.): Traders, pioneers, scientists. Hamburger in Latin America , LIT-Verlag, Berlin 2010, pp. 67–88 (75) online
5. ↑ Christiane Berth: `` Biographies and networks in the coffee trade between Germany and Central America 1920-1959 '', Hamburg University Press 2014, p. 126f.
6. ↑ Christiane Berth: '' Biographies and networks in the coffee trade between Germany and Central America 1920–1959 '', Hamburg University Press 2014, pp. 199, 203. Online
7. ↑ Christiane Berth: '' Biographies and networks in the coffee trade between Germany and Central America 1920–1959 '', Hamburg University Press 2014, p. 244. Online
8. ^ Christiane Berth: From Hamburg to the coffee worlds of Central America. The Nottebohm Hermanos in Guatemala , In: Ulrich Mücke / Jörn Arfs (ed.): Traders, pioneers, scientists. Hamburger in Latin America , LIT-Verlag, Berlin 2010, pp. 67–88 (81) online
9. ↑ Quoted in the Reich edition ` ` Der Funke - daily newspaper for law, freedom and culture '' by February 9, 1933, p. 6

literature

• Hamburgischer Kaufmannsbank Nottebohm & Co (ed.): '' Nottebohm 1822 - 1972 '', Hamburg 1972.
• Hildegard von Marchthaler (arrangement): German gender book vol. 128 (10th Hamburg gender book) , Starke, Limburg / Lahn 1962.
• Christiane Berth: From Hamburg to the coffee worlds of Central America. The Nottebohm Hermanos in Guatemala , In: Ulrich Mücke / Jörn Arfs (ed.): Traders, pioneers, scientists. Hamburger in Latin America , LIT-Verlag, Berlin 2010, pp. 67–88.
• Christiane Berth: '' Biographies and networks in the coffee trade between Germany and Central America 1920–1959 '', Hamburg University Press 2014
• Detlef Krause: The Commerz- und Disconto-Bank 1870-1920 / 23: Banking history as system history , Steiner Verlag 2004.

Web links

• CV at www.hamburger-persoenitäten.de