L. Behrens & Sons
L. Behrens & Sons was a Hamburg private bank and trading company, it existed with interruptions from 1806 to 1970.
The merchant Levy Behrens, who immigrated from Pyrmont , founded the company L. Behrens & Sons in Hamburg in 1806 with his sons . In the first few years they were very successful as merchant bankers and mainly traded in English and Saxon textiles and cloth goods, which they sold in northern Germany. To the business contact to England to deepen the two sons there founded subsidiaries: Salomon Levy Behrens 1815 in Manchester , the SL Behrens & Co. and Jacob Behrens 1834 in Leeds up existing today Jacob Behrens & Co. The turn to banking business took place in the In the 1850s, through connections to the London Rothschild banking house , L. Behrens & Sons was involved in the sale of shares together with the Rothschild banking house in Frankfurt and the S. Bleichröder banking house in Berlin . In the following years, L. Behrens & Sons rose to become one of the leading Hamburg banks alongside Joh. Berenberg, Gossler & Co. , Conrad Hinrich Donner and MM Warburg & CO .
Since there was a shortage of foreign exchange after the First World War , L. Behrens & Sons entered the sugar trade; they were one of the first German companies to export German sugar. The company was also able to survive the subsequent global economic crisis unharmed. During the National Socialism, the bank was “Aryanized” in 1938 , the main owner George Eduard Behrens was de facto expropriated and taken into protective custody. Norddeutsche Kreditbank-AG in Bremen took over the part of the company that handled the banking business . The trade department has as of the friend of Henry S. Behrens Willink Willink & Co will continue. In 1948 GE Behrens returned from exile and L. Behrens & Sons was re-established from Willink & Co. The banking business was not resumed. The old meaning could not be regained either. In 1970 L. Behrens & Sons was liquidated.
Art restitution
In 2008 the Dutch government restituted a work by Camille Corot to the heirs of George Behrens, which the latter presumably had sold to a Dutch museum in 1940. In 2013 the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen restituted a work by de la Peña that had been sold after March 1935. After the city of Düsseldorf rejected the restitution of a work by Menzel that Behrens had presumably sold in the summer of 1935, but asked the Limbach Commission for a recommendation, it recommended in February 2015 not to restitute the work.
literature
- Manfred Pohl : Hamburg banking history. Mainz 1986, ISBN 3-7758-1136-2
Footnotes
- ↑ This still exists today as Sir Jacob Behrens & Co. See homepage behrens.co.uk
- ↑ see Ingo Köhler: The "Aryanization" of the private banks in the Third Reich. Repression, elimination and the question of reparation. Beck, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-406-53200-4 , p. 287 f
- ^ Recommendation of the Dutch Restitution Commission RC 1.71 ; Sotheby's arts auction March 21, 2010 ( Memento of the original from May 7, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. accessed on March 17, 2016, each accessed on March 17, 2016
- ^ A Just and Fair Solution Reached by Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen and the Heirs of George Behrens
- ↑ Recommendation of the Limbach Commission ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ; for discussion see Press release of the city of Düsseldorf from February 19, 2015 , legal note Kahmann / Naumann in the magazine for open property issues 2015, 114
