John D. Rockefeller

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John Davison Rockefeller Senior (ca.1875)
John Davison Rockefeller Senior (around 1915)
John Davison Rockefeller Senior ( John Singer Sargent , oil on canvas, 1917)

John Davison Rockefeller Sr. (born July 8, 1839 in Richford , New York , † May 23, 1937 in Ormond Beach , Florida ) was an American entrepreneur , first billionaire in world history (in 1916, in US dollars ) and is considered the richest person in modern times.

Rockefeller co-founded a petroleum refinery that became the Standard Oil Company in 1870 . One of his business partners was Henry Morrison Flagler .

Family and origin

John Davison Rockefeller was born in 1839 as the second of six children and the eldest son of William Avery Rockefeller (1810-1906) and Eliza Davison (1813-1889) - hence his middle name Davison . Contrary to long-term rumors that his family had French roots, genealogists were able to prove the German origins of the Rockefellers and trace them back to the early 17th century. Then in 1723 Johann Peter Roggenfeller from Altwied - baptized on September 27, 1682 in the Protestant church of Rengsdorf - immigrated to America with three children from Bonefeld (then part of the parish of Rengsdorf, County of Wied ; today: County of Neuwied , Rhineland-Palatinate ) and settled in Germantown in what was then the British colony of Pennsylvania .

The name Roggenfelder / Roggenfeller / Rockenfeller refers to the - today deserted - place Rockenfeld in Neuwied (Rockenfelder = "coming from Rockenfeld"). Even today there are numerous residents with the family name Rockenfeller in the Neuwied district , including racing driver Mike Rockenfeller .

The "family secret"

The father, who traveled across the country as a "herb doctor" without a medical degree, probably left his family around 1855, but remained married to Eliza until her death. He took the name William Levingston and married Margaret L. Allen, born in 1835, as a bigamist in Norwich, Ontario (Canada). This marriage remained childless. Another woman named Nancy Brown fathered two other daughters (Clorinda and Cornelia Rockefeller) at the time of his legal marriage. The tomb was paid for from the property of the second woman.

At the height of Rockefeller's monopoly power, the first rumors arose that the family was keeping an “embarrassing secret”. Joseph Pulitzer offered a $ 8,000 reward for information about "Doc Rockefeller" known only to be under an assumed name. But the journalists could not find him before his death and did not publish the full story until two years later.

Marriage and children

John Davison Rockefeller married on September 8, 1864 Laura Celestia Spelman (1839-1915), called "Cettie", the daughter of a wealthy merchant from Cleveland , Ohio . The couple had five children together, one of whom, Alice, died in infancy:

When Cettie died in 1915, Rockefeller was hit with it. He said, “Your judgment has always been better than mine. She was an unusually clever woman. Without her astute advice, I would be a poor man today. "

Kykuit, the Rockefeller family seat

In 1913, Rockefeller moved into the feudal family estate Kykuit near Tarrytown (New York) , which took six years to build and was designed by the two architects Chester Holmes Aldrich and William Adams Delano. The Rockefeller family had owned large estates in the Hudson Valley as early as 1893. Kykuit consists of a four-storey country house villa in neoclassical style with two basement floors with connecting channels and a service tunnel. The representative interiors were designed by Ogden Codman and are now equipped with a collection of Chinese and European ceramics, fine furniture and art from the 20th century. Kykuit is surrounded by a large park with sculptures. Today Kykuit can be visited by the public.

Rockefeller family burial site in Lake View Cemetery in Cleveland, Ohio

The grave

Cettie and John D. Rockefeller found their final resting place in Lake View Cemetery in Cettie's hometown of Cleveland. Erected at the time as Tomb Obelisk from Vermont -Marmor at the time was said to be the largest carved from a single piece of stone monuments worldwide.

Entrepreneurial activity

The beginnings

After his parents moved to Cleveland, the sixteen-year-old got a job as an apprentice at the freight forwarding company Hewitt & Tuttle on September 28, 1855 , and he was soon employed as an assistant accountant. After fourteen weeks of work, he got the very low salary of fifty dollars for it. When Rockefeller was eighteen, the Hewitt & Tuttle accountant, who made $ 2,000 a year, was fired and Rockefeller took over.

On April 1, 1858, Rockefeller accepted an offer from the young Englishman Maurice B. Clark and became a partner in a brokerage and agency business in Cleveland (Ohio) with Clark and George W. Gardner . That same year the big oil business began in the United States and Rockefeller entered the industry. In Samuel Andrews he found a good chemist who improved the processing of the crude oil for Rockefeller to such an extent that it was almost completely recycled. He made his own barrels in his new business and was his own haulier and carter , which made him superior to most of his competitors.

Establishment of the Standard Oil Company

Standard Oil Company stock signed by Rockefeller and Flagler

During the first three years of running the oil business, he continued to work at Clark, which he later paid off. So he took over the company and made Andrews a partner. During this time, Rockefeller also met Henry Morrison Flagler , who would become his best friend and loyal companion. Rockefeller brought Flagler into its business as a partner, and from 1867 the company was called Rockefeller, Andrews & Flagler . On January 10, 1870, this company became the Standard Oil Company , with John Davison Rockefeller, his brother William Rockefeller , Henry Morrison Flagler, Samuel Andrews and Stephen V. Harkness as founding shareholders.

In January 1872, several local oil companies under Rockefeller's leadership merged to form a trust , the South Improvement Company . His goal was to get cheap freight rates for crude oil from Pennsylvania through agreements with the railroad lines in Cleveland. A few months later, these agreements came to the public, whereupon Rockefeller was attacked politically, legally and by other companies and had to shut down some of his operations. Still, Rockefeller bought more and more oil companies and facilities in the years that followed, with his company creating a network of subsidiaries to circumvent legal restrictions on company ownership in other states. In 1882 the company headquarters was relocated to New York and the parts of the company empire were also legally united. The anti-trust laws that several state politicians enacted and that were passed by Congress in 1890 were primarily directed against Rockefeller's economic activities. In a legal exchange of blows that lasted more than 20 years, Standard Oil was initially able to avert the breakup.

Rockefeller owned iron mines on Lake Superior and large ore carriers , but later sold them to US Steel . He himself retired from active business life in 1897, but retained his title as president of his company until 1911.

Standard Oil Company unbundled

The Standard Oil Company was indicted on November 18, 1906 by the United States government in Missouri under President Theodore Roosevelt on the basis of the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890. In addition to Standard Oil of New Jersey, 65 of the companies controlled by Standard Oil were also indicted, as well as the entire management level, including John and William Rockefeller, Henry Flagler and Oliver Payne. The process, which lasted several years, finally ended on May 5, 1911 with the smashing of the Standard Oil Company into 34 companies, whereupon the shareholder value sank into the abyss. However, Rockefeller realized that this would recover and bought the shares of his company. According to conservative estimates, he earned two hundred million dollars from the boom that was now beginning , because the increasing popularity of the automobile and the First World War allowed the demand for oil to rise to previously unimaginable dimensions.

capital

Rockefeller is one of the richest people in world history. His net worth in 1913 was approximately $ 900 million. If you just take inflation into account, that $ 900 million from 1913 is worth about $ 24 billion today. In 1916, John D. Rockefeller became the first billionaire in world history (in US dollars). However, if you also take into account that people were poorer at the time and the market in which he earned his money was much smaller, then compared to the population he was as rich as someone with 192 billion US dollars in 2008. However, the business magazine Forbes calculated total assets of around 300 billion US dollars. He financed numerous charitable projects from his fortune - not least at the instigation of his son John D. Rockefeller Jr.

The philanthropist

Along with Andrew Carnegie , Rockefeller is considered one of the greatest American philanthropists . To cope with the flood of petitions, Rockefeller sought advice from the Baptist pastor, Frederick Taylor Gates , who was secretary of the American Baptist Education Society (ABES) in 1888 . Through this company Rockefeller financed the establishment of the University of Chicago in 1890 . Gates and other philanthropists at the beginning of the 20th century were able to devote themselves to tasks neglected by the government, such as education, science, health care, and agriculture. This is how Gates drew Rockefeller's interest in promoting medicine. He should found a research facility and give men with ideas, imagination and courage the means to conduct scientific research on infectious diseases.

In 1901 the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research was founded and in 1903 the General Education Board , into which the ABES was incorporated. In the meantime, John Davison Rockefeller Jr. had also found a job here. Gates shared Andrew Carnegie's fears that an extraordinarily rich inheritance diminishes initiative and effort, that it undermines heirs' participation in the social and economic processes that make society strong. He warned Rockefeller: “Your fortune is piling up, piling up like an avalanche. You have to keep up with it! You have to distribute it faster than it grows! If you don't do it, it will crush you and your children and grandchildren. ”In 1913 the Rockefeller Foundation was founded, which now distributed the funds, including two million dollars in 1927 for the Rockefeller Museum of Archeology in Jerusalem.

As a devout Baptist , Rockefeller supported many Baptist institutions. Among other things, it enabled the construction of the German Baptist seminary in Hamburg .

Trivia

A US citizen was convicted of libel at the time for accusing his neighbor of using Standard Oil Company methods in his business .

The Rockefeller companies included and in some cases still include ExxonMobil and Chase Manhattan Bank , which merged with JP Morgan & Co. to form JPMorgan Chase & Co. in 2000 .

The Rockefeller Center in New York , according to his son Jr. John D. Rockefeller named, who played the leading role in the financing of the construction project.

One of his grandsons, Nelson A. Rockefeller , was US Vice President under Gerald Ford .

Movie

  • Hard as steel to the Atlantic. Documentation and docu-drama , Germany, 2008, 44 min., Script and director: Christian Heynen, production: Engstfeld Film GmbH, ZDF , arte , series: Terra X , summary from ZDF with online video
    “John D. Rockefeller und seine Standard Oil Company had a very powerful influence. Dealing with such power was like David versus Goliath to Benson and his partners. A little nobody wants to take on an overpowering and financially strong opponent like Rockefeller. "

literature

See also

Web links

Commons : John D. Rockefeller  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ William Avery Rockefeller - Eighth Generation , ancestry.com, accessed March 3, 2013
  2. ↑ http://www.hudsonvalley.org/historic-sites/kykuit
  3. ↑ Raymond Cartier: 50 times America , Piper Verlag, Munich 1985, edited by Renate Zeschitz edition
  4. ↑ LInfo.org: The Sherman Antitrust Act , accessed 11 August 2010
  5. ↑ See Project Syndicate: A Roosevelt Moment for America's Megabanks? , Simon Johnson , July 14, 2010
  6. ↑ Forbes: The Rockefellers: The Legacy Of History's Richest Man , July 11, 2014
  7. ^ Howard Zinn: A People's History of the United States . Harper Perennial, New York 2005, ISBN 0-06-083865-5 , p. 262.
  8. ↑ General Education Board From: Encyclopedia Americana by The Encyclopedia Americana Corporation (1918)
  9. ^ E. Richard Brown: Rockefeller Medicine Men Medicine and Capitalism in America. P. 43.
  10. ↑ Terra X: Stahlhart zum Atlantik (August 18, 2013, 3:40 p.m., 43:22 min.)  In the ZDFmediathek , accessed on January 30, 2014.
personal data
SURNAME Rockefeller, John D.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Rockefeller, John Davison
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American entrepreneur
DATE OF BIRTH July 8, 1839
PLACE OF BIRTH Richford , New York , United States
DATE OF DEATH May 23, 1937
PLACE OF DEATH Ormond Beach , Florida , United States