Gerhard Meyer (businessman, 1774)

Gerhard Meyer (born March 30, 1774 in Bremen ; † 1855 in Bad Rehburg ) was a German businessman and Bremen builder at St. Petri Cathedral .

biography

Meyer was the son of a Reepschläger . His father and mother died early (1780 and 1787 respectively), so that he grew up as an orphan with his four siblings. He completed a commercial apprenticeship in the trading company Grovermann and married the daughter of the company owner in 1800. In 1799 he founded his own companies for the tea trade, for commission and forwarding business , as well as an oven and tile trade and a tobacco factory. Later he was also an agent of an insurance company (insurance).

Meyer gained importance through his offices in the cathedral community of Bremen. From 1805 to 1815 he was cathedral deacon , in 1811 administrator of the St. Petri orphanage and from 1815 old deacon . In 1817 he donated a building to the orphanage at Domshof (No. 8–9) (the Bremer Bank has been building since 1904 ). From 1822 to 1839 he was the builder for the cathedral . In the municipalities of the Bremen city churches, building owners are called the executive boards. He unsuccessfully campaigned for the return of the structural assets (buildings, lands such as Pauliner Marsch ) of the cathedral that had belonged to the city since 1803 through the Reichsdeputationshauptschluss . On his initiative, the lead cellar was built around 1822 as part of the cathedral museum .

The well-read Meyer owned a large library, which he bequeathed to the cathedral parish, but which it sold in 1868. He also devoted himself to the Bremen family stories. He wrote several writings including in 1828 the work Some About the Memories of the Cathedral of Bremen with information on the rooms, tombstones, paintings and art treasures of the cathedral (newly published Bremen 2001).

literature

• Herbert Black Forest : The Great Bremen Lexicon . 2nd, updated, revised and expanded edition. Edition Temmen, Bremen 2003, ISBN 3-86108-693-X .