Jean Baptiste Coupienne

Jean Baptiste Coupienne

Jean Baptiste Coupienne (* 1768 in Dinant , † March 1825 in Mülheim an der Ruhr ) was a tannery owners and municipal council in Mülheim an der Ruhr.

Live and act

Jean Baptiste Coupienne came from the Belgian Dinant in the Principality of Liège . At the age of 26, he was enlisted in 1794 as a soldier for the Hanover-British troops and fought against the French revolutionary army. After his discharge from the army, he was en route back to his Belgian homeland in 1795 in Mülheim an der Ruhr . Five years later he married the only daughter of the wealthy Mülheim tanner Heinrich Pelzer and founded his own tannery in Rumbach in 1801 . It can be assumed that he had previous knowledge of the field of tanning and that, as a young man, he had already dealt with the advanced tanning processes that were common in the Principality of Liège and in neighboring France. The use of the so-called "Liège process" in the tanning process guaranteed the Belgian quality of the sole leather, valued at home and abroad, and was probably the basis for the entrepreneurial success of Jean Baptiste Coupienne and his descendants.

Soon Jean Baptiste Coupienne was a municipal councilor and municipal alderman among the dignitaries of the city ​​of Mülheim an der Ruhr, which was elevated to municipal status in 1808 . In 1812 he became a member of the Masonic lodge "Zum heiligen Joachim im Orient" in Düsseldorf, in 1820 he joined the newly established lodge "Zur Deutschen Burg" in Duisburg. Jean Baptiste Coupienne died in March 1825 as a result of an accident.

The Belgian immigrant Jean Baptiste Coupienne is often referred to as the "father of the Mülheim leather industry". He and his descendants created the prerequisites for the leather industry in Mülheim an der Ruhr to be the most important in the entire German Empire until the mid-1920s. However, the Coupienne family could not stop the final decline of the leather town of Mülheim and the rise of other production locations such as Offenbach am Main .

Marriage and children

On October 6, 1800 he married Maria Alexandrine Caroline Pelzer (1777-1853). A total of six children emerged from the connection:

• Christian Gilbert (1801–1876)
• Katharina Henriette Sibylle (1805–1857) ⚭ 1833 Friedrich Wilhelm Vorster (1802–1876), nephew of Johann Hermann Voerster
• Heinrich (1810–1889) ⚭ 1839 Adeline von Eicken (1812–1878)
• Louise Maria Christine (1812-1900)
• Ernestine (1813–1865) ⚭ Heinrich Daber
• Ernst Jean Louis (1818–1868)

Since the Coupienne (Catholics) and Pelzer (Protestants) families belonged to different denominations, it was determined that all male descendants should be brought up in the Catholic faith and all female descendants in the Protestant faith.

literature

• Ilse Barleben : Mülheim ad Ruhr. Contributions to its history from the city elevation to the founding years . Mülheim an der Ruhr 1959, pp. 391-403.
• Thomas Urban: Immigrants with new ideas: The Coupienne family and the Mülheimer Ledergewerbe , in: Horst A. Wessel (Hrsg.): Mülheim entrepreneurs: Pioneers of the economy. Business history in the city on the river since the end of the 18th century . Klartext Verlag, Essen 2006, pp. 79–87.

Other sources

• City archive Mülheim an der Ruhr, holdings 1390/2/15 (Chronicle of the Coupienne family. Compiled by Ernst Coupienne, 1921.)
• City archive Mülheim an der Ruhr, inventory 1550 No. 187 (Mülheim personalities)

Web links

• History of the Mülheim leather industry