Jacob Wilhelm Haniel

Jacob Wilhelm Haniel (born March 20, 1734 in Elberfeld ; † May 28, 1782 in Ruhrort ) was a Ruhrort merchant and father of the entrepreneur Franz Haniel .

Live and act

Jacob W. Haniel was the son of the businessman Friedrich Joachim Haniel and his wife Catharina, née vom Heydt, in Elberfeld. He was baptized Lutheran but raised in the Reformed faith. Nothing is known about his training. Like his four siblings, he moved to Duisburg in Prussia , where he opened a wine shop in 1757. His partner was his brother-in-law Bernhard Bongart for about two years and his younger brother Peter Friedrich from the beginning of 1759. The Haniel brothers 'wine shop also seemed to be doing well during the Seven Years' War : the brothers were in third place in a compulsory loan that was staggered according to the respective assets , with which the Duisburg citizens had to finance payments to the French in 1763. After the Seven Years' War, wine from the Rhine and Moselle was subject to high import duties, and citizens had to pay high taxes on such luxury goods. That is why the Haniels expanded their business to include general freight forwarding and commission trading. Nevertheless, sales declined overall.

Presumably it was Jacob W. Haniel who ran a coal trade in Duisburg with a partner named Chombart in 1771. Possibly it was also the brother Peter Friedrich Haniel. This business was the first known coal trade under the name Haniel. In 1761 Jacob W. Haniel married Aletta Noot . At the request of the Noot family, he took over the Ruhrort packing house in 1772 , which has not carried out any business since the death of his father-in-law Jan Willem Noot . From this point in time it was probably run as a trading company for the first time, with wine trade and general freight forwarding remaining the main business of Jacob W. Haniel. Jacob W. Haniel approached the Prussian king twice to obtain privileges for immigrants, such as tax breaks. He obviously toyed with the idea of ​​also working as a manufacturer, since the application for a settlement in Duisburg referred to a cloth factory. When he came to Ruhrort, he announced that he might want to build a “certain factory”. However, these plans were not implemented.

When he died on May 28, 1782 in the Ruhrort Packhaus at the age of 48, he left behind his wife Aletta, their sons Wilhelm, Gerhard and Franz Haniel and their daughter Johanna Sophia, who had married the hut director Gottlob Jacobi .

literature

• Franz Haniel & Cie. GmbH (Ed.): “Haniel 1756 - 2006 - A Chronicle in Data and Facts”. Duisburg 2006

See also

• Haniel (entrepreneurial family)