Hermann Henrich Meier

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Hermann Henrich Meier around 1890
Portrait of H. H. Meier in the entrance of the Bremer Bank, Domshof 8

Hermann Henrich Meier , H. H. Meier for short , (born October 16, 1809 in Bremen ; † November 17, 1898 ibid) was a German businessman and politician .

biography

After growing up in Bremen, Meier attended a grammar school and boarding school in Stuttgart before returning to Bremen at the age of 17.

There he began a five-year commercial apprenticeship in the business H. H. Meier & Co , which was founded by his father of the same name and was run by Helfrich Adami after his death. This training was followed by trips to England and the USA , where he visited his uncle's shop in New York and finally went to Boston as an agent for H. H. Meier & Co. By 1838 he expanded the branch there and became politically active for the first time by advocating the continuation of a trade agreement between the USA and Bremen.

After returning to Bremen, Meier married in 1843. From 1844 onwards, as a member of the Citizens' Convention and, from 1849, the Bremen Citizenship, he also had political influence and a little later became a member of the Deputation for Bremerhaven and the Deputation for the promotion of steamship companies between Bremen and New York. In addition, he was appointed Swedish-Norwegian consul in 1847. In the following years he played a key role in numerous important activities in Bremen, such as the establishment of the Bremer Bank in 1856 and the Bremen Stock Exchange in 1864, and he was committed to the German Society for Rescue of Shipwrecked People , of which he was elected first chairman in 1865. In memory of his services in this function, the rescue cruiser H. H. Meier was named after him. Due to his negotiating skills in the merger negotiations with Dresdner Bank, the branches still carried the old name until the merger of Dresdner Bank with Commerzbank.

The founding of the North German Lloyd in 1857 is a separate chapter in Meier's biography . After he had long had plans for a transatlantic steamship line, he met Eduard Crüsemann . The plans of the two businessmen overlapped, after which they founded this shipping company together.

Meier was also politically active on a supraregional level. After he had already represented the constituency of Bremervörde in the Frankfurt National Assembly in Frankfurt am Main from April 4 to May 20, 1849 as successor to Johann Albert Dröges , he was also elected to the Reichstag of the North German Confederation for the National Liberal Party in 1867 and was elected from 1881 to 1887 member of the Reichstag of the German Empire . He campaigned for the establishment of a Reichspostdampferdienst to East Asia and Australia.

His son was the jurist, businessman and patron of the arts Hermann Henrich Meier junior (1845–1905).

HH Meier grave 2009.jpg

Meier was buried in the Riensberg cemetery (grave location: grid square O) in Bremen.

Honors

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Fritz Specht, Paul Schwabe: The Reichstag elections from 1867 to 1903. Statistics of the Reichstag elections together with the programs of the parties and a list of the elected representatives. 2nd Edition. Carl Heymann Verlag, Berlin 1904, pp. 293-294.

literature

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Meier, Hermann Henrich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Meier, HH; Meier, Hermann Heinrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German businessman and politician (NLP), MdBB, MdR
DATE OF BIRTH October 16, 1809
PLACE OF BIRTH Bremen
DATE OF DEATH November 17, 1898
Place of death Bremen