Friedrich von Westenholz

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Friedrich Westenholz , completely Carl Friedrich Ludwig Westenholz , from 1866 von Westenholz , from 1869 Freiherr von Westenholz (born May 27, 1825 in Breslau , † October 19, 1898 in Hamburg ) was a German merchant, banker and Austrian-Hungarian envoy to the Hanseatic cities .

Life

Carl Friedrich Ludwig Westenholz came from a north German family of musicians. He was a great-grandson of Ludwigslust court conductor Carl August Friedrich Westenholz (1736–1789) and his first wife, the singer Lucietta Affabili (1725–1776). His father Friedrich Ludwig Westenholz (1787–1873), son of the cellist Carl Friedrich Westenholz (1756–1802), however, had become a merchant in Gothenburg , London and Vienna , invested in mining and metallurgy, and in 1835 became agent of the Free City of Krakow in Vienna, temporarily acquired Wolfsberg (Carinthia) in 1841 , Waldenstein Castle in 1842 and the Dombrowa coal mine near Chrzanów in Galicia in 1848 . His mother was Louise Friederike, née Kuh (1800–1849) from a Jewish merchant family in Wroclaw who converted to Christianity in 1804. His sister Auguste (1823–1889) married the British banker and bibliophile Henry Huth (1815–1878).

After years of apprenticeship and traveling, Friedrich Westenholz settled down as a merchant in Hamburg at the end of the 1840s, where he ran the banking and wholesale company Friedrich Westenholz & Comp. built up. In the founding years he participated in a number of bank foundations in Hamburg, Berlin and London. During this time his company was one of the "top addresses for Hamburg's stock and private banks".

Westenholz was culturally and socially engaged in a variety of ways. He was a co-founder and sponsor of the Hamburger Kunstfreunde association . In 1892 he donated a Brahms bust by Victor Tilgner to the Hamburger Kunsthalle . He donated works by Anton Scharff to set up the medal cabinet . The paintings that the Kunsthalle received with his help include Adolph von Menzel's gala evening in the Berlin Opera House and Nymphenbad , Arnold Böcklin's Feueranbeter ( Heiliger Hain ) and Ernest Meissonier's Reiters Rast . In 1870 he was a co-founder and first director of the pension institution of the Hamburg Thalia Theater .

His residential and commercial building was at Glockengießerwall 14, later 9, in summer Pöseldorf , Sophienterrasse 14 . Arnold Böcklin's second version of Faun whistling to a blackbird , which his heirs sold to the Lower Saxony State Museum in 1919, was part of his own collection of paintings .

diplomacy

In 1849, Westenholz succeeded his brother-in-law Henry Huth as the Spanish vice consul and the managing Spanish envoy to the Hanseatic cities. After Ernst Merck's death in 1863, he was his successor as the Austro-Hungarian Consul General for the Hanseatic cities. His first major diplomatic task was to work with the Prussian ambassador Emil von Richthofen immediately before and during the German-Danish War of 1864. As a result of the Prussian-Austrian War of 1866, Friedrich von Westenholz gave up his citizenship in Hamburg and acquired for himself and his descendants 1867 the citizenship of St. Gallen in Switzerland . Although not a professional diplomat, in 1869 he was entrusted with the business of the Austro-Hungarian ambassador to the Free and Hanseatic Cities based in Hamburg.

Marriages and offspring

He was married to Clara Elisabeth, née Ertel (1829–1871), from 1849. This marriage had three sons: Carl Friedrich (1853–1908), partner in the company JM Miller & Co. in Vienna, married to Mathilde, geb. von Miller (1860–1938), a daughter of the industrialist Vinzenz von Miller zu Aichholz , August Henry (1855–1926), banker in Hamburg and chairman of the Hamburger Kunstfreunde , and Friedrich Paul , librarian and professor at the Technical University of Stuttgart (1859– 1919).

His second marriage was in 1872 with Julie Antonie Louise, née Hayn (1849–1916), daughter of Hamburg's Senator and Mayor Max Theodor Hayn (1809–1888). The couple had a daughter, Mathilde (1872-1940), and the youngest son Albert Wilhelm (1879-1939). He studied at Harvard University , became a private scholar and author. He was friends with George Santayana and died by suicide in August 1939.

Awards

literature

  • Mr. Carl Friedrich Freiherr von Westenholz † , in: Annual report of the Kunsthalle zu Hamburg for 1898. Hamburg 1899, pp. 17-19 ( digitized version ).
  • Caroline de Westenholz, From Castles to Casino's. The Von Westenholz Family. Amsterdam 2017

Web links

Finding aid

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Jacob Jacobson: Jewish weddings in Berlin 1759 to 1813: With additions for the years 1723-1759 (= publications of the Historical Commission in Berlin 28) Berlin: de Gruyter, Berlin 2011, ISBN 9783110829877 , p. 345.
  2. ↑ Carsten Burhop : The credit banks in the early days (= series of publications by the Institute for Bank History Research 21). Steiner, Steiner 2004, ISBN 978-3-515-08413-0 , p. 101.
  3. ↑ Otto Biba: "- I speak in my tones": for Johannes Brahms, 1833-1897. [Catalog ... on the occasion of the exhibition ... in the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg, September 5th-2nd November 1997], p. 60.
  4. ↑ Deutsches Bühnen-Jahrbuch 11, 1900, p. 150.
  5. ↑ Hamburg address book. 1878, p. 369.
  6. ↑ Hamburg State Archive: 622-1 / 110 Westenholz .
  7. ^ Fridrich Dieth-Locher: Citizens' Register of the City of St. Gallen: completed on December 31, 1886. Huber & Cie., St. Gallen 1887, p. 441f.
  8. ^ Genealogical paperback of the noble houses of Austria. 1906/07, p. 272.
  9. ↑ Family information mainly based on Gothaisches genealogical pocket book of baronial houses. 34 (1883), p. 967 .
  10. ↑ Order according to the Court and State Manual of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy 1892, p. 199.
personal data
SURNAME Westenholz, Friedrich von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Westenholz, Friedrich; Westenholz, Carl Friedrich Ludwig von; Westenholz, Friedrich Freiherr von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German merchant, banker and Austrian-Hungarian envoy to the Hanseatic cities
DATE OF BIRTH May 27, 1825
PLACE OF BIRTH Wroclaw
DATE OF DEATH October 19, 1898
Place of death Hamburg