Rudolf Hammerschmidt
Rudolf Hammerschmidt (born July 19, 1853 in Dortmund , † May 14, 1922 in Bonn ) was a secret councilor, manufacturer and art collector.
Life
Rudolf Hammerschmidt was the third of five children from the marriage of Bernhard Hammerschmidt and Luise Eichelberg. His father worked as a teacher and organist and later founded a linen trade in Bielefeld . His grandfather owned a paper mill and owned shares in several weaving mills. Hammerschmidt first attended the Ratsgymnasium Bielefeld and joined his father's company after finishing school.
In 1876 he emigrated to Russia and founded the company RB Hammerschmidt Manufakturwaren en wholesale and agency on the Nevsky Prospect in Saint Petersburg . In 1882 he married Minna Elisabeth Röttger, with whom Hammerschmidt had a son Wilhelm and a daughter Louise Julie. Elisabeth Röttger was the daughter of the publisher and owner of the imperial court bookstore Karl Albrecht Röttger, for whom he also worked on the Russian Review series .
From 1894 to 1908 Hammerschmidt was the sole manager of the Newsky sewing thread factory and the cotton spinning mill of the same name, which with 230,000 fine spindles was the largest factory for fine threads in Europe. He also held stakes in the Saturn colliery in Sosnowitz in Upper Silesia and in the Narva flax manufacture in Reval in Estonia .
In 1898 the family decided to return to Germany. In the same year, Hammerschmidt agreed with the sugar manufacturer Leopold Koenig an option on his property in Bonn, which was for sale . After the property had changed hands at the end of 1899 for 700,000 gold marks and some structural changes had been made, his wife Elisabeth and their children moved into the villa in May 1900.
When Hammerschmidt followed in the spring of 1901, he was already bringing numerous art treasures with him that had been auctioned in Russia and Germany and that were magnificently increased in the following years. In addition to the villa in Bonn, which was henceforth called Villa Hammerschmidt and was bought by the Federal Republic of Germany for the seat of the Federal President in 1950 , he gave his parents the Villa Hammerschmidt in Bielefeld. He also acquired Gut Depenau near Kiel with 4,000 acres of arable land and forest , dairy and large livestock.
At the suggestion of the German ambassador in St. Petersburg, Hammerschmidt was appointed secret councilor of commerce in 1910. In 1913 he had an estimated fortune of 20 million gold marks. His current income was 900,000 gold marks. Hammerschmidt lost part of his fortune due to the Russian Revolution.
literature
- Dahlmann, Dittmar / Scheide, Carmen, "... the only country in Europe that has a great future ahead of it." German companies and entrepreneurs in the Russian Empire in the 19th and early 20th centuries , Essen 1998.
- Salentin, Ursula / Hammerschmidt, Liselotte, chronicle of Villa Hammerschmidt and its residents , Bergisch Gladbach 1991.
- Olga Sonntag : Villas on the banks of the Rhine in Bonn: 1819–1914 , ISBN 3-416-02618-7 , Volume 2, Catalog (1), Bonn 1998. (also dissertation University of Bonn, 1994)
Web links
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Hammerschmidt, Rudolf |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Secret councilor, manufacturer and art collector |
| DATE OF BIRTH | July 19, 1853 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Dortmund |
| DATE OF DEATH | May 14, 1922 |
| Place of death | Bonn |