Emile Nölting

Jaques Emile Louis Alexandre Nölting (born August 20, 1812 in Mannheim , † April 19, 1899 in Hamburg ) was a German businessman , banker and philanthropist .

Life and work in Haiti

Emile Nölting was the son of the merchant Carl Joseph Nölting (1781–1849) and his wife Josepha Henrica (or Josephine Henriette), née Finder (1786–1861). The father's family came from Hamburg, his mother from Mannheim, where Carl Joseph Nölting worked. The couple married on July 28, 1808 in Brunstorf and had four other children in addition to Emile. At the age of four, Emile Nölting moved with the family to Hamburg. Here he went to school and from the age of 17 completed vocational training at Tanner & Brock. He then worked as a clerk at the ship broker Joh. Dan. Schirmer. The company focused on trips to the West Indies . In 1836 Emile Nölting traveled with the schooner "Superior" to Cap-Haïtien in Haiti . The company C. H. Killic presented him with a job offer, which Nölting refused. Instead, he initially worked as a freelancer for the company Hahs, Finke & Co. A short time later, he moved to the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince . Here he worked for the company J. R. Bernard & Co.

In 1838 he married Florida Richeux, whose father owned plantations. The couple had three children, all of whom died as young children. On November 13 of the same year, Nölting acquired a stake in J. R. Bernard & Co. He may have received the necessary funds from his father. In Port-au-Prince, Nölting met Julius Friedrich Wilhelm Reimers (1813–1880), who came from Hamburg and had reached Haiti around the same time as Nölting. The merchants joined forces and founded the company Nölting, Reimers & Co. on January 1, 1844. Nölting had previously dissolved the business relationship with John Robert Bernard.

In 1844 the Dominican Republic (San Domingo) split off from the island of Haiti. This reduced the business area of ​​Nölting, Reimers & Co., whose business developed positively. For its part, San Domingo had a good relationship with the Virgin Island of Saint Thomas , which was a Danish colony. Nölting and Reimers found another business partner named Charles Hurtzig. On January 1, 1846, they founded the company Nölting, Reimers & Cia. based in Saint Thomas, where Emile Nölting moved as managing director. The company established itself in a short time. Emile Nölting handed over the management to Charles Hurtzig and drove back to Hamburg, where he met Hermann Münchmeyer . He had also returned to Hamburg at almost the same time after a long stay in Haiti. Both determined to continue doing business in Haiti and Saint Thomas together. For this purpose, Münchmeyer founded the company H. Münchmeyer on September 1, 1846, based in Hamburg; Meanwhile, Nölting drove back to Saint Thomas. In 1850 Wilhelm Reimers went back to Hamburg. Münchmeyer then liquidated the company he had founded in 1846. Instead, on July 8, 1850, together with Nölting, both founded the company Münchmeyer, Nölting & Reimers, based in Hamburg, in which all namesake held shares.

Due to the differing interests of the three shareholders, they chose other forms of company for the company in Hamburg at the end of 1854: They liquidated Münchmeyer, Nölting & Reimers and instead founded the companies Nölting & Reimers and Münchmeyer & Co. on January 1, 1855. A short time later, Nölting rose from the Company in Saint Thomas from; from then on the company traded as Hurtzig, Meyer & Co.

In the summer of 1846 Emile Nölting stayed in Hamburg while his wife was traveling through Europe. She died on June 13, 1846 while staying in Paris . Emile Nölting married Louise Alexandrine Clara Windsor (1826–1898) for the second time on July 24, 1850 in Port-au-Prince. Together with his second wife, who came from Ireland, he moved from Saint Thomas to Port-au-Prince. Emile Nölting supported the emperor Faustin Soulouque here until 1853 in financial transactions, which were presumably used to raise cash. He then went to Manchester with his wife , where most of the imports from Haiti were landed. It was primarily coffee, tobacco and cotton. The company's business in Port-au-Prince was continued by Nölting's brother-in-law, Carl (Charles) Anton Philipp Purgold. In the summer of 1856 Nölting left Manchester with his family, returned to Hamburg and there acquired citizenship on April 3, 1857 .

Work in Hamburg

The economic crisis of 1857 had little impact on the business of Nölting & Reimers. The financial means of the entrepreneurs were sufficient to pay 40,000 marks for ailing companies as members of the Garantie-Disconto-Verein. At the end of 1858, Wilhelm Reimers decided to leave the company. After the liquidation, Nölting therefore founded the company Emile Nölting & Co., which maintained contacts with Nölting, Purgold & Co. in Port-on-Prince. Since overland transport in Haiti was complicated, it proved advantageous to have offices in several ports. Nölting therefore founded Purgold & Co. together with Charles Purgold and Robert D. Roberts on July 1, 1859, based in Les Cayes . Later branches were added in Gonaïves , Saint-Marc and Jacmel . The latter was led by Louis Sanne (1842–1875). In addition, Nölting founded the company Nölting, Rodatz & Co. based in Cap-Haïtien. As the most important merchant who did business with Haiti, Nölting took over the position of Haitian Consul General in Hamburg in 1865 .

In 1859 Nölting was elected to the Hamburg parliament by the parish of St. Jakobi . However, the election was declared invalid because he had not been a Hamburg citizen for three years. From 1859 to 1862 he acted as a commercial judge in Hamburg.

Emile Nölting must have made a large fortune with the trading business, as the extensive property holdings in Hamburg indicate: he lived at Ferdinandstrasse 24 and bought this building in 1864. In 1860 he had acquired the house on Alsterdamm 2, which is adjacent to the north. Located on the Alster Lake , the Haus am Alsterdamm he lived with his family, the building behind it in the Ferdinandstraße he used as an office building . In 1865 he bought a country house on Elbchaussee 190, which he named "Villa Clara" after his wife. This country house was built by Martin Haller and Auguste de Meuron expanded it in 1856.

From 1860 to 1868, Emile Nölting operated up to five sailing ships as a shipowner , but in the following years he concentrated on merchant banking and invested in other companies. In 1862 he had already acquired shares in the Hamburg Actien brewery. In 1869 he bought 18.2 percent of the shares in the newly renamed Hollerschen Carlshütte near Rendsburg for a purchase price of 700,000  Prussian marks . In February he was one of twelve businessmen among the founding members of Commerz- und Discontobank AG and took over six percent of the share capital, which totaled 10 million marks. He also held 20 percent of the shares in Chemische Fabrik Harburg-Staßfurt, which was majority owned by Commerz- und Discontobank. Nölting was a founding and supervisory board member of all companies in which he owned shares. From 1881 to 1890 he was deputy chairman of Commerz- und Discontobank AG, from 1890 until the end of his life its chairman.

At the end of 1889, Emile Nölting left his company and passed the business on to his son Edgar (* 1861), who had previously worked for his father for a number of years. The company still exists today. It focuses on the distribution of cleaning products and is owned by a direct descendant of Nölting.

Act as a patron

Emile Nölting was very committed to charitable causes. In 1860 he donated money with which the Zoological Society AG was founded. The zoological garden near the Dammtor was created under the direction of Ernst Merck . He worked free of charge at the International Horticultural Exhibition that took place in Hamburg in 1869. Nölting, together with Adolf Schramm (1805-1887) and two other people, set up a commission that made the new construction of the Marienkrankenhaus possible. For this purpose, they had raised more than 100,000 marks within two years.

"Jaques Emile Louis Alexandre Nölting", collective grave merchants (II f), Ohlsdorf cemetery

Nölting, originally of Protestant faith, converted to the Catholic Church in 1883 at the request of his Catholic wife and donated for church purposes. He donated an altar for the newly built St. Marienkirche in Hamburg-Altona. After Clara Nölting's death on July 18, 1898, who greatly depressed Nölting, he was cared for by the Gray Sisters of St. Elisabeth. He promised them to finance a new home and donate it to the Catholic Church. The Hamburg architect E. Brettschneider planned the house, later known as the Nölting-Stift. However, Nölting himself did not see the plans or the building, as he died three months before the plans were completed. The five-storey building, completed in 1900, was located at Pastorenstrasse 3 (renamed Michaelisstrasse 23 in 1959) and existed until it was demolished in 1966. Since the number of women religious declined significantly during the Nazi era , the building was converted from a home in 1943 converted into a residential building. From 1947 it also served as a parsonage for Little Michel .

Honors

Emile Nölting is commemorated on the collective grave slab merchants (II f) of the Althamburg Memorial Cemetery, Ohlsdorf Cemetery .

In 1951 Nöltingstrasse in Hamburg-Ottensen was named after Emile Nölting.

literature

• Claus Gossler: Nölting, Emile . In: Franklin Kopitzsch, Dirk Brietzke (Hrsg.): Hamburgische Biographie . tape 4 . Wallstein, Göttingen 2008, ISBN 978-3-8353-0229-7 , pp. 255-257 .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Wilhelm Heyden: The members of the Hamburg citizenship 1859-1862 . Festschrift for December 6, 1909. Herold in Komm., Hamburg 1909, p. 92 .
2. ^ Emile Nölting GmbH & Co. KG: Company history