Julius Richter (banker)

Ludwig Anton Julius Richter (born December 31, 1836 in Hamburg ; † March 26, 1909 there ) was a German bill broker , banker and entrepreneur .

Live and act

Julius Richter was the son of the Hamburg coffee broker Eduard Richter. Born in Hamburg, Julius Richter lived in Antwerp at a young age , where his father worked for a British company. Julius Richter therefore learned several languages. In 1847 he returned to Hamburg. After completing his professional training at the D. Jaques & Sohn bank , he worked there for several years. In 1859 he founded the Julius Richter company and brokered bills as a broker . The company was based in the Große Johannisstraße / corner of Rathausmarkt . The economic boom associated with the early days led to successful business as an investment banker. The German Empire planned to replace the various thaler and guilder currencies with the mark , which should be backed with gold . Richter calculated that Germany would only be able to acquire the gold it needed in England. He therefore bought numerous London bills of exchange at an early stage, which he later passed on to the government of the Empire at significantly higher prices. The government bought gold in London for these bills . Together with the exchange broker David Ruben, Richter also listed the daily exchange rates on the Hamburg stock exchange . Both had received the order from the Hamburg Chamber of Commerce . This increased Richter's sales and also enabled him to process French reparations payments that went back to the Franco-German War .

In addition to his activities as a banker and broker, Richter influenced the transport sector and several companies. In 1878 he founded the Hamburg-Altonaer Pferdebahn-Gesellschaft as a stock corporation and became a member of the supervisory board. In 1887, as a member of the supervisory board, he led the sales negotiations of the Berlin-Hamburg railway company . In doing so, he was able to persuade the Prussian government to pay the shareholders a higher price. In 1879 he was one of the co-founders of the Holsten brewery in Altona and was a member of the supervisory board. Richter also sat on the supervisory board of the Hamburger Hypothekenbank .

At the end of 1881 the Richter family went on a trip to Italy. In Rome in 1882, Julius Richter met the painter Franz von Lenbach and asked him to create two family portraits. Richter kept in contact with the painter later on. Together they often visited Otto von Bismarck in Friedrichsruh . Since Richter venerated von Bismarck, he asked the prince to be allowed to rename a facility on the Waseberg "Bismarckstein". With the consent of Bismarcks, the facility was renamed in 1890. Richter encouraged the Blankenese municipal council to raise funds for a Bismarck monument. The copper monument should have a height of 30 meters, stand on a 20 meter high granite base and be erected on the Bismarckstein. The design for this came from Ernst Wenck from Berlin and Georg Thielen from Hamburg . The appeal for donations appeared on Bismarck's 80th birthday in 1895. It was supported by Georg von Steinmann , Alfred Waldersee , Otto Giese , Robert Miles Sloman and Adolph Woermann . Citizens from Altona and Hamburg responded to the call for donations, but the erection of the monument failed due to Wilhelm II's veto .

Julius Richter died in his hometown in 1909. His heirs sold the Bismarckstein on April 1, 1910 to the Blankenese community.

Real estate

In 1875 Richter bought the summer residence from John Bellhouse Bowden, who was English and worked as an engineer for the Altona waterworks. In addition to the building on Falkensteiner Ufer , Richter also acquired the Waseberg and Polterberg. Richter had the site designed in the style of an English landscape garden. In addition to an extensive system of paths with viewpoints and exotic trees, a terrace was created on the slope of the Elbe. Here were greenhouses in which Richter grew grapes and cloves. The horticultural association for Hamburg, Altona and their surroundings , to which the judge belonged, awarded him medals for the breeding results . His brother Emilio Richter , who worked as an art gardener, created a Roman terrace here in the mid-1880s, which is now part of the Roman Garden . In the year of Richter's death , the land and terrace were largely bought by Max Warburg , who thus enlarged his property in Blankenese.

In 1876 Julius Richter bought a town house from the banker Gottlieb Jenisch. The building on Neuer Jungfernstieg served as the family residence. Today the Übersee-Club is located here.

literature

• Oliver Breitfeld: Judge, Julius . In: Franklin Kopitzsch, Dirk Brietzke (Hrsg.): Hamburgische Biographie . tape 4 . Wallstein, Göttingen 2008, ISBN 978-3-8353-0229-7 , pp. 286-288 .