Friedrich von Romberg

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Johann Bernhard Friedrich Romberg (from 1784 von Romberg) (born August 5, 1729 in Hemer , † 1819 in Brussels ) was a transport company, banker , manufacturer and shipowner . Last but not least, he was active in the transatlantic slave trade.

Life

family

His father Johann Bernhard Romberg was a wood judge in Sundwig . According to some authors, this Johann Bernhard Romberg was a recognized illegitimate son (" bâtard ") of Freiherr Friedrich-Wienhold von Romberg zu Edelburg-Bredenol-Fronsberg († 1727 in Hemer). Allegedly, according to contemporary information, Johann Bernhard lived to be 105 years old and died on January 24, 1779. Friedrich's brother Karl also held the office of wood judge. The mother was Elisabeth (née Habich, from Schwerte ) died in Hemer on June 16, 1781.

Friedrich von Romberg himself married Sophie von Huyssen on July 1, 1759 in Brussels. She was born on October 27, 1735 in Hessen and died on March 15, 1785 in Brussels. She was a daughter of Freiherr Heinrich von Huyssen and his wife Maria-Christina (née von Aussem). He married Marie-Thérèse Buot on the 7th prairial of year VII of the French revolutionary calendar (1799).

The first marriage had five children. Among them was François-Frédéric Baron de Romberg. He was born in Löwen on January 17, 1760, married on June 21, 1786 in Machelen Sint-Gertrudis Joanna-Maria Plasschaert and died on July 10, 1809 in Enns .

Economic rise

Romberg completed a commercial training at the wholesale company Kissing in Iserlohn and continued this at the Schüle company in Augsburg. He lived in Brussels from 1756. At the beginning he mainly dealt with textiles from Silesia and Saxony. He worked with his brother on this.

Later he became more active as a transport company and was very successful as such. He was also particularly involved in the transport business between the Austrian Netherlands and Vienna . But he also had business relationships in various regions of the Old Kingdom , in Switzerland and Italy . Romberg had excellent relations with the Brussels-based ministers of the Austrian administration. Therefore, he received favorable tariffs for the transit route he operated between Ostend and Naples with branches in Leuven , Nancy and Lindau . Around 1780 his transport company used up to 200 horses as draft animals. During the American War of Independence Romberg also began to get involved as a shipowner. He let his ships sail from Ostend under the neutral imperial flag. On the occasion of a visit by Emperor Joseph II. In 1781 Romberg was able to point out a fleet of 94 ships. In particular, he supplied the French shipyards in Brest and Cherbourg with 3000 masts and numerous other materials for shipbuilding. In 1779 he donated considerable sums for the necessary reconstruction of Hemer after a fire and organized a fundraising in Brussels for the benefit of his hometown. A street in Hemer was named after him, probably for these services.

Business expansion

He then expanded his business activities to various business areas and locations. In Ostend there was the company Frederick Romberg fils & Ricour run by his eldest son Frederick . In Bruges he ran a marine insurance. In Ghent , the company Romberg & Cie . This specialized in the slave trade from Africa to Santo Domingo and Cuba . In Brussels there was a textile production run by the younger son Henry. This mainly produced for the slave business. In his home region, Friedrich Romberg, together with his brother and Johann Theodor Lürmann, played a key role in founding and operating the textile bleaching facility in Stephanopel . Romberg & Cie purchased yarn and wool from the Iserlohn trading company Rupe in the 1780s and also worked for them as a transport company. Romberg, with good connections to the manager in Hainaut and the court in Vienna, also worked as a banker. Between 1782 and 1785 he delivered numerous silver pesos and bars to the Mint in Brussels. In 1784 he was appointed Imperial Knight by Joseph II.

Engagement in the slave trade

Relief on the lintel of the office / mansion in Stephanopel

Together with the banking house of the Walckiers brothers from Brussels and his former employee Georg Christoph Bapst, Friedrich Romberg founded the Romberg, Bapts & Cie company in Bordeaux for the slave trade in 1783 . The operative business was essentially taken over by Henry Romberg and Bapst. After the death of young Romberg it was in the hands of Bapst. The initial capital was 600,000 livres. This was significantly more than the corresponding company in Nantes, which is also heavily involved in the slave business .

Due to the boom in the West Indian plantation economy, the company rose to become the largest slave trading company in Bordeaux within a few years. By 1791 the company had sent out at least a dozen slave ships. Between 1787 and 1789 alone, it fitted out seven ships, making it the fourth largest shipping company in Bordeaux. The captains of the ships bought around 300 slaves each on the coast of what is now Mozambique . These were then sold in the Caribbean . On the lintel above the main entrance of the office building in Stephanopel, a relief can be seen showing ships circling the Cape of Good Hope on their way to America. In addition, there was a direct economic commitment in the Caribbean itself. The company Romberg, Bapts & Cie managed around 20 plantations for indigo and cotton in Santo Domingo until 1790. Some of them were also available for purchase. She also supplied the islands with European goods and brought the products from the plantations to Europe, some of which were processed by the family's own textile companies.

By the beginning of the 1790s, the number of partners rose to 21. The capital was the then extraordinarily high sum of 2.2 million livres. The contribution of 200,000 livre came from Johann Jakob Bethmann . The company collapsed during the French Revolution and the Haiti Revolution in 1793. However, there had been economic difficulties before, as the plantation owners often did not deliver the agreed amount of goods to pay the slaves. Associated with this was a shock to the financial markets. The Bethmann banking family, for example, lost capital worth over a million livres. Romberg was able to save a considerable fortune when the company collapsed. He invested this capital in the purchase of estates and houses in Paris that had formerly belonged to the nobles or the church.

Autobiography

Romberg wrote an autobiography in French ( Mémoire des faits de Frédéric de Romberg , Brussels, December 1810). The manuscript is kept in the Belgian royal library in Brussels.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ partly his title is given as imperial knight, partly as baron. According to the New General German Adelslexikon, the elevation to the nobility took place in 1783, the baron diploma followed in 1784 because of new factories. Ernst Heinrich Kneschke: New General German Adelslexikon. Vol. 7. Leipzig, 1867 p. 566.
  2. ^ A. Ebbinghausen, "Sundwig, residence of the Rombergs in the 18th century", in: Der Schlüssel , Heimatzeitschrift für Hemer, 1976, p. 88.
  3. ↑ Claude Anspach, "Frédéric baron de Romberg. Seigneur de Machelen Sainte-Gertrude 1729-1819", in: Le Parchemin , n ° 291, Brussels, 1994, p. 179: " L'intérêt qu'il [= Friedrich-Wienhold from Romberg to Edelburg-Bredenol-Fronsberg] marque pour Johann [Bernhard] Romberg, Holzrichter à Hemer (1674-1779) et sa descendance (jouissance d'un moulin, parrainage religieux), font supposer que celui-ci [Johann Bernhard] était un bâtard de Friedrich-Wienold ". Friedrich von Romberg called the two generals Johann Friedrich Wilhelm Moritz von Romberg and Friedrich Gisbert Wilhelm von Romberg his "cousins". (Anspach, op. Cit. , P. 179). And: " Dans une lettre que son cousin Gisbert, général Freiherr von Romberg zu Bruninghausen, lui adresse peu de temps avant sa mort, celui-ci rappelle l'intervention que Frédéric fit en sa faveur auprès du roi de Prusse et l'en remercie encore "(Anspach, op. cit. , p. 177).
  4. ^ Gazette van Antwerpen (newspaper), February 12, 1779.
  5. ↑ Claude Anspach, "Frédéric baron de Romberg. Seigneur de Machelen Sainte-Gertrude 1729-1819", in: Le Parchemin , n ° 291, Brussels, 1994, pp. 161-181.
  6. ↑ Claude Anspach, op. Cit. , Pp. 166-167.
  7. ↑ cf. Wilfried Reininghaus: Johann Theodor Lürmann and the bleaching of yarn from Stephanopel near Hemer. Mercantilism, Merchants, and Local Rivalries in the 18th Century. In: Der Märker 41/1992 issue 4 p. 152.
  8. ↑ In detail: Wilfried Reininghaus: Johann Theodor Lürmann and the bleaching of yarn from Stephanopel near Hemer. Mercantilism, Merchants, and Local Rivalries in the 18th Century. In: Der Märker 41/1992 Issue 4 pp. 147-182.
  9. ^ Brussels royal library manuscript G 2077 .

literature

  • German Biographical Encyclopedia , Vol. 8, Munich 2007, p. 515.
  • Klaus Weber : German merchants in the Atlantic trade 1680–1830. Companies and families in Hamburg, Cádiz and Bordeaux . Munich 2004, ISBN 3-406-51860-5 , p. 195 ff.
  • Mark Häberlein: German Communities in 18th-Century Europe and North America . In: European migrants, diaspora and indigenous ethnic minorities. Pisa 2009, p. 24.
  • Jochen Meissner / Ulrich Mücke / Klaus Weber: Black America. A history of slavery . Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-406-56225-9 , p. 94 f.
  • Friedhelm Groth: House Stephanopel. Funder Friedrich von Romberg and the international slave trade. What the eye-catching half-relief on Stephanopel 61 has to say . In: Der Schlüssel 1/2015, pp. 2-19.
  • A. Ebbinghausen: Sundwig, residence of the Rombergs in the 18th century , in: Der Schlüssel , home magazine for Hemer, 1976.
  • Richard Althaus: Romberg, a Sauerland adventure ... (not published)
  • Derival: Le voyageur dans les Pays-Bas Austria . 1783, Volume IV, p. 104.
  • Claude Anspach: Frédéric baron de Romberg. Seigneur de Machelen Sainte-Gertrude 1729-1819 , in: Le Parchemin , n ° 291, Brussels, 1994, pp. 161-181.

See also

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Romberg, Friedrich von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Romberg, Friedrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Entrepreneur, shipowner and banker
DATE OF BIRTH around 1726
PLACE OF BIRTH Sundwig
DATE OF DEATH 1819
Place of death Brussels