Günther von Bültzingslöwen

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Günther von Bültzingslöwen, after 1877

Günther von Bültzingslöwen (born November 24, 1839 in Lübeck , † August 21, 1889 in Berlin ) was a German merchant, delegate of the Red Cross, (honorary) officer of the Dutch Indian Army , consul of the North German Confederation and then of the German Empire in Surabaya and, after his return to Germany, landlord at Biesdorf Castle .

Live and act

Von Bültzingslöwen comes from a family of officers, the Thuringian noble family Bültzingslöwen . His father Ferdinand von Bültzingslöwen (1808-1882) was Lieutenant Colonel and City Commandant of Lübeck. On October 18, 1838 in Plön, he had Emilie Dorothea Sophie, b. Long married. Günther von Bültzingslöwen visited the Katharineum there , but left the tertia in 1856 at the age of 16 to become a merchant. He started an apprenticeship in Hamburg and left Germany at the age of 19 to go to the Dutch East Indies .

After landing in Batavia he founded his own company in Surabaya in 1868 . By growing and trading coffee and sugar cane , he quickly made a considerable fortune. He was appointed consul of the North German Confederation and later of the German Empire in Surabaya and was also consular agent of the United States . In 1870 he temporarily returned to Germany. During the Franco-Prussian War , his brother Henry (born May 12, 1848 in Lübeck), whom he had financially enabled to become an officer, fell as a second lieutenant in the Oldenburg Infantry Regiment No. 91 at the Battle of Mars-la-Tour on May 16 August 1870. Günther von Bültzingslöwen joined the Red Cross and got as far as Paris. In the autumn of 1871 he returned to Surabaya and mainly expanded the sugar business.

As a Red Cross delegate in Aceh 1873/74

In 1873 in Bogor he asked the politician Henry David Levyssohn Norman to let him take part in the Second Expedition to Aceh , either as an officer or as a Red Cross delegate. He became a delegate of the Red Cross, accompanied the expeditionary force and looked after the wounded. On January 23, 1873 he discovered during a reconnaissance that the long besieged Kraton was deserted. His news enabled the Dutch to take this strategically important place the next day. After his return in May 1874, he was appointed the first flankeur ( flank man , scout, spy ) of the Indian Army and received the Military Wilhelms Order, 4th class.

Günther von Bültzingslöwen's grave in the Old Annenfriedhof in Dresden

Weakened by a chronic fever that he contracted during the Aceh expedition, he temporarily returned to Germany in 1875 and lived with his family, who had since moved to Dresden. He was received by Kaiser Wilhelm in Berlin and awarded the 3rd Class Crown Order on the black and white ribbon of the Iron Cross . He received the Order of St. Michael 3rd Class from the Bavarian King . In 1877 he was made an honorary knight and in 1888 a legal knight of the Order of St. John .

In August 1876 he returned to Surabaya. He received a silver honorary gift from the Indian Army, settled near his sugar factory and headed the local militia ( Schutterrij ) as a lieutenant colonel.

In December 1883 he was forced to travel to Europe to see his mother, who was seriously ill - his father had died the year before. He was not supposed to return to Asia, but commuted back and forth between Dresden, Berlin and the Netherlands. In 1887 he bought Gut und Schloss Biesdorf near Berlin, but suffered great losses during the sugar crisis. Werner von Siemens , who had been associated with him since his school days, had learned field measurements from his father and had been recommended by him for Prussian engineering, gave him a loan and finally took over the property.

Günther von Bültzingslöwen died of a heart attack in a train station in Berlin. He was buried in the family crypt on the Old Annenfriedhof in Dresden. His sister Mathilde von Bültzingslöwen (1852–1926) was the mother of the painter Paula Modersohn-Becker .

Afterlife

Monument in Surabaya

From Surabaya in 1876/77 he had shipped reptiles, conchylia and corals as well as several hundred bird hides from Celebes and other islands of the Malay Archipelago to Lübeck, which became part of the collection of the Lübeck Museum at the cathedral . The then conservator Heinrich Lenz described the birds in the Journal of Ornithology in 1877 . In 1884, the Natural History Museum in Leiden received rare specimens from the bird life of East Java from him .

On November 27, 1892, a monument to Günther von Bültzingslöwen was unveiled in Surabaya with great sympathy. The approximately four meter high obelisk made of brown granite is adorned with the metal profile picture of Günther von Bültzingslöwen. The front of the cube-shaped base shows in a bas-relief of Bültzings lions as Red Cross helpers, supporting a wounded Dutch-Indian warrior.

literature

  • Egbert Broer Kielstra: Description of the Atjeh-oorlog. De gebroeders van Cleef, The Hague 1883.
  • HD Levyssohn Norman: De eerst flankeur van het Indian casual. In: Eigen Haard. 1889, pp. 199-202.

Web links

Commons : Günther von Bültzingslöwen  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ School program of the Katharineum from March 1856, p. 67 ( digitized version )
  2. ↑ s: Appointment as German Federal Consuls. 11 September 1868
  3. ↑ s: Appointment to German consuls. 18 November 1871
  4. ↑ Official congressional directory 1872, p. 106.
  5. ^ Friedrich Wilhelm von Varchmin: Walhalla: Germany's victims from the campaigns of 1870 and 1871. Erfurt 1872, p. 37.
  6. ^ Henry David Levyssohn Norman in the Dutch Wikipedia
  7. ^ Reports from Her Majesty's consuls on the manufactures, commerce, & c. of their consular districts. 19 (1876), p. 1446.
  8. ↑ Order of St. John Journal 18 (1877), S. 167th
  9. ↑ Order of St. John Journal of Official Monthly Journal of the Bailey Brandenburg 30 (1889), p 227
  10. ↑ Werner von Siemens: Memoirs
  11. ^ Biesdorf Castle: History
  12. ^ H. Lenz: Mitheilungen über Malayischen birds. In: Journal für Ornithologie 25 (1877), pp. 359-382.
  13. ^ Notes from the Leyden Museum. 14 (1892), p. 271 (digitized version)
  14. ↑ Das Echo: Wochenschrift für Politik, Litteratur, Kunst und Wissenschaft of February 9, 1893, p. 183.
personal data
SURNAME Bültzingslöwen, Günther von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bültzingslöwen, Günther Baron von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German merchant, consul and landlord
DATE OF BIRTH November 24, 1839
PLACE OF BIRTH Lübeck
DATE OF DEATH August 21, 1889
Place of death Berlin