Hermann Sielcken

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Hermann Sielcken (born August 14, 1850 in Hamburg , † October 8, 1917 in Baden-Baden ) was a German-American merchant and entrepreneur who made a fortune as a coffee importer and became famous as the “coffee king”.

Life

Sielcken was the son of a Hamburg master baker and at the age of 18 went to Brazil as an employee of a Hamburg export and import company , worked there and in Costa Rica as a coffee buyer and finally moved on to San Francisco as a wool buyer , where he became an American Became a citizen. In New York , he joined Isidore Strauss' company , which later owned the well-known Macy’s department store , and returned to the coffee business when he joined William H. Crossman & Brother . Now self-employed, he made a fortune wholesaling coffee .

At the beginning of the 20th century he settled in Baden-Baden at Hofgut Mariahalden on the Sauersberg, which was later acquired by Max Grundig and today belongs to the Max Grundig Foundation. Sielcken was a great sponsor of the city of Baden-Baden, he not only donated the patronage facility and the Josephinenheim , the first modern maternity and maternity home, but also guaranteed the city administration a monthly donation of 10,000 marks for the supply during the years of the First World War of the soldiers' families. Hermann Sielcken died on October 8, 1917 in Baden-Baden and was buried in the family grave in Bremen .

Hermann Sielcken was married twice. After the death of his first wife Josephine in 1907, Hermann Sielcken married Clara Isenberg, born in Braunschweig , on September 29, 1913 , daughter of the Bremen merchant Paul Isenberg who had become rich in Hawaii .

After the death of Hermann Sielcken in 1917, Clara Sielcken married b. Isenberg met baritone Joseph Schwarz , who was engaged at the Chicago Opera in 1922 , but who died in 1926. Clara Sielcken-Schwarz, as she then called herself, was a "great society" because of her enormous wealth and her sophisticated lifestyle. On October 13, 1928, the Berlin newspaper Tempo reported her alleged engagement to Prince Eitel Friedrich von Prussia , the son of the last German emperor.

The city of Baden-Baden honored Hermann Sielcken's diverse social commitment by awarding it honorary citizenship and naming a street.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b List of people elected honorary citizens of the city of Baden-Baden in chronological order. (PDF; 63 kB) City of Baden-Baden, accessed on October 4, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Sielcken, Hermann
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-American businessman and entrepreneur, patron
DATE OF BIRTH August 14, 1850
PLACE OF BIRTH Hamburg
DATE OF DEATH October 8, 1917
Place of death Baden-Baden