Christian Daniel Benecke

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Christian Daniel Benecke on a painting by Friedrich Carl Gröger (1836)

Christian Daniel Benecke (born May 7, 1768 in Mönchsroth , † March 5, 1851 in Hamburg ) was a businessman and mayor of Hamburg .

Life

Benecke on an engraving by Friedrich Adolph Hornemann
Epitaph for Benecke at the Merck family grave in Jacobipark in Hamburg-Eilbek
Collective grave plaque Althamburg Memorial Cemetery

The son of the princely Oettingian chief bailiff Johann Jacob Benecke († 1807) and brother of the later philologist Georg Friedrich Benecke (1762-1844) grew up with his grandmother in Nördlingen from the age of seven , where he was taught religion by his uncle. After commercial training in Augsburg (with HG Hildebrandts Erben ), he first went to Amsterdam and later to Nantes . There he experienced the turmoil of the French Revolutionary Wars and therefore tried to emigrate to America in 1793 . His ship, the Bremer Brigg Union , was captured by the Spanish near the Azores , and the passengers were initially held captive in Cádiz . There Benecke temporarily found a job with a German merchant named Gundelach before traveling back to Amsterdam on a Dutch frigate in the summer of 1794.

From there he moved to Hamburg on April 17, 1796, where he opened a joint business with Amsterdam partners under the name Benecke & Co. and in 1806 also acquired Hamburg citizenship. As early as 1802 he had taken on the honorary post of poor carer, where he had to determine the number of the poor, determine their needs and distribute existing gifts to them. In 1812 he became a member of the Chamber of Commerce and assessor at the Lower Court . In the summer of 1813 he was appointed by Governor General Louis-Nicolas Davout as a member of the municipal council; the municipal council had replaced both the council (senate) and the citizenry under French rule, and had thirty members. The municipal council existed until May 26, 1814 and was then dissolved by the council. The members of the municipal council were asked by the council to continue to support the council for a short period of time.

In July 1813 he was part of the Hamburg delegation, which unsuccessfully tried to obtain a reduction in the contribution of 48,000,000 francs demanded by Davout to Napoleon in Dresden . But the embassy was not even received, and when the city defaulted on payment, Benecke was taken hostage to Harburg with other respected merchants .

After the end of French rule, he was elected to the Senate on September 13, 1815 . There he took over a. the office of landlord of the landlordship of Bill- and Ochsenwerder and had to deal with the consequences of a severe storm surge there in 1825. In order to alleviate the plight of the rural population affected, he formed with Jenisch and Abendroth a Commission of water damage , boost the donations and distributed.

Benecke lived in a town house at Theerhof No. 63 (later No. 45) and lived in the country in his garden on the Elbe in Övelgönne , where he grew plants and in 1826 also took over the chairmanship of the commission for the newly founded botanical garden .

After he had withdrawn from all commercial transactions in 1827 in order to be able to devote himself entirely to public tasks, Benecke was elected mayor on March 2, 1835 . In the great Hamburg fire in 1842, he chaired the Senate and had, among other things, on the night of 5./6. May to decide on the demolition of the (old) Hamburg city hall to contain the fire . As mayor, he was also the patron saint of the poor hospital in the suburb of St. Georg and bought two pieces of land in 1841 and 1844, the interest income from which secured the livelihood of several women in need. He also ran a soup kitchen from his own resources, which provided 300 poor people with a warm meal every day. After his death he bequeathed a third of his fortune to charitable institutions in the city, including the Rauhe Haus and the Sieveking Diakonie Association .

Benecke was buried in the family crypt of his friend, Senator Heinrich Johann Merck, in the new Jacobi cemetery on the Chaussee to Wandsbek, today 's Jacobipark in Eilbek. The tomb is still preserved today. In the area of ​​the Althamburg Memorial Cemetery of the Ohlsdorf Cemetery , the mayor's (II.) Collective grave commemorates Christian Daniel Benecke, among others.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wolf-Rüdiger Osburg, The administration of Hamburg in the French period 1811–1814 , p. 86, P. Lang, 1988

literature

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Benecke, Christian Daniel
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German businessman and mayor of Hamburg
DATE OF BIRTH May 7, 1768
PLACE OF BIRTH Mönchsroth
DATE OF DEATH March 5, 1851
Place of death Hamburg