Johann Nikolaus Böhl from Faber

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Consul Johann Nikolaus Böhl von Faber

Johann Nikola (u) s Böhl von Faber , Spanish also Juan Nicolás Böhl de Faber , (born December 9, 1770 in Hamburg , † November 9, 1836 near Cádiz ) was a German merchant , consul of the Hanseatic cities in Cádiz, Mecklenburg landowner and literary collector .

Life

Johann Nikolaus Böhl and Lütkens was the eldest son of Johann Jakob Böhl (1727–1786) and his wife Cäcilia Ilsabe, nee. Lütkens. The family's ancestors had worked as merchants in Stralsund . Jacob Böhl moved with his brothers from there to Hamburg in 1750, where his first son was born as Nikolas Böhl . The father opened a trading company here and a little later founded a branch in Cádiz, which was one of the first of its kind in Europe. Since the business with America was very profitable, the company quickly became one of the most important in Europe. Johann Jakob Böhl made a great fortune. After his death, the widowed Cecilie Böhl married the Prussian lawyer Martin Jakob Ritter und Edler von Faber in 1787. He adopted Nikolas Böhl in 1806 under the name Böhl called Faber . On April 8, 1806, Nikolas Böhl called Faber, as the former consul of the Hanseatic cities in Cádiz and landlord on Görslow, received the imperial nobility. Since then, Nikolas Böhl has had the addition of “von Faber” to his name.

Coat of arms of their Böhl von Faber

The father Johann Jakob Böhl was in close contact with the pedagogue Joachim Heinrich Campe . Together with his friends Johannes Schuback and Polycarp August Leisching, he convinced Campe to settle in Hamburg. The pedagogue founded the Camp'sche Institut here , where he educated Johann Nikolaus Böhl and his three brothers until the institution was closed in 1783. Campe took Nikolas Böhl in 1779 in his novel Robinson the Younger as "Johannes". Böhl then returned to his parents' household and went on an educational trip to England in 1784. From 1785 he worked in his father's company in Cádiz. From the end of 1794 he ran the company together with his younger brother Gottfried Böhl.

In 1796 he married the Catholic Spanish woman Frasquieta de Larea, who was the daughter of an Irish woman. He always kept in touch with Hamburg and bought a house in Braunschweig , into which he moved with his wife and their mother. Since the women did not feel comfortable here, he sold the property again and settled in Chiclana de la Frontera near Cádiz. After staying in Switzerland in 1805, he bought an estate in Görslow near Leetzen , which he moved into with his family at the end of the same year.

After his wife and mother-in-law had left him again for Spain, Böhl stayed in Germany with his eldest daughter Cecilia and his only son, whom he taught himself. During this time he increasingly studied religious and mystical literature, about which he exchanged ideas with his friend Nikolaus Heinrich Julius , whom he had known since 1809, August Campe and others. The daughter Cecilia later became a Spanish writer , known under the pseudonym Fernán Caballero . Due to the coalition wars, Böhl lost a large part of his fortune. In August 1813 he converted to the Catholic faith. He sold the property in Mecklenburg at a great loss and returned to Cádiz in the same year.

Friends enabled him to set up an insurance company in Spain . He later managed the English wine business Duff, Gordon & Comp . With such financial security, he turned increasingly to literature. Since he was mainly interested in romantic literature , he studied old Spanish poets in particular. Strongly influenced by August Wilhelm Schlegel , Böhl campaigned publicly for the older Spanish theater and the playwright Pedro Calderón de la Barca . He collected numerous dramatic and lyrical works and tried to make possible their reprints. His collection, entitled “Floresta”, was published in 1821 in a first volume mediated by his friend Julius Friedrich von Perthes . It was an anthology of old Spanish poems that Böhl had prepared for a long time. Later, again with the help of Perthes, he edited another collection of Spanish plays. The Royal Language Academy in Madrid honored him for this in 1820 with an honorary membership.

Böhl, who had been Hamburg consul in Cádiz since 1816, died in 1836. His book collection was initially transferred to the Hamburg State Library , as he wished . The Spanish government later bought it from the heirs and handed it over to a library in Madrid. Literary researchers only recognized Böhl's importance for Spanish and German literature in the 20th century.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ GHdA Adelslexikon Volume I, 1972, p. 466 f.
personal data
SURNAME Bohl von Faber, Johann Nikolaus
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Böhl von Faber, Johann Nikolas
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German businessman and literary collector
DATE OF BIRTH December 9, 1770
PLACE OF BIRTH Hamburg
DATE OF DEATH November 9, 1836
Place of death near Cadiz