Diedrich Heinrich Wätjen

Diedrich Heinrich Wätjen (also DH Waetjen ; * December 27, 1785 in Ochtmannien near Süstedt ; † January 12, 1858 in Bremen ) was a German merchant and shipowner , as well as a senator in Bremen.

biography

Wätjen was born as the fourth son of a farming family from Ochtmannien. In 1800 he followed his older brother Julius to Bremen, where he completed an apprenticeship as a businessman. From 1808 he began to do business on his own account, also as a blockade breaker during the times of the French continental barrier . When his first child Christian Heinrich was born , he lost his wife Christine. From 1818, after four years in England, he joined a company in Bremen, which he gradually took over until 1821. He married a second time, with a daughter from one of the oldest Bremen families. After taking on a partner, the company developed under the name DH Wätjen und Co. into the largest private sailing shipping company in the world.

In 1837 he was elected Senator from Bremen , which he remained until 1857. He represented a liberal line and worked closely with Arnold Duckwitz and Johann Smidt .

From 1851 he lived most of the time on his country estate in Blumenthal (today Wätjens Park, the later location of Wätjens Castle ) after he had become a widower for the second time.

Honors

The Wätjenstrasse was named after the shipowners Diedrich Wätjen and Heinrich Wätjen.

literature

• Hans Wätjen: White W in the blue field. The Bremen shipping company and overseas trade DH Wätjen & Co. 1821–1921 . Wolfsburg 1983
• Peter-Michael Pawlik: From the Weser into the world . European Publishing House 1994, ISBN 3551882568

Individual proof

1. ^ "The Wätjen Family" ( Memento from May 18, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) (University of Bremen)