Peter Heinrich Merkens

Peter Heinrich Merkens, contemporary lithography

The figure of Peter Heinrich Merkens (r.) On the Cologne town hall tower

Peter Heinrich Merkens (born December 29, 1777 in Mülheim am Rhein , † January 14, 1854 in Cologne ) was a German entrepreneur , banker and politician from Cologne. He was one of "the outstanding personalities in Rhenish economic history" in the 19th century, during the period of Vormärz .

biography

family

Peter Heinrich Merkens was the son of the master baker Mathias Daniel Merkens and his wife Helena Petronella, geb. Kroon. The family was Reformed , the father a deacon . He came from the Marcken zu Marken family , whose origins can be traced back to the 13th century and which had produced officials in the Aachen-Jülich-Düren area for centuries, until it lost its importance and became impoverished in the 17th century. Merkens's biological father died shortly after his birth.

In order to supplement his meager salary as a clerk , Merkens taught at the end of the 1790s as an assistant teacher at MA Aubry's daughter institute. There he met the 16-year-old Elisabeth "Lisette" von Coels, daughter of a Catholic family of the Cologne upper class and stepdaughter of Mayor Johann Jakob von Wittgenstein . In 1799, the 22-year-old Merkens and the young woman traveled from Cologne, which was now under French occupation, to Altena in Prussia , where the two were married against the wishes of the bride’s parents, Catholic. The Catholic Church did not recognize this mixed marriage . The reconciliation with the parents did not take place until 1814, after Merkens had become a wealthy and important man. The couple had two sons and a daughter. In the 1820s Lisette Merkens (1783–1842) was involved in the philhellenic movement , which at the time had supporters across Europe. Aid associations were founded to support the uprising of the Greeks against the Ottoman Empire , and Lisette Merkens was part of a committee of women from well-known Cologne families who raised money for it. These women did not shy away from going from door to door for the “holy cause” and even going into pubs, which met with public outrage. After the death of his first wife, Merkens married Ottilie DuMont in 1843. Through this marriage he became a brother-in-law of Johann Maria Farina , who was married to Josephine, a sister of his wife. The father of the two sisters was the tobacco manufacturer Johann Michael DuMont.

Training and ventures

After finishing elementary school , Merkens visited the renowned Protestant trading institute of Wilhelm Anton Ising in his (then independent) hometown of Mülheim on the right bank of the Rhine , before completing a commercial apprenticeship with Everhard Caspar Schüll, a successful forwarding agent and spice trader, in Cologne , on the left bank of the Rhine , in 1792 . After his apprenticeship he switched to the spice and wine shop of Johann Jacob Schüll, who belonged to the "Handelsvorstand" founded in Cologne in 1797, representing the interests of Cologne merchants, a forerunner of the later chambers of commerce . Both Schulls were Protestants too.

In 1808 Merkens went into business for himself and founded a colonial goods and spice business together with Jacob Seydlitz, who came from Maastricht , which soon achieved a monopoly in the salt distribution business as Depot general des salines Imperials de l'Est . After Seydlitz's death in 1810, he continued to run the company with his widow and expanded it into one of the largest trading houses in Cologne. During the continental blockade, he shifted the focus of his trading house to banking, and he soon made a name for himself. Most recently, the Seydlitz & Merkens company only acted as a bank.

In 1818, Peter Heinrich Merkens founded the Rheinschiffahrts-Assecuranzgesellschaft , the first independent insurance company for the transport of goods on the Rhine, from which Agrippina-Versicherung emerged in 1845 and the Preussisch-Rheinische Dampfschiffahrtsgesellschaft in 1825 , the forerunner of today's Cologne-Düsseldorfer , which he called Major shareholder and president himself directed. In 1838/39 he took part in the Cologne Fire Insurance Company , which from 1841 onwards was called Colonia under his leadership .

In business and politics

Merkens, who was an advocate of free trade, was involved in Cologne's economic life and politics aside from his purely business activities. For many years he was a member of the city council. In 1826 he was convened by the Prussian government in the provincial parliament in Düsseldorf : a Protestant entrepreneur who represented Catholic Cologne. There, on May 23, 1843, he applied for complete legal equality between Jews and other citizens , which the Assembly of Estates was the first German provincial parliament to accept. He was a member of the state parliament until 1845. From 1847 he was the first Cologne member in the United State Parliament . In both parliaments he worked on transport, economic and trade policy.

The first chamber of commerce to which Merkens belonged from 1810 was established in Cologne under Napoleon's rule in 1806. In 1816, shortly after Cologne came under Prussian rule, he wrote the memorandum of the Cologne Chamber of Commerce on the abolition of the Cologne city's handling rights in connection with all of the free shipping on the Rhine, especially in the Netherlands , which called him a “man of the new time ”. In it he turned against the tariffs planned by the Congress of Vienna on the Rhine and the abolition of the Cologne stacking right , which was one of the city's most important sources of income. Merkens wanted to ensure that this medieval privilege would only be lifted if, in return, the Netherlands in particular largely waived the duties and taxes they levied. This made it possible to secure the right of stacking for Cologne for a transition period of 16 years. In 1829 Merkens became the (appointed) Vice President and in 1831 the first elected President of the Chamber of Commerce, which under him developed into the leading free trade chamber in Prussia until he gave up his office in 1837 "because of overflowing business".

Until his death in January 1854, Peter Heinrich Merkens remained President of both the Cologne-Düsseldorfer and Colonia's board of directors . After his death, the 22 ships of the Köln-Düsseldorfer set their flags at half-mast for six weeks. He was a model for many of his great liberal Cologne companions such as Ludolf Camphausen , Karl Eduard Schnitzler and Wilhelm Ludwig Deichmann . The banking house Seydlitz & Merkens , which was involved in numerous start-ups and conversions of companies in the Rhineland around 1850, merged with the founding of Deutsche Bank 16 years after his death . His wife Ottilie survived him by 20 years.

Honors

Grave of Peter Heinrich Merkens and his family

Peter Heinrich Merkens has been honored with many domestic and foreign orders, including the Order of the Red Eagle III. Class . In 1842 he was awarded the Knight's Cross of the French Legion of Honor . He also carried the honorary title of Royal Secret Commerce Councilor . After his death, the “champion for the interests of the Rhineland against Prussia, especially for the new size of Cologne” received an honorary grave in Cologne's Melaten cemetery (HWG between lit. D and E) .

A sculpture by Peter Heinrich Merkens is part of the figure program for the Cologne town hall tower (No. 63, 2nd floor). The statue created by the Cologne sculptor Stefan Kaiser was handed over in January 1991. It was donated by the Colonia insurance companies.

The Merkens room in the Cologne Chamber of Commerce is reminiscent of Peter Heinrich Merkens.

literature

• Klara van Eyll:  Remember, Peter Heinrich. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 17, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1994, ISBN 3-428-00198-2 , pp. 153-155 ( digitized version ).
• Heinz Group: Heinrich Merkens. In: Rheinisch-Westfälische Wirtschaftsbiographien. Volume V, Aschendorffsche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Münster 1973, pp. 1–26.
• Klaus Schwank: Peter Heinrich Merkens. Entrepreneurs and politicians. (= Kölner Biographien. Heft 2) Ed. News Office of the City of Cologne, Cologne 1973.

Web links

Commons : Peter Heinrich Merkens  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Town hall tower: figures on the second floor. City of Cologne, accessed on January 18, 2015 . 

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g} Klara van Eyll :  Merkens, Peter Heinrich. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 17, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1994, ISBN 3-428-00198-2 , pp. 153-155 ( digitized version ). In this article, the frequently mentioned birthday December 25, 1778 is corrected.
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i} Hiltrud Kier , Bernd Ernsting , Ulrich Krings : Cologne, the council tower: its history and its program of figures . Ed .: City of Cologne. JP Bachem Verlag , Cologne 1996, ISBN 3-7616-0858-6 , p. 516-517 .
3. ↑ ^{a b c d} Schwank: Peter Heinrich Merkens . o. S.
4. ↑ ^{a b} Dr. Ulrich S. Soénius: New impulses for Cologne's economy through Protestant immigrants. (PDF) (No longer available online.) Kirche-koeln.de, September 29, 2002, archived from the original on March 4, 2016 ; Retrieved January 18, 2015 . 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.  
5. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Detlef Rick: Melaten - graves tell history . Emons, Cologne 2010, ISBN 978-3-89705-789-0 , p. 41/42 .
6. ↑ Christine Fauré: Political and Historical Encyclopaedia of Women. Routledge, 2004, ISBN 978-1-135-45691-7 , p. 263 (English) ( limited preview in Google book search)
7. ^ Astrid Küntzel: Strangers in Cologne. Böhlau Verlag Köln Weimar, 2008, ISBN 978-3-412-20072-5 , p. 31 ( limited preview in the Google book search).