Constantin Brun

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Constantin Brun (Portrait of Jean-Laurent Mosnier , 1808)

Johan Christian Constantin Brun (born November 27, 1746 in Rostock or Wismar , † February 19, 1836 in Copenhagen ) was a German-Danish merchant. Born and educated in Northern Germany, he came to Denmark after a stopover in Russia, where he became royal administrator for trade with the Danish West Indies . At the same time, he built up his own successful trading company, which benefited greatly from Denmark's neutrality during the early coalition wars towards the end of the 18th century.

He was married to Friederike Brun , a poet and well-known salonnière of Denmark's Golden Age .

Family and education

Constantin Brun was a son of the doctor Johann Karl Brun (1711–1775) from Danzig and his wife Justine Katharina Twer (also: Stewer ?) In Wismar. He came to Lübeck as an apprentice to the businessman Franz Heinrich Pauli . After he had shown talent for business, Pauli sent him, together with his son ( Franz Hinrich Pauli or Adrian Wilhelm Pauli ?) To Saint Petersburg to set up a branch of the FH Pauli und Sohn trading house .

On October 16, 1777, Brun received an appointment as the Danish consul in St. Peterburg. The appointment brought him to Copenhagen , where he met his future wife Friederike on a visit from her father Balthasar Münter , the pastor of the German-speaking St. Petri Church (Copenhagen) . He fell in love with her and returned to Copenhagen in the winter of 1782/83.

Rise in Denmark

The Danish government became aware of his exceptional business talent. Presumably on the initiative of Ernst Heinrich von Schimmelmann , he was offered the position of royal administrator for trade with the Danish West Indies. Brun accepted this offer, settled in Copenhagen and proposed marriage to Friederike Münter, which she accepted in the course of the same year. Under Brun, Danish trade with the West Indies was transferred from the Danish West India Company to the Danish Krone. In the following decades, this trade flourished, not least because of the Danish neutrality in the European wars of that time.

Brun also expanded his own trading company and made a substantial fortune with it. At the time of his death in 1836, Brun was one of the richest men in Denmark and left an estate of more than 2 million Rigsbankdaler .

In 1788/89 the Danish government sent him on a diplomatic mission to Russia, which was closely allied with Denmark, to financially support the Russo-Swedish War on the basis of the Danish-Russian assistance treaty of 1773.

Possessions

Brun owned several estates and mansions. In 1796, after the death of Juliane von Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel , who lived there, he acquired a city palace in Copenhagen, which was called Gyldenløves lille Palæ Gyldenlöwe's small palace after its previous owner, Ulrich Friedrich Gyldenlöwe , and had it redecorated according to plans by the French architect Joseph Ramée . The palace at the intersection of Dronningens Tværgade and Bredgade came to the Moltke family in 1852 and is therefore now called Moltkes Palæ .

  • Bruns City Palace (Moltkes Palais)

  • Bathroom in the city palace, designed by Joseph Ramée

As early as 1790 he had bought the Sophienholm manor on Bagsværd Lake ( Lyngby-Taarbæk Kommune ) as a summer house. From 1800 to 1805 he had it expanded by Ramée and gave it the shape that has been preserved to this day.

In 1799 he acquired the estate and former monastery of Antvorskov and a little later the Falkenstein estate, both near Slagelse , from Magnus von Dernath . He divided Antvorskov into four estate parcels, which he named after his children Charlottedal , Augustadal , Idagård and Carlsgård and sold them on in 1806 for a substantial profit. Using innovative techniques in agriculture, he developed his goods into model agricultural goods. On Antvorskov, he found accommodation and a livelihood as an inspector for Friedrich Bernhard von Wickede and his family. He brought several families from Switzerland and built a dairy and cheese dairy , whereby the cheese was primarily intended for export, and experimented with threshing machines .

In 1810 he bought the Krogerup estate ( Fredensborg Municipality ) for his son. The family owned the estate until 1939.

  • Gut Sophienholm, now an art museum

  • Gut Krogerup around 1860

family

Christoph Heinrich Kniep : Ida Bruhn as a dancer (around 1815)

Constantin Brun's wife Friederike Brun was a writer and hosted many of the Danish artists and writers who were well-known in her day. Her salon on Sophienholm was very popular. Her youngest daughter Ida performed as a singer and dancer in her salons . She maintained acquaintances and correspondence with many leading cultural celebrities in Europe, for example with the Swiss writer Karl Viktor von Bonstetten and in particular Madame de Staël .

Constantin Brun showed no interest in these activities of his wife and dismissed them as poetic madness . He found her salons extravagant, but Friederike pushed her ideas through against him. He was only impressed by the idea that the fortune he had built made her Europe-wide activities possible.

He was buried in a chapel of St. Peter's Church in Copenhagen, where members of the Schimmelmann family had also been buried before him . A memorial plaque reminds of him there.

children

  • Carl Friedrich Balthasar Brun (April 20, 1784 - November 14, 1869), landlord, chamberlain and court hunter. From him comes the other German-Danish family Brun up to the Danish Greenland politician Eske Brun (1904–1987).
  • Charlotte Brun (1788–1872) ∞ (August 4, 1809) August Wilhelm Pauli , merchant and Hanseatic Minister-Resident in Copenhagen from 1814 to 1848
  • Augusta Brun (1790–1845) ∞ (October 11, 1811) Gustav von Rennenkampff (1784–1869), German-Baltic landowner
  • Adelaide Caroline Johanne Brun, called Ida (September 20, 1792 - November 23, 1857) ∞ Ludwig Philipp von Bombelles , diplomat

  • Carl Friedrich Balthasar Brun

  • Friederike Brun with daughter Charlotte, painting by Erik Pauelsen (1780)

  • Ida Brun, painting by JL Lund

Awards

literature

Web links

Commons : Johan Christian Constantin Brun  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ so the older literature
  2. ↑ so Snell (lit.), p. 254 and the NDB biography of his wife
  3. ^ Adalbert Elschenbroich:  Brun, Friederike. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 2, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1955, ISBN 3-428-00183-4 , p. 676 f. ( Digitized version ).
  4. ^ Johann Karl Brun in the Rostock matriculation portal ; see also Axel Wilhelmi: The Mecklenburg doctors from the oldest times to the present. Schwerin 1901, p. 48 No. 250. Brun was a district physician in Güstrow from 1750 .
  5. ↑ a b Salonlivet . Sophienholm. Archived from the original on July 19, 2011. Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved October 20, 2010. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.sophienholm.dk
  6. ↑ Constantin Brun . Gyldendal. Retrieved September 24, 2010.
  7. ↑ About Krogerup Folk High School . Krogerup Folk High School. Archived from the original on September 27, 2010. Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved October 3, 2010 .; Owners according to Carl Brun: 1869–1888: Petrus Friderich Constantin ( Fritz ) Brun (1813–1888), 1888–1921: Oscar Brun (1851–1921) and 1921–1939 his widow Ida Charlotte Brun, b. Tesdorpf (1851–1939, great-granddaughter of Peter Hinrich Tesdorpf (businessman, 1751) ) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.krogerup.dk
  8. ^ Doris and Peter Walser-Wilhelm (eds.): Bonstettiana, historical-critical edition of the correspondence of Karl Viktor von Bonstetten and his circle, 1753-1832. 14 volumes. Peter Lang, Bern 1996 ff .; Wallstein, Göttingen 2002 ff.
  9. ^ Bonstettiana: historical-critical edition of the letters of Karl Viktor von Bonstettens and his circle. Volume 10, Part X / 2, Wallstein, Göttingen 2003, ISBN 978-3-8353-2215-8 , p. 795
  10. ^ Gustav von Rennenkampff in the Carl-Maria-von-Weber-Gesamtausgabe
  11. ↑ s: Gustav Reinhold Georg von Rennenkampff
personal data
SURNAME Brun, Constantin
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Brun, Johan Christian Constantin (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-Danish merchant
DATE OF BIRTH November 27, 1746
PLACE OF BIRTH Rostock or Wismar
DATE OF DEATH February 19, 1836
Place of death Copenhagen