Karl von Kolb

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Karl von Kolb 1800–1866

Karl Bernhard Kolb , von Kolb from 1837 , (born January 19, 1800 in Aachen , † October 22, 1868 in Rome ) was a German merchant, banker and Württemberg consul in Rome.

Origin and life

Karl Kolb was evangelically baptized in Aachen under the name Carl Bernhard. His parents were Johann Gottfried Kolb (1772-1835) and Juliane Maria Coelln, daughter of an Aachen pharmacist and stepdaughter of his great-uncle Jakob Friedrich Kolb (1748-1813). His father had taken over the Kornelimünster cloth manufacture from his uncle Jakob Friedrich Kolb ; business was bad, however, and so he moved to Göppingen in 1822 in order to found a mechanical cotton spinning mill in Salach. The parents had a total of nine children, three boys and six girls. A younger brother of Karl Kolb was the judiciary and vedute draftsman Ludwig Kolb .

Karl Kolb first did a commercial apprenticeship in Trieste. In 1827/28 he founded a trading and shipping company in Rome, within which the financial business grew more and more over the years and finally resulted in a banking institution. In 1833 he became consul of Württemberg in Rome, also temporarily performing this function for the grand duchies of Baden and Hesse. He had a long-term correspondence with King Wilhelm I , with whom he was on familiar terms, in which he informed the king about the political, economic, social and ecclesiastical conditions in the Papal States. In gratitude, the king raised him to the Württemberg staff nobility in 1837 by awarding him the Knight's Cross of the Order of the Württemberg Crown . In 1848 he received the commentary cross of this order. Since 1841, since the appointed envoy was constantly absent, he was the executive representative of the same and remained so until his death, although he was a Protestant. Due to his close ties with King Wilhelm I and his excellent knowledge of the situation, Karl Kolb was directly involved in the preparation of the Württemberg Concordat with the Vatican, negotiated in 1857 and cast into law in 1862.

Karl Kolb remained single, but had a relationship with the widow Josephine Virginie de Végy nee. Whimsical. She came to Rome in 1839, but died in 1842, before Kolb could marry her. In Rome she gave birth to a daughter who is not said to have been Kolb's child. Nevertheless, he took the child in as a foster daughter. To ensure the continued existence of his banking house, he had his nephew Adolf Nast , the son of his sister Henriette, come to Rome for the last ten years of his life (i.e. since 1858) so that he could familiarize himself with the banking business. After Karl von Kolb's death in 1869, he took over Banca Kolb and obtained from the authorities that the name Kolb could live on in the new company name Nast-Kolb. This was continued under the name Nast-Kolb & Schumacher until it was dissolved in the middle of World War I in 1916. It was the largest private bank in Rome. Adolf Nast-Kolb took over the office of the Württemberg consul from his uncle in 1869 and was also consul of the German Empire in Rome from 1864 to 1902.

portrait

  • A photo “Karl Kolbs” is in Koenig-Warthausen (1934), after p. 304.

Works

  • From 1833 comprehensive correspondence of over 1,000 letters with King Wilhelm I of Württemberg on the political, economic, social etc. situation in the Papal States.

literature

  • Hertner, Peter (1979), “Kolb, Karl”, in: Neue Deutsche Biographie 12, pp. 443f.
  • Koenig-Warthausen, Gabriele von (1934), Karl von Kolb. In: Württembergische Vierteljahrshefte für Landesgeschichte, vol. 40, pp. 97–115.
  • Koenig-Warthausen, Gabriele von (1941), Karl Kolb: banker and Württemberg consul in Rome 1800–1866. In: Hermann Haering and Otto Hohenstatt (eds.), Schwäbische Lebensbilder , Vol. 2. Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, pp. 303–313.
  • Noack, Friedrich (1927, 1974), The Germanness in Rome since the end of the Middle Ages: in 2 volumes . Aalen: Scientia Verlag, 1974 (reprint of the Berlin and Leipzig edition: Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, 1927) (here vol. I, p. 400f, 549 and especially 571).
  • Theil, Bernhard (1987), The Württemberg Consul Karl von Kolb and the French Intervention in Rome in 1849. Journal for Württemberg State History , vol. 46, pp. 394–402.
  • Theil, Bernhard (2015), Karl von Kolb (1800–1869) - banker, Württemberg consul in Rome, diplomat, art mediator . Lecture in the main state archive in Stuttgart on March 21, 2015.
  • Ziegler, Walter (Ed.) (1983), Romantic trip to the Filstal: the artistic discovery of a landscape in the 18th and 19th centuries 19th century . Publications of the Göppingen district archive, vol. 8. Anton H. Konrad, Weißenhorn. ISBN 3-87437-207-3

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ On him see Ziegler 1983, pp. 22–24.
  2. ↑ Court and State Manual of the Kingdom of Württemberg, 1839, p. 37.
personal data
SURNAME Kolb, Karl von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kolb, Carl Bernhard (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German merchant, banker and consul of Württemberg in Rome
DATE OF BIRTH January 19, 1800
PLACE OF BIRTH Aachen
DATE OF DEATH October 22, 1868
Place of death Rome