Caspar Giani
Caspar Joseph Giani (born July 31, 1830 in Mainz , † January 1, 1895 in Aachen ) was a German businessman .
Life
Childhood and education in Mainz
He grew up as the fourth of 15 children in a merchant family in Mainz. His father, Andreas Cajetan Giani, immigrated from Trontano near Domodossola to Mainz via Karlsruhe in 1813 , where he founded a “ specialty trade ” and in 1827 married Elisabeth Krohe, the daughter of a citizen of Mainz.
In his father's company, Caspar first completed a commercial apprenticeship and met the trainee Leonard Monheim from Aachen in 1849 . Through him he was introduced to the Merckelbach family , who lived in the Wittem fort between Aachen and Maastricht . In 1858 he married Leonard Monheim's sister-in-law Katharina Merckelbach, with whom he had seven children.
After his father's death in 1859, he initially worked in the Mainz store with his mother and siblings.
Merchant in Aachen
In 1866 he was accepted by his brother-in-law Monheim as a partner in his “drug material goods retail shop” at 8 Jakobsstrasse. He then moved with his family to Aachen and moved into house no. 16 on the Hochstraße, which continued from Theaterstraße in the 1820s to 1830s (today: Theaterstraße 50). The joint business was expanded within two years to include a “colonial and tropical fruit trade, spice mill, and mustard and chocolate factory”, thus forming the beginning of the later “Trumpf” chocolate factory . By 1877, further facilities for the "mechanical production of chocolate including spice mills, sugar cutting and production of powder refinade" were added.
In 1878 the business separated from Leonard Monheim, who concentrated on the industrial production of chocolate at Jakobstrasse 8-10. Caspar Giani, on the other hand, founded his own delicatessen store "en gros et en detail" in the rooms at Hochstraße 16, expanded it into the leading wholesale business for colonial goods and tropical fruits and added a coffee roastery . In the same year he had a representative villa built in the neo-Gothic style, the “Villa Giani”, on the Lütticher Strasse at the corner of Moreller Weg above the city, based on plans by the architect Hermann Joseph Hürth (see illustration there) .
In the 1880s and 1890s, the family managed to establish connections to other entrepreneurial families in the Rhine Province through a clever marriage policy : The eldest daughter Elise married the Cologne manufacturer Wilhelm Wolfs in 1883 . The third daughter Marie married the Elberfeld factory owner Otto Burchartz in 1886 , her eldest son Max Burchartz later became a well-known graphic artist. The eldest son Leonhard married Johanna Faymonville in 1890, daughter of an Aachen brewery owner. The second daughter Josefine married the 1892 Breyeller merchant Gustav Dammer, her eldest son Karl Dammer later became general music director in Berlin. The fourth daughter Anna married the mayor of Trier Josef Oster in 1895 . The youngest son Joseph married Ella Neuman in 1897, a daughter of the factory owner Friedrich Neuman, who was the owner of the FA Neuman company in Eschweiler .
Caspar Giani died on January 1, 1895 and was buried next to his wife, who had recently died , in the still existing family grave site in Aachen's Westfriedhof on the main road to Campo Santo.
Aftermath
After Caspar Giani's death in 1895, his son Leo succeeded him. Villa Giani was sold by the heirs to the "Aachener Sanatoriumsgesellschaft" and has since been used as a hospital ( Franziskushospital ). In 1909 Leo gave the company to his brother Joseph in order to devote himself entirely to politics and social welfare. Joseph Giani had the commercial building at Hochstrasse 16, which dates back to the 1840s, replaced by a new building built in Art Nouveau style. With the spread of the automobile, he expanded the company in the 1920s through a mineral oil trade and bought a house for his family of nine in Aachen's Mozartstrasse.
During the Second World War , Josef's family was evacuated to Oberstdorf . The commercial building in the former Hochstraße, now renamed Hindenburgstraße, was damaged and later replaced by a new building. Josef Giani died in 1949 and found his final resting place in a new family grave in the Westfriedhof.
literature
- Carl Giani: Family tree of the Giani family. Manuscript. Mainz 1904.
- Reinhard Dauber : Aachen villa architecture. The villa as a building task in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Bongers, Recklinghausen 1985, ISBN 3-7647-0371-7 (also: Aachen, Techn. Hochsch., Habil.-Schr., 1984).
- Joseph Gerhard Rey: The Schervier family and their clans (= publications of the episcopal diocesan archive Aachen 1, ZDB -ID 846757-2 ). Johannes Volk Verlag, Aachen 1936.
Individual evidence
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Giani, Caspar |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Giani, Caspar Joseph |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Merchant |
| DATE OF BIRTH | July 31, 1830 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Mainz |
| DATE OF DEATH | January 1, 1895 |
| Place of death | Aachen |