Franz Ernst Schütte

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Franz Ernst Schütte (around 1900)
Discharge bust in the Bremer Bürgerpark

Franz Ernst Schütte (born November 21, 1836 in Bremen , † February 11, 1911 in Bremen) was a German merchant and oil importer and an important patron of the city of Bremen.

biography

Education and Entrepreneur

Schütte learned the commercial profession at the tobacco company Lüttge und Horst. During a subsequent stay in the United States , he continued his education. After his return in 1862, he and his younger brother Carl (1839–1917) took over his father's trading company Albt. Nic. Schütte & Son in Bremen. The company was mainly involved in the tobacco trade and various US imports.

Ascent to the "petroleum king"

In 1859, Pennsylvania oil was first marketed through the house . From 1863/64 the company was increasingly active in the new oil import business and rose to become the most important oil trading company in Germany. The Schütte company worked closely with the important freight forwarder Wilhelm Anton Riedemann . From the mid-1880s, ship transport using barrels prevailed and in 1886 the first tanker steamer crossed the Atlantic for the company.

In 1890 the Schütte brothers, Wilhelm Anton Riedemann and the Standard Oil Company from the Rockefeller Group founded the German-American Petroleum Society (DAPG) in Bremen, later Esso AG (today Esso Deutschland GmbH). The DAPG worked closely with the Società Italo-Americana pel Petrolio (SIAP), later Esso Italiana, and founded the Petroleum Import Compagnie (PICO), later Esso (Switzerland) AG , with them in 1894 .

Volcanic foundation

In 1893 Schütte bought the shipyard in Vegesack , which Johann Lange had built up from 1805 . This resulted in the company Bremer Vulkan Schiffbau und Maschinenfabrik in Vegesack with the major shareholders Victor Nawatzki as the first general director, the Bremen merchants Schütte and Loose, the Bremen ship owners Bischoff and Wätjen, the ship broker Bunnemann, the director of the Bremen wool combing company Zschörner and the Papenburg shipyard owner Meyer and the Bremen shipyard owner Ulrichs . Schütte was the first chairman of the supervisory board of the aspiring shipyard. The Bremen volcano existed until 1997.

Schütte also found the Bremen-Vegesacker-Heringsfischereigesellschaft , in 1896 with Friedrich Bischoff the steam shipping company Argo AG and - again with Bischoff - in 1902 the fruit trading company, which was also the first chairman of the supervisory board.

further activities

Schütte was a member of the Bremen Chamber of Commerce from 1869 and President of the Chamber from 1876 to 1878 . He devoted himself to transport issues and promoting the expansion of the Mittelland Canal .
Since 1881 he had been the builder of the St. Petri Cathedral in Bremen and sponsor of various construction projects.
From 1876 he was a member of the board and from 1877 to 1911 chairman of the Bürgerparkverein .
Schütte was a member of the Bremen citizenship for twelve years .
In 1874 he became a representative of the Bremen trade and in 1895 a member of the commission of the Imperial Justice Office .

The patron

The construction of the cathedral towers, the interior decoration of the cathedral, the construction of the botanical garden , the public park and the city forest as well as the Kaiser-Friedrich-Monument can be attributed to his financial support .
He suggested the construction of the New Town Hall in 1891 and had an unrealized design drawn up by the cathedral architect Max Salzmann . In 1899 he bought a plot of land from the Senate for 2.5 million marks, but with the stipulation that the city must use this income to build the new administrative building as an extension of the old town hall, which took place from 1909 to 1913.
He commissioned the Bismarck monument , the Rosselenker in the Bremen ramparts and the tower blower fountain near the cathedral. His large donations also served other arts and educational purposes. In 1902 he created the Bremen Schiller Foundation .
The Franz Schütte Foundation , established in 1916 from the estate of the then Bremen “Petroleum King” , now cares for families in need and promotes the training and further education of talented young people.

Schütte was buried in the Riensberg cemetery in Bremen. The entire family grave is about 6 by 6 meters, at the end of which there is a tombstone with a woman (female angel) playing on a bouzouki . In this stone his name in the form Franz Ernst Sch ve tte (: grave situation 117/237 V, coordinates ' "35.9 53 ° 5  N , 8 ° 51' 36.8"  O ).

Honors

Noah's Ark by Peter Fuchs. Second person from the right is Franz Schütte, to the left is Max Salzmann.
  • In 1901 he received the Bremen Medal of Honor in gold .
  • He was immortalized twice at Bremen Cathedral together with cathedral builder Max Salzmann , although neither of them expressly wanted it:
    • In the door of the north tower there is the relief Noah's Ark by the artist Peter Fuchs . The second person from the right with a wallet and a hammer in their hands is Franz Schütte. To the right of him is the artist himself and to the left is Max Salzmann, holding a compass in his hand.
    • On the south side of the north tower at the height of the top windows is a bust of Franz Schütte. Opposite him, on the north side of the south tower, is a bust of Max Salzmann. The plaster models for these sandstone busts were made in 1894.
  • In the trading hall of the Bremen Stock Exchange , a relief tondo was installed during his lifetime.
  • As presumably also the previous relief, a tondo signed by Adolf von Hildebrand with his monogram (cast bronze, 49 cm diameter, St. Petri cathedral parish) with the profile head of Schütte goes back to the same model.
  • In 1913, merchants from Bremen donated a monument in the form of a bust in the Bürgerpark. The original created by Adolf von Hildebrand is in the Kunsthalle Bremen .
  • In the district Oberneuland is Franz-Schütte-Allee named after him.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Erika Thies: The Petroleum King . In: Weser-Kurier , February 11, 2011, p. 9.
  2. ↑ Andreas Calic: On the edge in the middle: From the three town halls to the English park . In: StattReisen Bremen eV (ed.): Bremen - tours through history , p. 24f. Sutton Verlag , Erfurt 2008, ISBN 978-3-86680-330-5 .
  3. ↑ Margarethe Haberecht and Georg Skalecki. ZeitSchichten: The restoration of Bremen Cathedral. In: Denkmalpflege in Bremen, issue 3, 2006, p. 19

Web links

Commons : Franz Ernst Schütte  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Schütte, Franz Ernst
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schütte, Franz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German merchant and oil importer
DATE OF BIRTH November 21, 1836
PLACE OF BIRTH Bremen
DATE OF DEATH February 11, 1911
Place of death Bremen