Peter Werhahn

The title of this article is ambiguous. For other people see Peter Werhahn (disambiguation) .

Peter Werhahn (born December 2, 1842 in Neuss ; † November 23, 1922 there ) was a German banker and entrepreneur from Neuss.

Person and family

Peter Werhahn was the eldest son of Peter Wilhelm Werhahn (born March 17, 1802 in Büderich (Meerbusch) ; † May 16, 1871 in Neuss). Together with his siblings Wilhelm, Paul, Franz and Sophie, he inherited his fortune in 1871, from which they, probably to save inheritance taxes and to fulfill a promise to their father, undivided into the family business OHG Wilh, founded on the father's deathbed . Werhahn brought in, from which today's Wilh. Werhahn KG was created. This legendary Rhenish millionaire family, often referred to as the “holy family” due to their devout Catholicism in Neuss and the surrounding area , already owned a considerable fortune in the 19th century. Since Brother Paul, as a Jesuit priest and Sister Sophie, as a tertiary, were out of the question for managing the family business, Peter took over the position of his father and, together with his brothers Wilhelm and Franz, succeeded in considerably increasing the parental legacy at the beginning of the 20th century .

Companies

The focus was on the timber , land and fertilizer trade in the Neuss port, which was complemented by a sawmill and the Neuss warehouse company. Gradually, land on the Lower Rhine was acquired. First it was about individual pieces of land, then about forests, which had to be supplied for the sawmill. The Werhahns profited from the industrialization in the nearby Ruhr area and the boom phase from 1871. With the upswing of the steel industry in the Ruhr, the demand for wood for tunnel lining and housing construction grew rapidly. Also field fire stones and briquettes were always better discontinued. With the rapidly growing population, the need for food also grew, which, thanks to the import of guano and saltpeter , had to be grown on an even larger scale in the Lower Rhine region. There was also good business to be made with flour , cheap fat , curd soap and legumes , without requiring such immense investments as those made by the big industrialists on the Ruhr. The economist Kurt Pritzkoleit compared Peter Werhahn both with the medieval Augsburg trading house Fugger , as well as with that "man who goes with the heap of gold diggers - not to dig nuggets or to swing the sieve, but to the pioneers hoe and shovel, wood to sell flour, beans, salt and schnapps for the construction of their huts or even just for the fire in the tent and thus in the long run more profitable, in any case a completely safe business ” .

With the growth of the timber trade and the expansion of the sawmill and planing mill, the Werhahns also took advantage of the rising timber prices beyond the Lower Rhine. At first, forests were bought in Bavaria, then Poland and Slavonia came into view. Peter Werhahn owned a season ticket with the First Danube Steamship Company , with which he toured the Balkans . He visited Ukraine by night train and horse and cart . With the growing profits from the timber trade, Werhahn bought a flour mill in Neuss; the grain and fertilizer trade was expanded, later the Werhahn & Nauen oil mill was added.

In the Neusser Königstr. In 84 Peter Werhahn opened under the Wilh company . Werhahn a bank that primarily gave family members the opportunity to invest their earned money and not have to entrust it to third parties. At the same time, the family clan reduced the opportunity for outsiders to gain insight into the profitability and financing of the company.

In 1904, on Peter Werhahn's initiative, the OHG Wilh took part. Wehrhahn on the Mayen Slate operation , Rathscheck Mine Katzenberg with 50%, of which they are involved today.

In the Prussian “Yearbook of Millionaires” from 1912, Peter Werhahn was named as “banker and mill owner” with a personal fortune of 14 to 15 million and a taxed annual income of just over one million gold marks. His younger brother Franz was there with a fortune of 3 to 4 million and an annual income of 180,000 gold marks as “co-owner of the Wilh. Werhahn as well as the sawmill and planing mill and the rolling mill Wilh. Werhahn in Neuss ”. As “Chairman of the Schallmauer union in Frechen near Cologne and the Register coal works union in Regis near Leipzig , as chairman of the supervisory board of Neusser Dampfmühlen AG , Duisburger Lagerhaus-Gesellschaft, Novesia-Brauerei GmbH in Neuss, and as deputy chairman of the supervisory board of Gillbacher Zuckerfabrik AG , AG Hotel Disch in Cologne, also member of the supervisory board of Braunkohlen- und Briquettwerke Roddergrube AG in Brühl , the Humboldt trade union in Wallensen , the Vaterländische Versicherungsgesellschaft in Elberfeld , the WKV Warenkredit-Anstalt in Cologne, the Rhineland Fire Insurance Company in Neuss (today's RheinLand Insurance AG), the Clarenberg AG for the coal and clay industry in Frechen near Cologne and the GmbH Wachtberg I Braunkohlenwerke also in Frechen ” , the same source names other significant business interests of Peter Werhahn.

The Werhahn's real estate holdings in Cologne alone were given as 39 houses, including numerous commercial buildings in the best inner-city locations, a few villas and 17 workers' barracks on Stammheimer Strasse. The millionaires yearbook already mentioned stated the value of real estate in Cologne alone at 7 to 8 million gold marks. According to the same source, further properties worth around 10 million gold marks were added in the capital of Berlin , including properties on Friedrichstrasse and Unter den Linden .

One of the companies that was so typical of Berlin for decades was that of the later Privy Councilor of Commerce, Carl Bolle , who with tireless diligence had practically created the legendary C. Bolle dairy from the smallest of beginnings . This had extensive warehouses and the dairy horse-drawn carriages, which were so typical of Berlin at the time, around which many Berlin anecdotes and many a song are based. The dairy thus supplied almost one hundred thousand Berlin households with 50 million liters of milk a year. With a capital of less than 6 million gold marks, Bolle achieved a net profit of one million in 1910. When Bolle died unexpectedly in the same year and his quarreling heirs were unable to continue the business, OHG Wilh took over in 1911. Werhahn the dairy together with its not insignificant real estate. The position was strengthened through the takeover of the Berlin competitor “Vereinigte Pommersche Meiereien” and the “Schweizerhof Meiereien” . The real estate owned by the Berlin dairy farm C. Bolle, which was not yet included in the above figures in the millionaire's handbook, became the starting point for the Berlin supermarket chain Bolle in the post-war period. Werhahn added the sweets chain " Minota " and the " Neue Welt " restaurants in Berlin's Hasenheide .

After Peter Werhahn's death, Wilhelm Werhahn successfully continued the family business, which can be considered an example of Rhenish capitalism .

literature

• Bernt Engelmann : Die Macht am Rhein , Volume 1: The old wealth , Munich 1968, ISBN 3-423-00830-X

Individual evidence

1. ^ Descendants (total) of Andreas Theodor Werhahn. largely based on research by Monika Borisch. Hans Pettelkau, October 20, 2010, accessed January 6, 2012 . 
2. ↑ M. Borisch: Our ancestors and their relatives: Andreas Theodor WERHAHN. rootsweb, January 16, 2006, accessed March 28, 2012 . 
3. ↑ dr-wo.de
4. ↑ ^{a b} Engelmann, p. 171
5. ↑ Engelmann, p. 170
6. ↑ 200 years of the Middle Lower Rhine Chamber of Commerce and Industry - tradition obliges ( Memento from November 17, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
7. ↑ werhahn.de ( Memento of the original from April 1, 2009 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. 
8. ↑ Engelmann, p. 172
9. ↑ Engelmann, pp. 173f
10. ↑ Engelmann, p. 174f
11. ↑ Engelmann, p. 177