Otto Wartmann-Kägi

Otto Wartmann-Kägi

Otto Wartmann-Kägi (born June 3, 1841 in Bauma as Otto Wartmann; † November 4, 1882 in Maidest , Iran ) was a Swiss businessman in the Orient . He is not to be confused with the farmer and cheese maker Otto Wartmann , who introduced the recipe for Tilsiter (type of cheese) to Switzerland.

Life

Otto Wartmann-Kägi is the third surviving child of Bauma's last schoolmaster , Hans Rudolf Wartmann (1804–1869), and his wife Anna Barbara Zollinger (1811–1866). During his youth in Bauma, under the tutelage of Sprecher and Kägi, he attended primary and secondary school with his later brother-in-law . After his confirmation in the summer of 1856, he began a commercial apprenticeship. After graduation he worked as a traveler ; he always drove a dog as a companion with him after the customers.

In the middle of the 19th century , various Zurich trading houses opened branches in the Middle East and began to trade in products from the textile industry for raw cotton and other products from the Orient. Julius Weber, a Swiss businessman and contemporary of Otto Wartmann-Kägi, had opened his own office building in Baghdad in 1860 . Through mediation, Wartmann-Kägi received the offer to join Weber's company. His departure from Switzerland began in 1861 without having the slightest knowledge of the oriental languages. From Marseille via Malta and Beirut , he arrived in İskenderun on May 16 of the same year . From there he traveled with a caravan via Aleppo , Urfa and Diabekir to Mosul . The last section of the route took place on the Tigris by raft to Baghdad, where it arrived on June 23, 1861, after 53 days, four days before the opening of the Constantinople-Baghdad telegraph . Together with Alexander Schläfli , who worked as a military doctor in Baghdad and became known through his travel reports, he visited the ruins of Nimrud . He described his arrival as follows:

“We were the first Swiss, and without two English people, even the first Europeans to visit these ruins. He was now confident about the future for Julius Weber. My hopes have not been disappointed so far, and heaven grant that I can live with Mr. Weber, who has become a brother to me, for a long time, because our characters match. I hope and believe that I will be quite happy here once I am used to life and have a little knowledge of the language. Business is good here when the weather is drawing. In four years, if God gives me health, I will be a sly businessman, because only here you can see what trade is. I will do my best to speak the language as soon as possible so that I can then do a good job in the business. "

For a while, Wartmann-Kägi considered quitting his job. He could not invest in the company with his own capital and had to watch as his colleagues, who were financially stronger, received the more pleasant and safer work and were able to make the greater profit. With one of his older youth comrades, he had drawn up a plan to build a larger cotton plantation in Egypt . It was never carried out. The Swiss Export Company finally renewed the contract with Otto Wartmann-Kägi in September 1865. He stayed with the company for another two and a half years and returned to Switzerland in February 1868. Theodor Guyer-Hanhart, a friend of Rudolf Kägi, the father of Otto Wartmann's future wife Elisabeth Kägi, later provided him with the capital so that Otto could participate appropriately according to his wishes. During his home stay, he found his future partner in his distant cousin Elisabeth Kägi. They married in 1870.

In the autumn of 1868 Otto Wartmann-Kägi returned to his field of activity in the Orient with new plans. This second trip also led via Marseille, with the ship “Tanais” to Smyrna and İskenderun, and from there on the same caravan route to the Iraqi capital. Now he was no longer the inexperienced youth who had to laboriously communicate with a few French or Italian words - now he was the local businessman who was familiar with the customs and language of his surroundings. He described his return as follows:

“If you are in boots, hold a solid whip in your hand and see fresh horses in front of you, 84 hours seem like a trifle, and you swing yourself into the saddle with pleasure. You are very eager and can hardly wait until you have passed the city gate to start a gallop. Nothing but the beating of the horses' hooves disturbed the sad silence of the plains that were about to settle down. The sun disappeared behind us, the stars gradually rose and showed themselves shyly (...) the lonely traveller's companions shone with wild splendor, enveloping his paths in a gloomy semi-darkness. Anyone who has ever followed his path alone for long nights must recognize how beneficial it is to shorten his time by admiring this nocturnal goings-on in the lofty firmament. The welcome in Baghdad was warm from our compatriots and friends, and for two days I was assaulted from morning to evening. "

For health reasons and because of his wife, the head of the company Julius Weber no longer traveled to Baghdad and entrusted the continuation of the business to his employee Otto Wartmann-Kägi. From October 1, 1868, the company operated under the name Wartmann, Roggen & Cie. The following year brought him financial independence. Otto Wartmann-Kägi was the first in Baghdad to use modern means to try irrigation systems with modern pumps instead of the ancient bucket wheels to increase the yield of cotton plantings. He gained great influence in oriental politics when he was appointed consul of the Kingdom of Italy in 1868 :

“In politics, adviser to the French consul, who cannot stay a day without me - to the [Turkish] government as an adviser against everything that means English (...) therefore they [the English] hate and respect me. The former king of Delhi is retired here (…) is her enemy inside. That's why he's on good terms with me and has just invited me and everyone else in the house to dinner (...) I'm so good with our governor, General Fakedin Pascha, that he told a Turk who complained against me because I slapped him has given, moved around until it spoils him and finally wants to make peace with me. On the other hand, the division general is angry with me because they want to withdraw the supervision of the five Turkish steamships in order to entrust them to me. "

Otto Wartmann-Kägi returned to Switzerland at the beginning of 1870, and Elisabeth Kägi was married on April 19 in Bauma. A honeymoon trip to Baghdad followed. The route probably led via Trieste through the newly built Suez Canal via Buschir and Basra up the Tigris to the city. The trading business under Otto Wartmann-Kägi went badly. The money the company invested in cotton planting was too small to make a decent profit. In addition to the strong competition from the older and more financially strong Winterthur company Blum & Cie. couldn't pass it. In 1875, Wartmann-Kägi felt compelled to send his wife and the two children born in Baghdad back to Switzerland. Soon after their return, the third child was born.

Otto Wartmann-Kägi tried from 1875 to negotiate new and better trade relationships. Negotiations with a newly founded Dutch-Persian trading company in Buschir were unsuccessful. Wartmann-Kägi found a new, capable trader in Rudolf Hürner, a Bernese, who was supposed to replace rye. The company has since acted as Wartmann, Hürner & Cie. The financial situation improved so that Wartmann-Kägi could bring his family back to him. In the harsh winter of 1879/80 he left via Vienna-Budapest-Constantinople to Alexandria , and from there by ship through the Suez Canal via Buschir and Basra. The activities of Wartmann, Hürner & Cie. was gradually interpreted after the "new territory" Iran , with which the company traded lively. The Wartmann-Kägi family expanded in 1882 to include a fourth child.

Active trade with Iran increased in volume, but the holdings of funds and credit decreased. In October 1882, Wartmann-Kägi undertook another business trip from Baghdad by ship to Kant-el-Amara and from there on horseback via Bederé to the residence in order to redeem the larger credits he had for a delivery of horses to an elector of the Kurdish prince Khuli Khan should lead. On November 4th he suddenly died at Maidest, nine miles from Kirmandschab. The dispatch to Baghdad reported that he had fallen from his horse. However, a later report by the English representative on Kirmandschab stated that he had been attacked and murdered by a Kurdish gang at the instigation of a debtor. Otto Wartmann-Kägi was brought back to Baghdad and buried there in the English cemetery. The trading office had to be closed.

Otto Wartmann-Kägi had four children: Katharina (1871–1934), Rudolf Wartmann-Füchslin (1873–1930), engineer and building contractor, Karl Otto (1875–1949) and Dorothea (1882–1952).

literature

• Robert Oehler: The Wartmann von Hittnau and Bauma - history of a gender of schoolmasters and bricklayers in the Zurich Oberland , Aarau 1956.