Christian Otte

Christian Otte (born July 19, 1674 in Eckernförde in the Duchy of Schleswig - Gottorf ; † November 30, 1747 in Eckernförde, Duchy of Schleswig, in the entire Danish state) was an influential wholesaler, shipowner, grain and wine wholesaler.

Otte stands for an unusual, new type of aspiring commercial entrepreneur who, due to the wealth they acquired through entrepreneurial initiative, apparently rose from nowhere to the highest social classes. He founded a downright merchant and entrepreneur dynasty, the members of which occupied some of the more important administrative posts in the duchy and allied themselves with leading noble families. Eckernförder Otte-Straße was named after him and his family.

career

As a young man he went to sea and soon had so much wealth (from an unknown source, perhaps partly from his father's inheritance from 1693) that he could afford his own ship at the age of 25. His commercial success began during this time as a young Baltic merchant boatman and captain of his own ship, which carried wood, iron, lime and the like. a. brought from Sweden to Eckernförde.

But he soon gave up seafaring and became a merchant and shipowner, first together with his younger brother Otto Otte (1680–1736) and other investors, then alone with growing wealth. In 1709/13 he already had his own fleet of 10 ships (trips to Sweden , Baltic Sea cities, Norway , France , England ). From 1711 he was a member of the Eckernförde bridge commission; Due to the Northern War, the city suffered from high contributions during this time (in 1713 Christian Otte brokered a municipal loan from the Jew Meier Moses in order to remedy the greatest need). Since 1713, the town's minutes of the meeting have reported on the wholesale wine trade of the Ottes. In 1715 he was named with his brother as the owner of an old Schuete; At this time he was already one of the most respected and well-to-do citizens, who was consulted in serious negotiations about contributions and war supplies. In 1716 he was also an expert at the permanent meetings of the council; at that time he and his brother were considered to be "the principalist citizens".

In 1721, after the Great Northern War, Eckernförde, which had hitherto been the town of Gottorf, was transferred to the Danish king, with the result that the entire Duchy of Schleswig now belonged to the entire Danish state; Shipping became more difficult at first, as Copenhagen was given significant privileges in competition with the other Danish seaports (in the following decade, however, its privileges were dismantled in the interests of the development of the individual parts of the empire on Bernstorff's initiative ). Now Christian Otte's almost uninterrupted shipbuilding activity began for many years; In the same year he expanded his fleet and started trading in Schleswig grain, wood, iron, etc. Lime (from Sweden and Pomerania to Eckernförde, England and France), salt (England) and wine (Bordeaux), mostly for the account of Copenhagen or Hamburg merchants. The shipowners of the duchies had the largest ships at that time and expanded trade with the Danish colonies in the West Indies . Unlike in the past, Otte's captains had no economic responsibility of their own, but were solely responsible for transporting the goods to their destination.

In 1723 he built a warehouse in the city (with the initials CO and EO for him and his wife). He had no partners since the 1730s and was able to finance all of his businesses on his own. In 1732 he took part in the Asiatic Company in Copenhagen. In 1734 he bought the Krieseby estate with subjects and was also the landowner for Rossee and Grasholz .

He began in 1746 (after a Danish treaty with the North African states that created security from pirates) with further cargo voyages from the Baltic Sea to Portugal, from there on to the Mediterranean and back to Hamburg, now owned a quarter of Eckernförde's tonnage (seven own ships).

The Otte company

After his death, his son Friedrich Wilhelm Otte, born in 1715, continued the company, which was "ultra-modern for the time," and expanded trading in the Baltic Sea with Portugal. When Friedrich Wilhelm Otte died in 1766, the company was the largest private shipping company in the duchies. With 16 ships, it owned almost half of all Eckernförde ships. “The commercial skills and entrepreneurial daring of Christian and Friedrich Wilhelm Ottes were the sole basis of their success, especially since the Ottes' foresight and entrepreneurial commitment were rather unusual for the 18th century. Both because of its size and because of its specialization in freight transport, the Otte shipping company was completely atypical for the entire Danish state in the 18th century and, together with companies such as the Donner trading company in Visby or the Henley and Son shipping company in London, pioneered the restructuring of the Shipping company. (...) Only in the course of the (...) industrial revolution should the trend towards business specialization finally prevail in the form of large shipping companies. ”In the second half of the 18th century, the Otte shipping company was continued by the Bruyn family (grandson of Christian Otte ).

Foundation, endowment

In 1739 Otte founded a poor and old people's house in Eckernförde "out of a Christian and compassionate disposition", which he furnished with land and capital (3000 Reichsthaler) and whose first administrator he was until 1747. Eckernförde residents, members of the family and "Crisebuyer subjects" are allowed to enter the house. The Otte'sche Poor Foundation still exists today.

family

Otte was the son of a cobbler. In his first marriage he married Margret Classen on December 2, 1698 in Eckernförde (* May 17, 1678, † June 26, 1704, daughter of Daniel Claussen and Anna Oelerichs). In his second marriage on November 30, 1706 in Rendsburg, he married Elsabe Claussen (daughter of the Rendsburg innkeeper Jürgen Claussen, sister of a Eckernförde ship owner and the pastor of Borby). Christian Otte had a total of 16 children.

Most important of these was Friedrich Wilhelm Otte (1715–1766), mayor of Eckernförde, chancellery and diplomat, main manager of the Otte company in Eckernförde (in particular the founder of the faience factory). Another son was Georg Christian Otte (1702–1778), 1st Mayor of Schleswig with the title of Chancellery Assessor and head of the Otteschen companies in Schleswig. He had married Magdalena Elisabeth, the daughter of Johann Loren Bensen, the highest official of the duchies, the senior administrator of Schleswig-Holstein and Pinneberg. Johann Nikolaus Otte (1714–1780), on Gut Krieseby , chancellery and chief regional inspector in the duchies “was extremely involved in the family's industrial ventures”. His son Friedrich Wilhelm Otte the Younger became a budget councilor and chief regional inspector in the duchies and worked as a writer for the abolition of serfdom . On behalf of the Danish king, he reformed the poor system in the duchies. The youngest daughter Hedwig Christiane (1723–1792) was married to the royal Danish judiciary Ferdinand Otto Vollrath Lawätz . An important grandson was the Danish major and chief inspector Johann von Bruyn , who carried out the land reform in the Duchy of Schleswig.

literature

• “Otte, Christian”: Biographical lexicon for Schleswig-Holstein and Lübeck
• Jann M. Witt: Seafaring in transition using the example of the Otte shipping company in Eckernförde , in: Yearbook Heimatgemeinschaft Eckernförde eV , 58th year 2000, pp. 27–50
• Jann M. Witt, "Master next God?" The Northern European merchant shipping captain from the 17th to the 19th century , dissertation, Univ. Kiel 1999
• Lars N. Henningsen: The Otte-Reederei in Eckernförde , a mirror of the shipping boom in Schleswig-Holstein 1700-1770, Wachholtz, 1991, (special print from: Economic change in Schleswig-Holstein from the Middle Ages to the present , 20th vol. of "Studies on the Economic and Social History of Schleswig-Holstein", 1991)
• Lars Henningsen: Provinsmatadorer fra 1700 - Arene, Reder-, købmans- and fabrikantfamilien Otte i Ekernførde i økonomi and politics 1700 - 1770 , Eckernförde 1985 (Rosenkilde og Bagger) with a final summary in German
• Geert-Herbert Lüders: The Otte'sche Armenstiftung in Eckernförde since its foundation in 1739 , in: Yearbook of the home community of the Eckernförde district , 27th year 1969
• Günther Noack: "The Classes in Borby" , in: Yearbook of the home community of the Eckernförde district , 19th year, 1961
• Hans Fontenay de Wobeser: Eckernförde's heyday and the Otte family , 1920

Remarks

1. ↑ Otte had the existing buildings demolished and built the estate in the form in which it still exists today. Good Krieseby. In: The garden routes. Schleswig-Holstein Chamber of Agriculture, Horticulture Department, accessed on September 8, 2018 . 
2. ↑ Witt 2000, p. 36
3. ^ Witt 2000, p. 46
4. ↑ Cruisebuy = Krieseby.
5. ↑ Fontenay v. Wobeser p. 49

Web links

• Jens Kirchhoff: family line Otte (Otto) from Eckernförde. (PDF) In: North German Genealogies. December 15, 2013, accessed September 8, 2018 .