Jean Louis Albert Le Coq

The A. Le Coq brewery logo

Jean Louis Albert Le Coq (* 1800 in Hamburg ?; † 1875 in Berlin ), alternative name: Johann Ludwig Albert Le Coq , was a Prussian and later English merchant, winery owner and wine and beer merchant A. Le Coq in London.

Life

Origin and family

Jean Louis Albert Le Coq came from the Huguenot family Le Coq , which originally lived in Metz . The merchant Jean Le Coq (1669–1713) came to Germany as a refuge . He was descended in a direct line from Toussaint Le Coq, who married Jeanne Doron in Metz in 1565.

The grandparents of Jean Louis Albert Le Coq were Charles Le Coq († 1814), a merchant and director of the sugar boiling plant of David Splitgerber in Berlin, who had made it prosperous through these activities, and Marie Charlotte Ermann (1739-1802), who Sister of the German historian and Protestant theologian Jean Pierre Erman (1735–1814). Her family was also of Huguenot origin and moved from Geneva to Berlin in 1720 .

Albert's father was the merchant and Prussian consul in Hamburg Jean Le Coq (1768–1800), who was married to Henriette Chodowieka, daughter of probably the most popular German engraver, graphic artist and illustrator of the 18th century Daniel Chodowiecki (1726–1801) .

It can therefore be assumed that Jean Louis Albert Le Coq was born in Hamburg because his parents lived there. Only his year of birth 1800 is known. He was born in the year his father died and grew up as a half-orphan.

He married Anna Maria Wittus from Trier.

The merchant and insurance director André Auguste Le Coq (1827–1894), born in Kempten am Rhein, emerged from the marriage . His son was the archaeologist Albert von Le Coq (1860–1930).

Career

Nothing is known about his youth.

According to the A. Le Coq company website and labels on beer bottles, the company was founded by Albert Le Coq in 1807. In the 1820s Albert LJ Le Coq moved to London to trade in the products of the family winery. Albert was only seven years old then. However, there does not appear to be any documentary evidence for this. It is possible that his father owned a winery in Kempten and his son's guardian founded the trading company in 1807 in the name of the minor.

Many sources that go back at least to 1939 also claim that the family business was founded in 1807 as A Le Coq & Co.

In any case, Albert was still living with his wife on the vineyard in Kempten in 1827 when his son André Auguste Le Coq was born there.

It is certain, however, that Le Coq moved to London by the 1830s at the latest, apparently to set up a trade for the family wine company in Great Britain.

The “Imperial Extra Double Stout” with an alcohol content of 9% became world famous. The beer is now brewed by Harvey & Sons of Sussex, England, under the supervision of the Board of Trustees of A. Le Coq and the Tartu Brewery in Estonia.

The labels on the brewery's Imperial Extra Double Stout beer bottles indicate that A. Le Coq was a Belgian who exported beer from London to Russia and the Baltic region in the early 18th century. That Le Coq was a Belgian is wrong, but it was claimed some time ago in an earlier version of the Wikipedia article A. Le Coq .

Le Coq had probably been in business in Great Britain for some time when his partnership with Charles Seidler in Mark-Lane in the City of London, who operated together as Le Coq & Co, "amicably" dissolved on July 1, 1841 has been.

Soon after arriving in London, Le Coq began bottling and exporting the Russian Imperial Stout under his own name. This beer was first brewed in England in the 18th century for the Russian Empress Catherine the Great , who ordered large quantities of Imperial Stout for her court.

Le Coq did not make the beer itself, but ordered this special dark and strong top-fermented beer, specially brewed for the Russian market, from major breweries in London. He exported Le Coq beers in bottles with the company name to Russia. The Russians used the bottles for other purposes. Ronald Seth wrote that the first Russian wines from the Caucasus who were ever seen in the UK, were exhibited in the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park in 1851 as part of the first World's Fair ( Great Exhibition ). The A Le Coq beer bottles were converted into bottles for the wines. The Crimean War , which lasted from 1853 to 1856, briefly halted exports to Russia, but at the end of the war, according to Seth, Russian officers entertained their British guests in Sevastopol with A. Le Coq Porter.

In 1839 the company Le Coq & Co. had its branch under the name wine merchants in London, 66 Mark Lane.

The company later moved. The companies Le Coq Albert merchant and Le Coq & Co. Merchants had their branch in 1843 in the house 1 Muscovry Court Trinity Square. The house was named after the Muscovy Company , which had been trading with Russia from England since the mid-16th century. The Muscovy Company had embarked on an expedition to Russia in 1563, negotiated with the Tsar and brought a letter to the Queen granting privileges to English merchants.

Albert had settled firmly enough in England to want to become a British citizen, which he did in 1851. To do this, he must have lived in Great Britain for 20 years. His home and office were also given as 1 Muscovy Court, Trinity Square, Tower Hill.

In January 1858, the partnership between Le Coq and John Watson in the Muscovy Court house was dissolved.

The size of the deals Le Coq made can be seen in the wreck of the motor sailing ship Oliva en route from London to Gdansk in 1869, when it hit a reef during a storm off the Norwegian coast and shortly afterwards with a cargo of bottled beer went down from the Barclay Perkins Brewery, which was exported under the name A Le Coq, valued at £ 751 , which is now worth about £ 150,000.

Albert retired from the business in 1861 and returned to Berlin.

The company A Le Coq & Co was continued by two other partners, John Turnbull and Richard Sillem.

The Sillems were also originally Germans from Hamburg, where they had been merchants since at least the 16th century and where they must have known Albert's father Jean Pierre Le Coq, who had been Prussian consul in Hamburg.

According to Martyn Cornell, Le Coq died in Berlin in 1875.

After Albert Le Coq's death, his son André Auguste Le Coq was no longer interested in the London beer export business. In 1881 the shares in the London export company were sold to Oscar Sillem. It was still known as A Le Coq until now .

In 1913 A Le Coq took over a brewery in Estonia. The aim of the takeover was to achieve a better position for A. Le Coq on the Russian market. With the Soviet occupation of Estonia, the company was expropriated and renamed Tartu Õlletehas . It remained one of the most popular brands of beer and mineral water in the Soviet Union. When Estonian regained independence, it was privatized again in 1995.

literature

• Website of A.LeCoq, History, accessed on April 15, 2020 digitally (English)
• Martin Cornell, ALBERT LE COQ IS NOT A FAMOUS BELGIAN , from March 10, 2017 in: Martyn´s Cornell´s Zythophile, Beer now and then, accessed on April 15, 2020 e-magazine , also published digitally in Academia.edu . (When opening the Zythophile in Google Chrome and switching on the translation function, a good German translation appears).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Richard Béringuier : Family trees of the members of the French colony in Berlin , 1885, p. 31 ( digitized version )
2. ^ ^{A b c d} Moeller, Volker, "Le Coq, Albert von" in: Neue Deutsche Biographie 14 (1985), p. 36 f. [Online version]; Rolf Straubel : Biographical manual of the Prussian administrative and judicial officials 1740–1806 / 15 . In: Historical Commission to Berlin (Ed.): Individual publications . 85. KG Saur Verlag, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-598-23229-9 , pp. 558 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
3. ↑ ^{a b} Website of A. LeCoq, History, accessed on April 15, 2020 digitally (English)
4. ^ ^{A b} Ronald Seth, Estonian Journey: Travels in a Baltic Corner , Robert M McBride & Co, New York, 1939, p. 137 (quoted from Martyn Cornell, Albert Le Coq is not a famous Belgian , from March 10, 2017 in Martyn Cornell's Zythophile), accessed March 25, 2010 ( digitally ).
5. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j} Martyn Cornell, ALBERT LE COQ IS NOT A FAMOUS BELGIAN , from March 10, 2017 in: Martyn´s Cornell´s Zythophile, Beer now and then, accessed on April 15, 2020 ( e-magazine ), also published in "Akademia" ( digitized version )
6. ↑ wunderassn, Post dated March 6, 2012, accessed digitally on March 25, 2020
7. ↑ Harvey's Brewery website, from Lewes / East Sussex, accessed digitally on April 15, 2020
8. ^ The London Gazette, Part 1, 1842, p. 45 digital
9. ↑ Mohrenbrauerei Vertriebs KG, A-6850 Dornbirn (website), accessed on April 15, 2020, digital
10. ↑ Mika Rissanen and Juha Tahvanaine, The History of Europe in 24 Beers, 2016, without page numbers (before Section VIII), e-book reading sample
11. ↑ Royal national and commercial directory and topography, London 1839, p. 250 digital
12. ^ The Post Office London Director, 1843, p. 267 digital
13. ↑ Muscovy Court , in Survey of London: Volume 15, All Hallows, Barking-By-The-Tower, Pt II, ed.GH Gater and Walter H Godfrey (London, 1934), pp. 4-6. British History Online [1] (accessed April 16, 2020)
14. ↑ The Spectator, Volume 31, 1858, p. 17 digital
15. ↑ Garrett Oliver, The Oxford Companion to Beer , 2012, p. 480 [2] ebook digital
16. ^ Albert von Le Coq Buried Treasures of Chinse Turkestan: An Account of the Activities and Adventures of the Second and Third German Turfan Expeditions , 1928, p. 108, [3] snippet view