Hinrich van der Smissen

Hinrich van der Smissen (born January 24, 1662 in Glückstadt ; † July 1, 1737 in Altona ) was a German baker, entrepreneur and shipowner.

Life and work as an entrepreneur

Hinrich van der Smissen was a son of the merchant Gysbert van der Smissen , who had settled as a Mennonite with royal privilege in Glückstadt and later Altona without enjoying full civil rights there, and his first wife Cathalina, née Hendriks. At the age of 15 he began an apprenticeship with the Mennonite Hamburg merchant Jacob Kops, which according to the contract was to last for seven years. Probably due to the siege of Hamburg by Danish troops, the apprenticeship ended as early as the following year 1678, because he was considered a Danish subject in Hamburg as a foreigner. After that he allegedly worked on a Hamburg “Greenland driver” that was boarded by Danes. He then worked as a private tutor in Norway and came back to Glückstadt a little later without money.

In Glückstadt, van der Smissen learned in his father's bakery and completed an apprenticeship as a baker in June 1679. In 1682 he went to Altona with his father and from May 1684 has been running the bakery. Due to the positive business development, he was able to save money quickly. One reason for his success is said to have been the fact that he visited the Greenlanders on the Elbe every morning in front of the other bakers and supplied them with bread.

Probably around 1685 van der Smissen used his reserves and bought the office building on the Elbbrücke, in which he had only been a tenant until then. A short time later, he and a relative of his future wife named Jan Elias Münster, who as a Mennonite ran a shipping company in Glückstadt, set up a shipping pier. Münster wanted to move to the common property with his company; the landing stage was supposed to serve the Greenland voyage. Van der Smissen wrote in his autobiography that he had the first packing houses in Altona built there. It is not known whether whalers were actually loaded at the company's dock. However, Van der Smissen stored Silesian linen, later coffee, tea, tobacco, rice, spices and other colonial goods in the houses, with which he operated conditional business.

The disputes between Altona and Hamburg increased due to the newly built quayside by van der Smissen. During the Danish siege of Altona in 1686, the people of Hamburg resorted to gun violence and hit the warehouses with 100 cannon balls. In a consignment warehouse in Hamburg's Rummel-Hafen there were also general cargo from van der Smissen, which the Hamburgers confiscated and demanded double customs. This "harbor war" determined the attitude of the van der Smissens family to Hamburg for several generations. As shipowners and forwarding agents, they tried several times to expand the Altona port and to strengthen the local industry and merchant fleet.

Van der Smissen then acquired further property and discussed all important decisions with his wife. His father-in-law also helped him to become the largest private landowner in town for a short time. From the turn of the century he acquired many properties on the Elbe slope. He initially had rented houses built on the eastern Oberland properties. His heirs later bought the houses, which were already the most desirable residential areas in Altona in the mid-18th century. In 1706 van der Smissen bought a hill south of the Palmaille from President Matthias Jessen . Von Jessen had insisted that the buyer leave a 10-foot bar undeveloped in favor of a driveway. However, Van der Smissen left 40 feet wide free, giving it the look that is still characteristic today. In 1707 he commissioned a road that led orthogonally from the Palmaille to the Elbe and thus connected the Altona Oberland with the Unterland for the first time. The excavated soil was used to fill up land on the Elbe and to build further warehouses and quays there.

Van der Smissen belonged to a community of Mennonite investors who bought land. In 1703 the land was communalized with a water mill; later they belonged to him alone. In 1704 he had a windmill and a water mill built on the Lünkberg. Around 1710 he opened a second bakery, which was located on the lower section of his private street “Unterland corner of Große Elbstraße and Süderallee”. Around 1720 he had a dike made on the east side of the South Elbe. Additional houses and storage rooms were built. During this time he also bought land in Eiderstedt , where his grandfather lived. By 1725 at the latest, he owned the 90 hectare town courtyard in Freesenkoog and in the north-west of Eiderstedt, probably due to the dyke obligation, a tax-exempt farm and land in the old Augustenkoog . For some time, van der Smissen also had a brewery on the south side of Grosse Elbstrasse. In 1721 he and the brewer Behn took over the representation of the interests of the Altona beer brewers.

Van der Smissen rejected mercantilist company structures, but was forced by the government authorities to set up and operate such companies. When he died, he owned a commission, a forwarding company, two white bakeries, a starch factory, an anchor forge, a sawmill, a shipyard, a groats mill, a calico dyeing works, two dyeing works for sheets and pages, a wall clipping and preparation shop, his own 135 Meter long wall frames. There were also mills in Nienstedten and Klein Flottbek and many houses, farms, properties and holdings.

Van der Smissen granted Altona several loans to rebuild the city or to pay war contributions, including in 1700 when Nils Carlsson Gyllenstjerna threatened to set Altona on fire. Van der Smissen himself repeatedly lost a lot of fortune through no fault of his own. He and his partners suffered damage in a fire in November 1711. His father-in-law lost both breweries. Van der Smissen then headed a consortium to rebuild the breweries. They opened the following year and “more beautiful and better than before”, as van der Smissen wrote in his autobiography. During the fire in Sweden he lost all 18 buildings, which cost him all 50,000 thalers, which would have "robbed him of almost all means".

In April 1713, the Altona chief president convened a building commission, which consisted mainly of citizens and was supposed to lead the reconstruction of Altona. Although he was a Mennonite and therefore should not have been allowed to hold public offices, van der Smissen also joined the committee. What he did on this commission is poorly documented. He offered his storage yards and rooms to store building materials there. He was repeatedly suspected of taking advantage, but worked actively until the group was dissolved in 1716. The higher authorities belonging to the commission assessed his work positively. Not only because of these activities, but also because of the development of the central district and the creation of an industrial area, he was given the honorary title of "city founder".

It is unclear what role van der Smissen played in the Mennonite Flaminger community . According to sources, he and his sons never held offices in the ward. However, due to two foundations, he was considered "an economic pillar of the community". He donated 300 Courantmark for the new building of the burned down Mennonite church and in 1734 a plot of land adjacent to the church on which preachers' apartments were to be built. With the donation of 1734, however, he excluded the community from any additional inflows from his will. In his will, drawn up three years later, he only provided for the “Legata” from the estate for the community. He opted for a family entailment based on the noble example. Funds should only flow into the community if one of the family lines were to go extinct.

Van der Smissen was considered an undogmatic personality who took up foreign influences and rejected all forms of strict denominationalism. One example was his work in the building commission, in which he worked closely with Johann Peter Flügge, who had separated from the Flaminger community after decades of dispute. Another sign of this were portraits of van der Smissen and his wife, who wore evening gowns and allonge wigs, which Gerrit Roosen, as a community elder, had decidedly rejected in writing at the turn of the year 1706/07.

In addition, it is documented that from 1727/29 van der Smissen supported a group of supporters of Kaspar Schwenckfeld who were expelled from Silesia and financed their emigration to Pennsylvania . The Schwenkfelder Church mentions the year 1734, which seemed more likely. From the summer of 1723 he maintained friendly contacts with the Quakers Richard and Susanna How, who lived in London and on Gut Aspley. With them he let his son Gysbert live and train. His son most likely also attended church services and religious teachings from the Religious Society of Friends . Von der Smissen is buried in the Mennonite cemetery in Hamburg-Altona .

family

On May 14, 1693 van der Smissen married Maria de Vos in Altona (born November 24, 1674 in Altona; † June 11, 1732 ibid). Her father was the Altona beer brewer and businessman Pieter de Voss. The van der Smissen couple had two daughters and four sons, including the company's successor Gysbert and the painter Dominicus , whose portrait of the father is in the collection of the Hamburger Kunsthalle . One son died early.

literature

• Matthias H. Rauert: Smissen, Hinrich van der . in: Biographical Lexicon for Schleswig-Holstein and Lübeck . Wachholtz, Neumünster 1982–2011. Vol. 12 - 2006. ISBN 3-529-02560-7 , pages 394-398.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Matthias H. Rauert: Smissen, Hinrich van der . in: Biographical Lexicon for Schleswig-Holstein and Lübeck . Wachholtz, Neumünster 1982–2011. Vol. 12 - 2006. ISBN 3-529-02560-7 , pages 394-395.
2. ↑ ^{a b c} Matthias H. Rauert: Smissen, Hinrich van der. In: Biographical Lexicon for Schleswig-Holstein and Lübeck . Wachholtz, Neumünster 1982–2011. Vol. 12 - 2006. ISBN 3-529-02560-7 , page 395.
3. ^ Matthias H. Rauert: Smissen, Hinrich van der . in: Biographical Lexicon for Schleswig-Holstein and Lübeck . Wachholtz, Neumünster 1982–2011. Vol. 12 - 2006. ISBN 3-529-02560-7 , pages 395-396.
4. ↑ ^{a b c} Matthias H. Rauert: Smissen, Hinrich van der . in: Biographical Lexicon for Schleswig-Holstein and Lübeck . Wachholtz, Neumünster 1982–2011. Vol. 12 - 2006. ISBN 3-529-02560-7 , page 396.
5. ↑ ^{a b c} Matthias H. Rauert: Smissen, Hinrich van der . in: Biographical Lexicon for Schleswig-Holstein and Lübeck . Wachholtz, Neumünster 1982–2011. Vol. 12 - 2006. ISBN 3-529-02560-7 , page 397.
6. ↑ t. Schwenkfelder Church , entry in the Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online , accessed June 7, 2018
7. ^ Matthias H. Rauert: Smissen, Hinrich van der . in: Biographical Lexicon for Schleswig-Holstein and Lübeck . Wachholtz, Neumünster 1982–2011. Vol. 12 - 2006. ISBN 3-529-02560-7 , page 398.
8. ↑ Family grave