Ernst Ohlmer

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Ernst Ohlmer (born March 21, 1847 in Betheln , † January 1, 1927 in Hildesheim ) was a German customs clerk , most recently a sea ​​customs director in Tsingtau .

Life

Ohlmer grew up in Gronau . Following his childhood dream, he became a seaman . He was shipwrecked on one of his voyages off the Chinese coast . After rescuing himself ashore, he earned a living by taking photos and learning the foreign language. Parts of the recordings he made during his years in China have survived, such as the recordings of the Summer Palace in Beijing, which was destroyed during the Second Opium War . Ohlmer took these pictures around 1872, and they were shown for the first time in 2010 in an exhibition in the China Millennium Monument .

On May 1, 1868 he got a job in the Chinese maritime customs service . From 1870 to 1872 he was posted to Shanghai , where he wrote a report on the opium trade . It was through this report that Robert Hart, Inspector General of Chinese Maritime Customs from 1861 to 1911, became aware of him and appointed him his private secretary in August 1872 . Ohlmer then moved to Beijing, where he gradually acquired a large amount of old Chinese porcelain . In 1880 he returned briefly to Germany for a vacation and then worked again for the Chinese maritime customs, this time in Guangzhou (Canton). In 1885 Ohlmer stayed in Germany again. There he married Louise von Hanneken (1856–1931), the daughter of the Prussian Lieutenant General Wilhelm von Hanneken (1810–1886), on December 29, 1885 . The marriage remained childless. After returning to China, he was appointed customs director in Guangzhou in 1887. From 1887 to 1898, Ohlmer served as the customs director in various cities, such as Beihai (Pakhoi), Foshan , Beijing, Macau and Yichang . When the contract for the Kiautschou lease area between the German Empire and the Chinese Empire came about on March 6, Ohlmer finally became director of maritime customs in Tsingtau. There he was significantly involved in the development of the local customs system and the free port . He retired in May 1914 and returned to Hildesheim with his wife shortly before the outbreak of World War I , where he spent the rest of his life. He bequeathed his important collection of Chinese porcelain, photographs and other objects to the Roemer and Pelizaeus Museum .

Ohlmer was buried in the Marienfriedhof in Hildesheim. The Chinese inscription on his tombstone and that of his wife Louise means: “He devotedly did his duty for China until his last breath . The grave of A li-wen. He was director of maritime customs for 46 years. He died at the age of 80. "

In Hildesheim, Ernst-Ohlmer-Strasse is named after him.

  • Gravestone of Ernst and Louise Ohlmer in the Marienfriedhof

  • Chinese inscription on the tombstone

Fonts

  • Status and task of German industry in East Asia. A wake-up call and a reminder call to the same. Hildesheim. 1905. 22 pages.
  • Tsingtau, its trade and its customs system. A look back at the development of the German protected area Kiautschou and its hinterland in the decade from 1902–1911. Tsingtau. 1913. 41 pages.

literature

  • Gabriele Lüken: The history of the Marienfriedhof from 1832 until today . In: Hildesheimer Friedhöfe through the ages. Lax Publishing House, Hildesheim 1999.
  • Régine Thiriez: Barbarian Lens: Western Photographers of the Qianlong Emperor's European Palaces. Routledge, 1998 (excerpts from Google Books )
  • Ernst Ohlmer his life and work . In: From home on February 19, 1981, Hildesheim, (from: Karl Ohlmer: The Ohlmer family from Nordstemmen ).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from April 12, 2005 in the Internet Archive ) 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. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.d-betheln.de
  2. ^ Text on photographs of the destroyed Summer Palace in Beijing. In: Photography of China - Ernst Ohlmer. Retrieved May 13, 2016 .
personal data
SURNAME Ohlmer, Ernst
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Director of Maritime Customs in Tsingtau
DATE OF BIRTH March 21, 1847
PLACE OF BIRTH Betheln
DATE OF DEATH January 1, 1927
Place of death Hildesheim