Hugo Schönberger

Josef Hugo Schönberger , known as Hugo Schönberger , (born October 12, 1838 in Prague , Austrian Empire ; † June 12, 1900 in Bad Ischl , Austria-Hungary ) was an Austrian export merchant and trade representative.

He is the son of the renowned Prague old town merchant Franz Anton Schönberger (1811–1886) and the brother of the businessman and diplomat Richard Schönberger (1846–1921), as well as the export merchant and sales representative Victor von Schönberger (1844–1893).

Life

Hugo Schönberger was born on October 12, 1838 in Prague and after attending the local high school he came to Vienna in 1862 , where he initially worked as a dispatcher in the grocery store "Gebrüder Mayer". Together with his younger brother Victor, he ran the “Gebrüder Schönberger” export and commission business from 1870, which benefited mainly from orders from the Siamese government (including alleged arms exports) and probably also from Victor's overseas contacts. In 1873 Hugo Schönberger was appointed Consul General of El Salvador in order to protect the interests of the local government at the Vienna World Exhibition . Due to business overload and presumably more favorable economic prospects, he resigned from his post as Consul General of El Salvador in 1879. Presumably on the indirect recommendation of his other brother Richard, he appeared from 1881 as the honorary consul of the Kingdom of Siam. He carried out this activity until 1897 and was among other things organizationally active as honorary consul during the visit of the Siamese King Chulalongkorn in 1897. From 1897 to 1900 he was then Honorary Consul General of the Kingdom of Siam in Vienna. After the death of his brother Victor in 1893, he also took over his Hawaiian consulate and the still existing export business as sole owner from 1894 . In addition to numerous Siamese honorary titles and Hawaiian medals, Hugo Schönberger, who had rendered outstanding services to Austrian exports to East Asia , received the Knight's Cross of the Franz Joseph Order in 1881 . In his office as Honorary Consul General of Siam, Schönberger died on June 12, 1900 at the age of 61 in Bad Ischl .

literature

• Neue Freie Presse : evening edition of June 13, 1900
• Ischler Wochenblatt : Issue of June 17, 1900
• Large-scale industry in Austria II , volume 3, page 13
• F. Schilling: Order Knight Album. Franz Josef Order. , 1889 (with picture)
• O. Thaiyanan: The relations between Thailand (Siam) and Austria-Hungary (1869-1917 / 19) , phil. Dissertation Vienna, 1986 ( dissertation from the University of Vienna ), 1987, pp. 55ff., 66, 312 (with picture)
• KR Wernhart: The King of Hawaii in Vienna 1881. , 1987, p. 15

Web links

• Ch. Mentschl:  Schönberger Hugo. In: Austrian Biographical Lexicon 1815–1950 (ÖBL). Volume 11, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna 1999, ISBN 3-7001-2803-7 , p. 52.