Georg Blohm (businessman)

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Georg Blohm (born November 9, 1801 in Lübeck ; † March 6, 1878 ibid) was a Lübeck merchant, patron and philanthropist of the 19th century.

origin

Georg Blohm was born as the son of the later Lübeck postmaster of the same name. His grandfather Georg Blohm was Lübeck's mayor at the end of the 18th century . The Blohm family, recorded in Lübeck since 1619, was impaired in their perspective by the economic hardships of the Lübeck French era and their consequences.

Emigration to Central America

The young Georg Blohm therefore saw no realistic possibilities for his own existence in the trading town on the Baltic Sea and emigrated in 1825 to Saint Thomas , a then still Danish island of the Virgin Islands in the Caribbean . The Danish West Indies were not yet free from pirates at the time , but they were a thriving trading center. There he married the daughter of the local Danish justice of the peace Ann Margret Lind († 1878). In 1829 they both moved to Venezuela, which had just become independent from Spain . Blohm founded a trading business in La Guaira that was soon extremely successful and later, as a family business, one of the largest in Venezuela. The shipping company Blohm, Nölting & Co even issued its own postage stamps in the mail between La Guaira and Saint Thomas. The success he achieved gave him the opportunity to return to his hometown Lübeck at the age of only 42, in order to ensure that his four sons would attend school properly.

Back in Lübeck

Cathedral Museum from 1892 to 1942 in front of Lübeck Cathedral
Family grave in the Burgtorfriedhof

Blohm acquired a traditional house with a garden at Koenigstrasse 9 in Lübeck . Today it can be viewed as the Drägerhaus of the Behnhaus Museum ; At the end of the Middle Ages it was inhabited in a different architectural form by the then very important mayor of Lübeck, Nikolaus Brömse . The particulier Blohm was involved in Lübeck in the committee of the Lübeck-Büchener railway and in the society for the promotion of charitable activities . When they passed away, the Blohms bequeathed the Hanseatic City of Lübeck the amount of 150,000 gold marks “to promote the prosperity of patrician affairs”, which under Mayor Kulenkamp, along with the interest accrued in the meantime, were used as capital stock for the Museum am Dom , which was completed in 1892 . The building was destroyed in the air raid on Lübeck on March 29, 1942 . The reconstruction now houses the Museum for Nature and Environment and the archive of the Hanseatic City of Lübeck . The Blohms were buried in the Burgtorfriedhof .

Descendants

Manor house in Viecheln

The sons Georg Heinrich (1835–1909) and Ludwig Friedrich (1837–1911) led the trading activities that had begun as co-founders of the company "GHund LFBlohm & Co." in Venezuela and Hamburg , which had been called "Blohm & Co." since 1871, away. Wilhelm Eduard (1840–1915), the third son became landlord on Viecheln (now part of Behren-Lübchin ) in Mecklenburg in 1864 , and the youngest son Hermann Blohm (1848–1930), as a co-founder of the industrial company Blohm & Voss, made a reputable claim from Art His father was skeptical about this plan, but supported the founding of the shipyard with a loan of 500,000 marks.

The subsequent generations of the family Blohm promoted from South America art and culture in northern Germany , the Hamburg Museum of Arts and Crafts with the famous porcelain collection of Otto Blohm, now in neoclassical Blohm room of the museum, in 1912 for the Villa Blohm was created . Blohm's Park in Hamburg-Horn also reminds of the family in Hamburg .

literature

Pincerno - Blohm & Voss 1877.jpg
  • Erich Gercken: The Blohm family from Lübeck. In: The car . 1964, pp. 123-131.
  • Susan Berglund: Mercantile Credit and Financing in Venezuela, 1830–1870. In: Journal of Latin American Studies. Vol. 17, No. November 2, 1985, ISSN  0022-216X , pp. 371-396.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ After the death of Georg Blohm, it was bought by the later mayor of Lübeck, Emil Ferdinand Fehling .
  2. ↑ Critters. In: Places in MV. Archived from the original on October 18, 2008 ; accessed on January 25, 2019 .
  3. ↑ Otto (1870–1944), the youngest son of Georg Heinrich Blohm, married Magdalena Matthes (1879–1952), sister of the painter Matthes from Düsseldorf, in 1899.
    Günter Stiller: Blohm's porcelain jewels. In: Hamburger Abendblatt , June 29, 2005.
personal data
SURNAME Blohm, Georg
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German merchant, patron and philanthropist in Venezuelua and Lübeck
DATE OF BIRTH November 9, 1801
PLACE OF BIRTH Lübeck
DATE OF DEATH March 6, 1878
Place of death Lübeck