Gerhard Haniel

Gerhard Haniel

Gerhard Haniel (born November 21, 1774 in Ruhrort , today Duisburg , † August 23, 1834 ) was a German entrepreneur .

Live and act

Gerhard Haniel was the third oldest surviving child of Jacob Wilhelm Haniel and Aletta Haniel nee. Noot. He probably received a school education similar to that of his younger brother Franz Haniel . Then he had to help out in the business of his mother Aletta, who had been widowed since 1782. In 1793, at the age of 19, he began further training with Anton Franz Cassinone (1712–1799) in Cologne - a business partner of the Haniels with branches in France. When the French revolutionary troops conquered the left Lower Rhine in autumn 1794, he returned to Ruhrort.

From 1796 he was like his brother Franz in the company JW Haniel seel. Wittib employed his mother. He was mainly responsible for coal sales for the company JG Müser & Comp. , in which the House of Haniel has been involved since 1796. Here he represented his mother. However, there were conflicts with Carl Friedrich Gethmann , a partner of the Müser company, who accused him of poor bookkeeping. In 1802 the company JG Müser & Comp. eventually dissolved. In the same year Gerhard Haniel founded his own coal trading and shipping company. Business partners were two former members of the Müser company: a member of the Müser family and probably Gerhard Haniel's cousin Peter Heinrich Noot.

The business was initially run on joint account with his brother Franz's coal merchant, ie the accounts had not yet been separated, the bankruptcy of one could have ruined the other. The company existed until at least 1809 and appeared to have been very successful. In 1806 he operated his shipping company with eight Ruhr ships, so-called barges , while Brother Franz only had six barges.

From 1802 he was involved in his mother's company. In 1809 the business was closed and divided between him and his brother Franz. In 1805 he and Franz acquired the shares of the abbess Maria Kunigunde in the ironworks of St. Antony and Neu-Essen . The third owner was the brother-in-law Gottlob Jacobi . With the purchase of the Gute Hoffnung hut in 1808 and the involvement of the brother-in-law Heinrich Huyssen , the Jacobi, Haniel & Huyssen (JHH) smelter union and dealership, which later became Gutehoffnungshütte (GHH), came into being . After Jacobi's death in 1823, the partners alternately took over the management of the metallurgical union. The fact that he did not only use his shipping company to transport coal was shown by the takeover of the salt transport monopoly on the Ruhr in 1817 for at least a year. From 1826 he was a member of the Ruhrort municipal council.

Since December 1807 he was married to Henriette Magdalena Huyssen, the older sister of Franz Haniel's wife Friederike. The couple had three children. He left behind his wife Henriette, the sons Carl Haniel (1811–1861) and Alphons (1814–1891) and daughter Bertha (1813–1899), who had married her cousin Hugo Haniel .

Probably at the beginning of the 19th century and increasingly at the beginning of the 30s, Gerhard Haniel acquired stakes in more than a dozen mines in the Ruhr area .

literature

• Franz Haniel & Cie. GmbH (Hrsg.): Haniel 1756–2006 - A chronicle in data and facts. Duisburg 2006