Rickmer Clasen Rickmers
Rickmer Clasen Rickmers (born January 6, 1807 on Helgoland ; † November 27, 1886 in Bremerhaven ) was a German shipyard owner, founder of the shipping company and rice merchant.
biography
Rickmers came from a family of boatmen. He was the son of the fisherman and pilot Peter Andres Rickmers and his wife Deike Rickmers , geb. Hornsmann . After finishing school, he first completed an apprenticeship as a ship carpenter on Heligoland. He then went to sea on Hamburg ships. In 1831 he married Etha Reimers in Esens , East Frisia , because the bride's father did not give his consent and the pastor on Heligoland therefore did not want to carry out the wedding. They had three sons: Andreas (1835–1924), Peter (1838–1902) and Wilhelm (Willy) (1844–1891), who continued to run the founder's company.
In 1832 he moved to Bremerhaven and worked as a foreman at the shipyard of Cornelius Jantzen Cornelius . In 1834 he started his own business and founded the RC Rickmers shipyard with its own yard. At the beginning of 1842 Rickmers bought the schooners Weser and Athene together with JHC Winkler and Blasius & Imhoff from Bremen . Both ships were intended for the transport of emigrants to North America. This finally laid the foundation stone for Rickmers Rhederei , which was later founded in 1866 . The increasing emigration to America brought an enormous boom for the shipping companies in Hamburg and Bremen / Bremerhaven after the war years of 1848/49.
In 1857 the shipyard moved to a new site with 65,000 m² in Geesthelle, a peninsula formed by a loop of the Geeste . The company now belonged to Geestemünde , but Rickmers kept the Bremerhaven shipyard until 1873. At the same time as the shipyard, Rickmers had a row of houses built for workers and employees. Between the shipyard and the workers' residential area, he built his house, the Villa Nizza , in a three- acre garden .
As early as 1870, the East Asian voyage became the focus of his shipping business. The fast sailors of the Rickmers shipping company carried millions of sacks of rice as return freight. In 1872 Rickmers took a stake in the Bremen rice company Ichon & Co. , which he took over entirely six years later. In 1884 Rickmers Reismühle was the largest company of its kind in the world.
As a technician, Rickmers developed a modern type of sailing ship that he copied from North American models. Another great success was the Rickmers sailor Rickmer Rickmers , who left the shipyard's Helgen in 1896 under construction number 92 and was named after his grandson. Since Rickmers refused to build steel ships, only wooden ships were built until his death. At the beginning of the 1850s, the Rickmers shipyard employed over 300 carpenters.
Shortly before his death, Rickmers took part in the founding of the German steam shipping company "Hansa" in Bremen, of which he was one of the main shareholders. The Geestemünder Bank (1871) was also one of his foundings . In 1872 he was appointed to the Commerce Council.
Rickmers' motto in life was "Fear God - Do right - shy nobody". When he died in 1886, the bustling entrepreneur left his three sons not only with the largest rice mill in Europe, but also with a globally active shipping and trading group. Today the Rickmers company exists in the fifth generation.
Honors
- The Rickmersstraße in Bremerhaven- Lehe was named after him and his family.
- The museum ship Rickmer Rickmers in the Port of Hamburg is named after the grandson of the company founder.
Others
- His father Peter Andres Rickmers (born April 10, 1782 on Heligoland; † May 11, 1873 in Bremerhaven) was buried in the Lehe II cemetery in Bremerhaven.
literature
- 175 years of Rickmers , Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-455-50111-7
- Rickmers-Werft and Hans Saebens (photos): 125 years of Rickmers. A book about shipbuilding and shipping . Nordwestdeutscher Verlag, Bremerhaven 1959.
- Dirk Peters: Seagoing shipbuilding in Bremerhaven from the founding of the city (1827) to the First World War . Phil. Diss. Hanover 1981.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ [1] Helgoland genealogy, family research by Kpt. Erich-Nummel Krüss, subject: Rickmer Clasen Rickmers
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Rickmers, Rickmer Clasen |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German shipyard owner |
| DATE OF BIRTH | January 6, 1807 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Heligoland |
| DATE OF DEATH | November 27, 1886 |
| Place of death | Bremerhaven |