Gustav Overbeck (diplomat)

Gustav Overbeck (from 1867 von Overbeck , from 1873 Freiherr von Overbeck ; born March 4, 1830 in Lemgo , † April 8, 1894 in London ) was a German businessman, adventurer and diplomat.

Live and act

The son of the pharmacist and medical advisor Georg Heinrich Overbeck from an old Lemgo family attended the grammar school in Lemgo up to the Prima and then the commercial school. He came to Bremen for a commercial apprenticeship with his uncle in the family business there, but did not stay there long and in the spring of 1850 emigrated to America with his cousin August Meier. He went to San Francisco, opened a commercial business and went on various trade trips that combined a thirst for adventure and his sense of lucrative business fields: in 1851 to Honolulu , the South Seas, Alaska and the Bering Strait .

Dent & Co. in Hong Kong, ca.1858

Concession from the Sultan of Brunei, 1877

In 1853 he went to Hong Kong and entered the British trading house Dent & Co. a. He stayed there until the company ran into economic difficulties in 1866. Already in 1856 he was appointed Prussian Vice-Consul, in 1864 for kuk Austrian consul. In 1866 he resigned from his Prussian post because of the Austro-Prussian war .

When he was in Hong Kong, he had four children with Lam Tsat-Tam. You were Lily Overbeck; Oi Mond Overbeck, Annie Overbeck and Victoria Overbeck

In 1867 he was raised to the Austrian nobility and in 1869 Austrian Consul General. In 1873 there was an elevation to the Austrian baron class.

In January 1876 he acquired the near-expiring concession rights of the American Trading Co. to territories in North Borneo from Joseph William Torrey for 15,000 Straits dollars . The acquisition was tied to the condition that he had to succeed in obtaining an extension of the concessions from the ruler of Brunei. In 1877 he therefore founded a joint venture with the brothers Alfred and Edward Dent as financiers , the Dent & Overbeck Company or Overbeck & CO. for the acquisition of territorial rights and the exploitation of natural resources in North Borneo. From November 1877 he went on an expedition with the steamer America to Borneo . On December 29, 1877 he was received by the Sultan of Brunei and received the concession; on January 22, 1878, Jamal-ul Azam, the Sultan of Sulu , who also had rights to the area, signed the concession. Overbeck was appointed Datu Bendahara , Maharaja of Sabah and Raja of Gaya and Sandakan . The far-reaching concession caused a sensation in Europe and the USA; the Washington Post named it the most important lease obtained by a trading company since the days of the British East India Company . But as early as July 22, 1878, the Spaniards operating from the Philippines forced the sultan to surrender, and Overbeck de facto lost the country and the title. In 1879/80 Overbeck traveled to Europe to get government support to enforce the concession. While Great Britain had a strong interest in Borneo, in Germany only Alexander Georg Mosle found a supporter for his plan to have his rights acquired by the German Reich. In early 1881, the British North Borneo Provisional Association Limited was founded after Overbeck had transferred its rights to the Dent brothers. The company succeeded within a year back the Spaniards and North Borneo , the British protectorate of British North Borneo to establish. The interpretation of the Jawi documents from 1877/78 still plays a role in the international legal dispute between Malaysia and the Philippines over territorial claims in Sabah.

Von Overbeck concluded a contract on April 2, 1889 with 14 landowners in Steinförde (Ldkr. Celle) and the landowner von Hornbostel on the exploitation of the rock salt deposit there. At the same time, he had plans to build a steam tram to a planned loading point on the Aller . The Deutsche Mineraloel-Werke von Tiemann, Schrader and Rheinhold from Winsen / Celle protested, however, because they allegedly saw their mining rights violated. In view of the economic importance attached to the planned company, even the Prussian Ministry of Commerce in Berlin was involved.

Since 1870 Overbeck was married to Romaine Madeleine Goddard (1847-1926). Her late father was Daniel Convers Goddard (1822-1852), the first Assistant Secretary in the United States Department of the Interior ; her mother Madeleine, b. Vinton (1825-1889), the daughter of Congressman Samuel F. Vinton, was an esteemed author and had married Admiral John A. Dahlgren in 1865 . The wedding of Gustav Overbeck and Romaine Goddard on March 16, 1870 was a social event in Washington; President Ulysses S. Grant and his wife, Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase and numerous ambassadors were among the guests. The couple had three sons: Gustav Convers von Overbeck, Oscar Karl Maria von Overbeck and Alfred von Overbeck (1877-1945). Romaine was an excellent pianist and often lived with her family in Washington during her husband's travels; In December 1875, Kurd von Schlözer introduced her to Hans von Bülow at the German embassy in Washington and began a brief, violent affair with him. Financially completely independent from the income of a family trust from coal mines in Ohio, she later lived separately from her husband in Baden-Baden and Berlin.

Little is known about Overbeck's later life. He died in London at the age of 64.

Awards

• 1862: Prussian Crown Order 4th class
• 1864: Order of the Iron Crown 3rd class
• 1867: Commander's Cross of the Franz Joseph Order

According to him, which is Overbeck street named in Lemgo.

literature

• Rainer Pape: Gustav Freiherr von Overbeck (1830-1894). A biographical sketch , in: Lippische Mitteilungen aus Geschichte und Landeskultur 28 (1959) pp. 163–217
• Volker Schult: Desire and Reality: German-Filipino Relations in the Context of Global Interdependencies 1860–1945. Berlin: Logos 2008 (Berlin Southeast Asia Studies 8) ISBN 978-3-8325-1898-1 , pp. 51–53

Individual evidence

1. ↑ See here (PDF; 312 kB) for the official English translation
2. ↑ see also White Rajas
3. ↑ “… this cession is one of the greatest secured by a commercial company since the days of the famous East India Company…” (Washington Post, April 12, 1878), quoted from the Madeleine Vinton Dahlgren Papers ( Memento of the original from 3. September 1999 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (Gustav Overbeck's mother-in-law) in the Georgetown University Library 
4. ^ Wording of the British North Borneo Company's charter contract
5. ^ Lower Saxony State Archives, Sign. NLA HA Hann. 180 Lueneburg, Acc. 3/015 No. 18
6. ↑ Madeleine Vinton Dahlgren: Memoir of John A. Dahlgren, rear-admiral United States navy. Boston: JR Osgood and company 1882, p. 644
7. ↑ After Charles Allen Converse: Some of the ancestors and descendants of Samuel Converse, jr. Volume 2, Boston: E. Putnam, 1905, p. 466
8. ↑ See Alan Walker: Hans von Bülow: a life and times. New York: Oxford University Press US 2010 ISBN 978-0-19-536868-0 , pp. 227ff.