Friedrich Wilhelm Krause

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Friedrich Wilhelm Krause (born March 9, 1765 in Stecklin , Greifenhagen district , † December 23, 1840 in Kolbatz , Greifenhagen district) was a German merchant and shipowner .

Friedrich Wilhelm Krause

From apprentice businessman to shipowner

After Friedrich Wilhelm Krause's parents - his father, Gottfried Krause, had been a forester, his mother was a daughter of the Stettin merchant Bueck - died early, he was brought up in Stettin by his grandmother. After attending secondary school, in 1782 he started an apprenticeship with relatives in Wollin . Before January 1785 he worked temporarily in Berlin. He was then registered as a merchant in Stettin, and in February 1785 as a merchant in Swinoujscie , where his uncle Gehring, a city senator, had been a successful merchant since 1765.

In 1795 France , Great Britain and the Netherlands were at war, while the Prussian merchant ships sailing under the neutral flag were free to sail. Prussian seagoing ships were increasingly involved in the movement of goods between ports on the American continent and Asia, so that Prussian sea trade experienced an upswing. The ships transported tea, coffee, spices, rum and other colonial goods , brought wood (especially staves for the construction of barrels) to Spain and France and returned from there laden with red wine. At that time, large parts of Germany and Eastern Europe were supplied with colonial goods via Stettin. Since insufficient water depth, the Swine and the Szczecin Lagoon made for large ships impassable, Swinoujscie with its appropriate port for major transit point for these goods was. The large seagoing ships called at the port of Swinoujscie in order to be evacuated from there to Stettin. For the transport of goods from Świnoujście to Szczecin, light ships with shallow drafts were used. Krause has been involved in this freight traffic with light ships since 1785 with the Gehring & Krause company, of which he was a co-owner. He thus laid the foundation for his later considerable fortune.

When Gehring left the company in 1791, Krause became the sole owner of the company. Initially, he cautiously acted as a joint shipowner in Szczecin companies, and from 1800 onwards as an owner ship owner. Shipowners who, like him, were able to pay cash and have the ships sailed on their own account, could earn money from the brisk trade in goods in three ways: by purchasing, transporting and selling. In 1800 his first ocean-going ship, the Hope , was launched in Swinoujscie. In 1805 he already had 19 new ships of his own with a total value of around 270,000 thalers; most of them had been built in his own shipyard. His share in the Pomeranian shipping was a little over 12%, and he had become the largest independent shipowner in the Prussian province of Pomerania . As early as 1803, Krause stated that his annual income was 7,000 thalers. For comparison: a senior civil servant had an annual income of around 500 thalers.

Senator in Swinoujscie

Due to his drive, his entrepreneurial success, his organizational talent and the prosperity he had achieved, Krause enjoyed a high reputation among the Swinoujscie citizens. In 1790 he became 'First Senator'. Even before the war between France and Prussia, he was appointed to the Council of Commerce . He is described as an energetic man of action, with less inclination to deal with administrative acts. Because of his assertiveness and his above-average organizational skills, the government gave him the election of the city council and magistrate in Usedom as early as 1809 and later the election of the district administrator of Usedom-Wollin, tasks that he completed satisfactorily in a few weeks.

Setbacks from the Napoleonic Wars

The war year 1805 brought him a financial setback: Krause's ships Dorothea , Friedrich Wilhelm , Eduard and Herkules were loaded with red wine in the port of Bordeaux in autumn 1805 and were prevented from leaving by English warships. When war threatened Prussia in the spring of 1806, he sold the ships and their cargo for 50,000 thalers to the shipowner Meffke in neutral Varel . When war broke out in September, the ships were confiscated by France anyway. Krause put the resulting loss after 1813 at 60,000 thalers. He was refused a claim for damages because he was unable to provide the necessary documents. Other ships were also lost, so that 1806 was very lossy for him. Between 1807 and 1811 other shipments and freighters were lost. In 1837, when he was in financial difficulties at an advanced age, he summed up that the total damage caused to him by the war had amounted to 182,000 thalers.

Patriot willing to sacrifice during the French period

During the war between France and Prussia, FW Krause distinguished himself as a Prussian patriot. When Prussian soldiers in a company could not be paid wages, he stepped in as a lender or as a guarantor for loans. When the news reached him in 1806 that a war chest carried by the Prussian Corps Hohenlohe had got stuck near Wollin , he took the risk and immediately traveled to Wollin to have the war chest and supplies intended for the army loaded onto one of his ships and then to To bring Gdansk to safety. During the siege of Kolberg in 1807 , Krause repeatedly played rifles and ammunition into the hands of the besieged. He once staffed 20 foot soldiers on his own account and took over their pay for a year. In Swinoujscie he had occasionally ensured that around 60 to 80 captured Prussian soldiers were able to free themselves at night.

Large landowners

Despite the continental blockade imposed by Napoleon I on British sea trade, Krause knew how to maintain trade in colonial goods, including with England. On the Pomeranian coast, he and other shipping companies participated in a lively, dangerous but profitable surreptitious trade through which he was able to make up for the losses he had previously suffered. Krause made a considerable fortune in these years. When numerous Prussian domains had to be sold in 1811, he took over the sandy Zinnowitz domain, comprising 18,000 acres, for 14,300 thalers . When he could not find a tenant, he sold it on June 11, 1818, divided into 29 parcels, for 18,000 thalers to 29 colonists and fishermen. Thirty years later these made Zinnowitz the famous seaside resort.

In July 1812 he granted a mortgage of 69,000 thalers to the large, beautifully situated Kolbatz domain in the Greifenhagen district, which a childhood friend of Krause's childhood friend, Gaede, had bought, and in September 1815 another 31,000 thalers. In the next year, this domain with the secondary estates Hofdamm and Heidchen passed into his possession for 155,000 thalers. At a time when there was a general lack of money, Krause paid these sums in cash.

Honors by the Prussian state

For his use in the fight against the occupation of Prussia under Napoleon I. Krause received from Friedrich Wilhelm III. after the end of the war the Golden Military Merit Cross and the Iron Cross on a white ribbon ; he was also given the title of Privy Councilor of Commerce .

Since being awarded the title of privy councilor, Krause has now enjoyed the reputation of a 'royal merchant'. He had reached the zenith of his social career and the second phase of his life began.

At the heart of society

Krause's wife, a daughter of the merchant Wittscheibe in Wollin, had given him 15 children in 26 years of marriage, eight of which survived him. These were taught and educated by private tutors, u. a. by Jacob Martin Philippi . He had gradually left the Swinemünde trading company to his sons Friedrich Wilhelm and Eduard. He himself used to live on his Kolbatz estate from spring to late autumn , where he became a social center in a wide area and, as the 'King of Swinoujscie', invited people to hunting parties and other events.

On June 14 and 15, 1820, he had an elaborate and sensational 'reunification festival of academic contemporaries (of the University of Halle ) from Easter 1792 to then 1799' held at Kolbatz , at which he appeared as prorector of the University of Halle.

He was also a popular host in Swinoujscie. He always kept guest rooms ready in his house for princes, ministers and officers who were traveling to or returning from Russia. When Friedrich Wilhelm III. made his first trip through Western Pomerania in 1820, he spent the night in Krause's spacious Swinemünde domicile. The nobility of the property impressed the geographer Heinrich Berghaus , who was a guest there in 1830, to such an extent that he called Krause “Croesus from Pomerania”.

Less entrepreneurial success of the sons

In the early 1820s, Krause's son Friedrich Wilhelm took over the business in Swinoujscie. About ten years later, the younger son Eduard Krause started his own business. Both sons were less careful with the property entrusted to them and made losses for which the father then had to pay. Even Krause's sons in Kolbatz, Hofdamm and Heidchen did not understand how to increase the fortune left to them. Both Karl Krause, who had been managing Kolbatz since 1820, and Robert Krause, who later received Hofdamm, lived beyond their means and went into debt. From 1832 he got increasingly into financial distress.

As early as the summer of 1830, FW Krause had agreed to the Stettiner Ritterschaftliche Privatbank as an absolute guarantor to take on all of his sons' debts without setting a maximum credit limit. His daughters are likely to have taken offense, because in 1832 200,000 thalers were registered as maternal inheritance for all children on the property in Kolbatz. Formally, the Kolbatz domain passed into the possession of the Krause's children, who, however, left the unrestricted administration.

In the spring of 1834 the 'King of Swinoujscie' got into severe financial distress. To save his eldest son, the Gothaische Lebensversicherung had to take out a loan of 50,000 thalers on his Kolbatzer property, and in June 1836 another 82,000 thalers. In addition, the debt at the Ritterschaftliche Privatbank in Stettin added up to 70,000 thalers, so that the total debt amounted to around 200,000 thalers. His sons Friedrich Wilhelm and Eduard had run away from this enormous sum of money. Krause's attempt at rescue failed, and in the autumn of 1836 he was insolvent in Swinoujscie.

Although the value of his Kolbatzer property was officially estimated at 540,000 thalers in 1833, the bank interest rates were so high that further borrowing was out of the question. In a time of general money shortage, there was no buyer to be found who could have raised such a large sum. Krause therefore turned to the Prussian king with a petition. After lengthy negotiations, the Prussian treasury finally bought Krause's domain in Kolbatz for 300,000 thalers in a kind of 'act of grace', in which Krause's services to the Prussian state were taken into account. Subsequently, the domain was made available to Karl Krause for an annual lease of 12,000 thalers. In 1843 the formal contract was signed.

Towards the end of life

At the end of his life, struggling with fate because of the loss of a large part of his fortune, Krause died on December 22, 1840 at the age of 75 in Kolbatz, where his grave is also located. During the last years of his life his son Ferdinand, counselor in Stettin, stood by his side.

Contemporaries described Krause as slim, gaunt in old age, blond and blue-eyed, with a narrow face, a sharp nose and a full head of hair. Theodor Fontane , who had met the shipowner personally a few years earlier, was impressed by the “masculinity” of his appearance. He wrote about him: "Despite his almost seventy years, he was still in splendid shape, so I can say that I have not met anyone in my life who would have illustrated the dominant figures of the 18th century as he did."

Two years before his death, the patriarch Friedrich Wilhelm Krause had given the number of his living descendants (children and grandchildren) as 26.

reception

The life of Friedrich Wilhelm Krause was the subject of two novels by the Swinemünde rector and chronicler Robert Burkhardt .

  • The King of Swinoujscie. A homeland novel. W. Fritzsche, Swinemünde 1928
  • Happiness and end of the King of Swinoujscie. W. Fritzsche, Swinemünde 1931

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ At that time the companies Schröder (Braunschweig's heirs) as well as Plüddemann and Burmeister in Kolberg , Bahn and Riensburg in Rügenwalde and especially Johann Friedrich Homeyer in Wolgast were similarly successful ; The big Szczecin companies such as Salingré, Velthusen and Sanne had a hard time fighting.
  2. ↑ The contract of sale was signed on September 16, 1811, and it was released in the land register on August 7, 1812.
  3. ↑ Author and a. of the nine-volume work Landbuch des Herzogtums Pommern , Wriezen 1862-1877.
  4. ^ Hellmut Hannes :  Robert Burkhardt (1874–1954) . In: Society for Pomeranian History and Archeology (Hrsg): Baltic studies . New series vol. 78, NG Elwert, Marburg 1992, pp. 99-109 ( digitized version ).
personal data
SURNAME Krause, Friedrich Wilhelm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German merchant and shipowner
DATE OF BIRTH March 9, 1765
PLACE OF BIRTH Stecklin , Greifenhagen district
DATE OF DEATH December 23, 1840
Place of death Kolbatz , Greifenhagen district