Georg Wilhelm Bokelmann

Georg Wilhelm Bokelmann (born July 5, 1779 in Hamburg , † January 21, 1847 in Altona ) was a businessman and Danish diplomat .

Life

He grew up in Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein. His parents were the lawyer Georg Ludwig Bokelmann and Anna Dorothea, née Schmemann. The family owned several Holstein manors one after the other, first Muggesfelde, then Perdoel and finally Kuhlen.

Georg Wilhelm Bokelmann received private tuition in his parents' house until he was thirteen. Then he attended a high school in Altona. After graduating from high school, he began studying economics . He was friends with a son of the Hamburg doctor and naturalist Johann Albert Heinrich Reimarus . His wife Sophie protected Bokelmann and introduced him to the Sieveking family , who also supported him.

On the mediation of David Veit , Bokelmann traveled to Paris in the spring of 1801 at the age of 21, where he stayed for several weeks in the house of Wilhelm and Caroline von Humboldt. At the same time Rahel Levin , who later became Rahel Varnhagen von Ense, was a guest of the Humboldts. A love affair developed between Levin and Bokelmann. Ellen Key reports that the then 30-year-old Rahel Levin, who was still mourning the separation from her (Berlin) bridegroom Count von Finckenstein, is said to have comforted herself “in the arms of the seraphically beautiful young Bokelmann”. Rahel Levin was visited again by Bokelmann in Berlin in 1802.

Wilhelm von Humboldt took Georg Wilhelm Bokelmann on a trip to the Basque Country from April 19 to July 14, 1801. In his letters to his bride, Humboldt describes the journey that took him from Paris to Spain with the young Bokelmann in the traveling car, and notes how the one at every river whose beauty roused Humboldt to delight declared critically: “Quite nice, but she Elbe near Hamburg is something completely different ”.

Georg Wilhelm Bokelmann had a stepsister from his father's first marriage, whose husband - the Hamburg merchant Simon - ran a company in Cadiz. On July 14, 1801, Bokelmann separated from Wilhelm von Humboldt in Bilbao and traveled on to Cadiz, where he stayed, with interruptions, until 1807. There he became a Danish consul . He continued the business of his brother-in-law Simon after he died early.

In Cadiz, Bokelmann met Juan Nicolás Böhl de Faber and the French generals Jean Victor Marie Moreau and Alexandre-Jacques-Bernard Law de Lauriston. In 1804, the French General Moreau was a guest at Bokelmann's house in Cadiz for six months. Moreau was about to emigrate to America. In the Bokelmann house he waited until his steamer finally left for America.

Back in Germany, Bokelmann took part in the autumn of 1808 as the Danish envoy at the Erfurt Prince Congress (meeting of Napoleon I with the Russian Tsar Alexander I and several German princes).

With the support of his friend Johann Georg Rist , at that time the Danish chargé d'affaires in Hamburg, he became the Danish consul in Rostock from 1811 to 1813, until the Swedes occupied the city and the surrounding area. From 1814 to 1836 he was the Danish envoy in Hamburg; initially consul, from 1814 in the rank of legation councilor , from 1823 consul general and from 1828 ministerial resident . As such, he was also accredited in the Hanseatic cities of Bremen and Lübeck. In 1815 he was awarded the knight class of the Danebrog Order , in 1836 the commanders class.

In 1819 Bokelmann married Sophie Sillem (* May 12, 1796, † 1850), the youngest daughter of the banker Hieronymus Sillem (* 1768, † 1833) and his wife Wilhelmine, née Büsch (* 1772, † 1852). His wife was the granddaughter of the pedagogue and publicist Johann Georg Büsch .

In Hamburg and Altona, Bokelmann maintained close and often friendly connections to the Sieveking family , to the businessman and later mayor of Hamburg Christian Daniel Benecke and to the Sillem banking family, to Piter (Peter) Poel , diplomat and publisher of the Altonaer Merkur, to Count Carl von Hessen , Danish governor of the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein, to Conrad Daniel Graf von Blücher , Upper President of Altona, and to the merchant Caspar Baron von Voght. Bokelmann also kept in touch with Wilhelm von Humboldt .

In 1826 Bokelmann acquired the Tremsbüttel hunting lodge (25 km northeast of Hamburg) from Count Stolberg-Stolberg , which he owned until 1836. In 1836 he retired from the Danish service, spent six months in Nice to recover from his health and lived in Altona from 1837. Here Karl August Varnhagen von Ense , Rahel Levin's husband, visited him . Bokelmann died at the age of 67.

One of his sons is Wilhelm Hieronymous Bokelmann (* 1822, † 1903), his daughter Franziska Bokelmann (* 1828, † 1908) married the legal historian Roderich von Stintzing (* 1815, † 1883), son of the Altona doctor Johann Wilhelm Stintzing († 1859) ).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Gesa Sklaroff Bokelmann: Georg Wilhelm Bokelmann. A Life Well Lived. English Translation and Historical References, Fig., Chester Springs, Pennsylvania (USA) 2006 [unprinted]. Evidence: Library of the Varnhagen Society, Cologne.
2. ^ Johannes von Schröder: Topography of the Duchy of Holstein, the Principality of Lübek and the free and Hanseatic cities of Hamburg and Lübeck.
3. ↑ Lexicon of German-Jewish Authors. Volume 20. Walter de Gruyter, 2012, ISBN 978-3-11-026907-9 , p. 165.
4. ^ Georg Reutter: Wilhelm von Humboldt's linguistic system - his position in the history of linguistics. Berlin 2006, p. 150.
5. ↑ Lübeck City Archives, Findbuch

predecessor	Office	successor
Adolf Gottlieb von Eyben	Danish envoy to the Hanseatic cities in Hamburg 1814–1836	Christian Høyer Bille