Rudolph Garrigue
Rudolph Pierre Garrigue (born February 22, 1822 in Copenhagen ; † September 28, 1891 in Vienna ) was a German-American bookseller and chief insurance officer.
Life
Rudolph Garrique was one of the sons of the Huguenot merchant Jacques Louis Garrigue (1789–1854), who came from Germany and lived in Copenhagen, and his wife Cecile Olivia Duntzfelt (1798–1863), daughter of the Danish merchant Christian Vilhelm Duntzfelt (1763–1809) and granddaughter on the mother's side of the Dutch merchant Frédéric de Coninck (1740–1811). The German-American doctor Henry Jacques Garrigues (1831-1912) was a brother, the singer Malvina Schnorr von Carolsfeld was a first cousin.
Garrigue did an apprenticeship as a bookseller in the Herold & Wahlstabschen bookstore in Lüneburg . Here he met his future brother-in-law and business partner in New York City, Friedrich Wilhelm Christern (1816-1891). In the 1840s he became an employee of the F. A. Brockhaus publishing house in Leipzig , where he was chosen to explore the North American book market and the local expansion prospects for a merger of German publishing houses. His first trip to the USA in 1845 took him to the south and west. In Germany, after his return in 1846, the ambitious joint project came to an end because not enough shares were subscribed.
In 1847 he traveled again to the USA and immediately founded the Rudolph Garrigue, German bookstore in New York City. In 1852 he took on his childhood friend, colleague from Lüneburg times and now Christian brother-in-law, who had emigrated to the USA in 1850 and also started his own bookseller, as a partner. The company was changed accordingly to Garrigue & Christern . Garrigue's plan to use the English edition of Brockhausschen Bilderatlas to move from the general store to the publishing business in North America was thwarted in 1854 by a major fire in which all preparatory work, including the printing plates, was destroyed. In frustration, he left the bookselling business in New York entirely to his brother-in-law, who continued it under the F. W. Christern company until his death.
Garrigue was an active member of the German Society of the City of New York in New York and was its president from 1854 to 1856 as the successor to Gustav Schwab. Afterwards he was one of the co-founders of the fire insurance company "Germania" and from 1859 its secretary, 1864 vice-president and from 1866 until his death president of this large insurance company.
The pianist and wife of the first Czech President Charlotte Garrigue was his daughter.
literature
- Garrigue, Rudolph . In: Rudolf Schmidt: German booksellers. German book printer
- John Hruschka: How Books Came to America: The Rise of the American Book Trade . Penn State Press, 2012 (English)
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Coninck, Frédéric, 1740-1811 . In: Carl Frederik Bricka (Ed.): Dansk biografisk Lexikon. Tillige omfattende Norge for Tidsrummet 1537-1814. 1st edition. tape 4 : Clemens – Eynden . Gyldendalske Boghandels Forlag, Copenhagen 1890, p. 77 (Danish, runeberg.org ).
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Garrigue, Rudolph |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Garrigue, Rudolph Pierre (full name); Garrigue, Rudolph Peter |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German-American bookseller and director of insurance |
| DATE OF BIRTH | February 22, 1822 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Copenhagen |
| DATE OF DEATH | September 28, 1891 |
| Place of death | Vienna |