Peter Wilhelm Werhahn

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Peter Wilhelm Werhahn , also Peter Guilleaume Werhahn , (born March 17, 1802 in Büderich ; † May 16, 1871 in Neuss ) was a timber merchant and sawmill owner in Büderich and Neuss. He established the rise of the Werhahn family to one of the most influential entrepreneurial families in the Rhineland .

Life

Peter Guilleaume Werhahn was of rural origin. He was born in 1802 on the Dyckhof , an estate near Büderich, which his father had leased at the time and bought a few years later. As a young man, Peter Wilhelm Werhahn moved to Neuss and married Magdalene Kallen, a daughter of the Neuss patrician family Kallen, who were related to all the influential Neuss families, including the later Cologne Cardinal Archbishop Josef Frings . The strictly Catholic couple fathered four sons, Peter, Wilhelm, Franz and Paul and a daughter, Sophie.

Initially, Werhahn traded “grave monuments at an extremely cheap rate of 12 Thalers and up”. He supplemented this by trading in wood from his own forest . Thanks to hard work and thrift, a sawmill was added over the years . The company has been rounded off by a land trade with grain and imported fertilizers : guano from Peru and saltpetre from Chile .

When he died, he left his children with a sizable business. Even on their deathbed, he made them promise to multiply this undividedly together, which they had achieved by founding the oHG Wilh. Werhahn (now Wilh. Werhahn KG ). His eldest son Peter Werhahn took over the position of his father and used the opportunity resulting from the boom after the victory in the Franco-German War in the founding years .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Descendants (total) of Andreas Theodor Werhahn. largely based on research by Monika Borisch. Hans Pettelkau, October 20, 2010, archived from the original on December 2, 2013 ; accessed on August 23, 2020 .
  2. ↑ M. Borisch: Our ancestors and their relatives: Andreas Theodor WERHAHN. rootsweb, January 16, 2006, accessed March 28, 2012 .
  3. ^ Entrepreneur with a sense of art ( Memento from September 26, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  4. ^ Historical association for the Lower Rhine, especially the old archdiocese of Cologne (ed.): Annals of the historical association for the Lower Rhine, especially the old archdiocese of Cologne . No. 200 . L. Röhrscheid, 1997.
  5. ↑ Kurt Pritzkoleit: Men, Powers, Monopolies: Behind the Doors of the West German Economy . No. 81 . Rauch, 1963.
  6. ↑ Bernt Engelmann: The power on the Rhine, Volume 1: The old wealth. Munich 1968, ISBN 3-423-00830-X , p. 169.
personal data
SURNAME Werhahn, Peter Wilhelm
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Werhahn, Peter Guilleaume
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German timber merchant and sawmill owner
DATE OF BIRTH March 17, 1802
PLACE OF BIRTH Buderich
DATE OF DEATH May 16, 1871
Place of death Neuss