Johann Georg Stintzing

Johann Georg Stintzing (born December 28, 1740 in Mainbernheim , † July 13, 1832 in Hamburg ) was a German wine merchant .

Live and act

Double obelisk adorned with vines as a cenotaph for the Stintzing wine merchant in Mainbernheim

Johann Georg Stintzing was the son of a master butcher from Lower Franconia . At the age of 22 he moved to Hamburg. Here he worked in the Ratsweinkeller from 1763 to 1774 and was the oldest journeyman when he finished. In May 1774 he quit in order to start his own business. Since he had poured out wine too generously and given wine lists and thus damaged the city of Hamburg, the Ratsweinkeller came in handy.

Since Stintzing acquired Hamburg citizenship on June 14, 1775 and was made a citizen on May 1, 1778, it can be assumed that he ran his wine business successfully. The first piece of land he bought was an inheritance from the Hopfensack. In 1782 he moved from there to a larger piece of land on the Grimm, where he lived for life in a house that included a warehouse and an office. Margarethe Hesse ran his household from Mainbernheim, whose father worked there as a lawyer. Both lived there until Hesse's death on February 9, 1827, but did not get married. Her grave, which Stintzing had bought for both of them, is in the Catharinen cemetery.

Stintzing sourced wines that reached Hamburg by land or by ship. In addition to sales in Hamburg and the surrounding area, he also sold them to America and Arkhangelsk . On January 8, 1777, the office of wine makers and cooper, which at the time was regarded as proof of quality, elected Stintzing as co-master. After the election to the test master on April 20, 1787, the election as an assessor followed on May 1, 1789. He could also have become an older man, which he probably refused because of the time involved.

In 1799 the so-called "Hamburg trade crisis" occurred. Since Stintzing wanted to give Lord Nelson, who was in Hamburg in October 1800, six dozen bottles of Rhine wine from 1625, the economic crisis had probably not harmed him. Nelson, however, refused the gift, which was intended as a token of the greatest devotion. He only wanted to accept six bottles and would only do so if Stintzing had dinner with him the next day, the admiral said. Stintzing replied that he would only show up for the meal if Nelson kept at least a dozen bottles. Nelson agreed, saying he would keep six of the bottles carefully for six future wins. It is not known whether he actually drank the wine before his death.

In 1805, hailstorms destroyed the vines in Stintzing's birthplace, Mainbernheim. The wine merchant, who had been a member of the Patriotic Society of 1765 since 1786 , wanted to use his fortune to help alleviate the misery it caused. He orientated himself on the general poor institution in Hamburg . Therefore he donated 1000 guilders for the "Handelsmann Stintzingsche Armen-Arbeits-Anstalt". She bought flax, wool and other materials for the needy to spin yarn from. They thus produced the raw materials for weavers and drapers. The proceeds from their cloth sales should flow back into the fund and thus ensure the continued existence of the foundation. The institution existed until the great inflation in the early 1920s, which consumed the foundation's assets.

The French period in Hamburg , especially after 1813, had a major impact on Johann Georg Stintzing's life and business. After the city of Hamburg, the contributions of Napoleon Bonaparte had not paid in a timely manner, detained the French occupiers Stintzing in Harburg . The over 70-year-old wine merchant had to give up his supplies in Hamburg and could no longer go about his business. He lost a significant part of his fortune and did not achieve previous business successes even after the end of the occupation in 1814. Nevertheless, he donated 1,000 marks in 1820 for the AK St. Georg, which was built by 1823 . He also donated to the annual collection of the Dutch Poor Casse .

On June 23, 1824, Stintzing wrote his will. He appointed nine of his nephews and nieces as universal heirs. The bulk of the fortune consisted of the wine stores, most of them white wines. The old wines, including Binger Schloßberg from 1682 or Rüdesheimer vintage 1696, did not make the heirs rich later: After the wine merchant's death in 1832, customers preferred young red wines from Bordeaux ; Stintzling's white wines were considered “subtle”. While he himself had calculated that he could earn four to five Courant marks per bottle, the heirs could only sell it for less than twelve shillings.

Stintzing set a monumental cenotaph on the old cemetery in Mainbernheim together with his brother, the Lübeck wine merchant Georg Friedrich Stintzing († 1800). His nephew Georg Friedrich Stintzing (1793–1835) was a lawyer and councilor of the Hanseatic city of Lübeck.

literature

• Renate Hauschild-Thiessen: Johann Georg Stintzing (1740-1832), a wine merchant from Mainbernheim in Hamburg in: Hamburgische Geschichts- und Heimatblätter , pp. 257-274
• Renate Hauschild-Thiessen: Stintzing, Johann Georg . In: Franklin Kopitzsch, Dirk Brietzke (Hrsg.): Hamburgische Biographie . tape 5 . Wallstein, Göttingen 2010, ISBN 978-3-8353-0640-0 , p. 358-360 .