August Behn

Theodor August Behn (born December 23, 1816 in Hamburg ; † June 5, 1886 there ) was a German shipowner and businessman .

Live and act

August Behn was the second born of the four sons of the Hamburg merchant August Wilhelm Behn and his Swedish wife Annette Marie, née Hellgren. His mother died at the age of 32 on July 6, 1824 when he was only seven and a half years old. His father was a co-founder of the company Köster & Behn , which dealt with the import of colonial goods and the export of wool and yarn. He drowned on the night of November 3rd to 4th, 1824 on his return from a business trip to London, when the brig Marie, led by his brother, was stranded in a hurricane in the Elbe estuary on the Knechtsand near the island of Neuwerk, together with crew and passengers except for one man who were swept away by a great wave. August and his three brothers became orphans. Her father's friends raised 20,000 marks, the interest of which was to finance their upbringing. Guardianship was taken over by the former employee of his father's company, businessman Gottlieb Heinrich Lutze, who came from Saxony, and Senator Martin Hieronymus Hudtwalcker .

Behn initially lived with a distant relative in Harburg for three years before his guardians gave him a pension at Hermann Siegmund Lütkens' private school. The school with its headquarters at Alten Wandrahm was attended by many sons of wealthy merchants and enjoyed a good reputation, especially because of the learned disciplines of arithmetic and languages, which are important for future merchants. Behn made friends with the children of wealthy Hamburg families, including the well-known families Merck, Meyer, Mutzenbecher, Weber, Berckemeyer and Möhring. Here he also met Valentin Lorenz Meyer , whose father was a Hamburg senator and wine merchant. Behn and Meyer later worked together as business partners. Behn lived in the Lütken private school for five years (1828–1833) in retirement.

The religious senator Hudtwalcker wanted Behn to study theology. His ward therefore attended the Johanneum's school of scholars from Easter 1830 . Behn received bad grades there and expressed the desire to become a businessman. That is why he switched back to the private school in Lütkens a year later, where he was Primus or Secundus in most classes . On March 28, 1833, Behn was confirmed in the Catharinenkirche . At Easter 1833 he started a commercial apprenticeship at the Gorrissen & Lutze company, which after the death of his father had taken over the business relationships of the Köster & Behn company and carried out goods commission business, and he moved to the apartment of his teacher GH Lutze at Besenbinderhof. Since the relationship with his teacher was not the best, the other company owner, Consul Georg Carpzow Gorrissen, took him in the following year. After only four of the required five years of apprenticeship, Consul Gorrissen found him a position as first clerk at the important company Joh. Lange Sohn's Wwe. & Co. in Bremen for an annual salary of 500 thalers. The company, which had twelve sailing ships, belonged to the consul Wilhelm Ludwig Oelrich (1770–1850) and the elder and later Senator Carl Friedrich Ludwig Hartlaub (1792–1874) at that time. Behn took up the position in Bremen at Easter 1837. His main tasks consisted in keeping the stock books and the German and English correspondence, in which he quickly familiarized himself.

In December 1838, Oelrich and Hartlaub made him an offer to take over the position of supercargo for the sailing ship Heloise and two other ships that were sailing with him. The trip was to go to British India and China . After a few days to think about it and after consulting Consul Gorrissen, Behn accepted the offer and landed in Singapore on July 5, 1839 . The First Opium War , which had broken out shortly before , unexpectedly offered Behn good business opportunities: since ships flying the English flag were not allowed to call at Whampoa , the port of the Chinese city of Canton , Behn and his three sailors took over the transport of Indian cotton from Singapore to Canton. Since the Bremen flag was not known in Canton, Behn sailed under the Hamburg flag and was able to sail unmolested up the Pearl River to Whampoa and deliver the cargo to the American company Russel & Co. With Heloise he returned to Singapore via Manila and had earned the capital contribution for the company he wanted to open in Singapore with this trade.

As early as July 1839, Behn had written to his agent, Consul Gorrissen in Hamburg, to have his school friend Valentin Lorenz Meyer sign the partnership agreement. This happened on April 3, 1840 in Hamburg. On November 1, 1840, Valentin Lorenz Meyer arrived in Singapore with some money from his father. This day is considered the official founding day of Behn, Meyer & Co. , which at that time was the only German trading company in Singapore. Since Behn and Meyer worked well together, one of the two always traveled while the other business partner did business in Singapore. From 1841 to 1846 they chartered sailing ships with which Behn three and Meyer made two crossings to China. Furthermore, both drove once to Batavia , Sumatra , North Celebes and New Guinea . During business trips, they bought products from the countries they visited and sold goods made in Europe. In the years 1841 and 1842 Behn, Meyer & Co. made net profits of 30,000 marks each  .

On April 18, 1842, Behn asked for the hand of his daughter Caroline Meyer, the sister of his business partner, in a letter from Singapore addressed to Senator Meyer. He said yes nine months later. On October 21, 1843, Behn returned to his hometown. He then traveled through Europe for nine months in order to establish new business contacts. After taking the Hamburg citizen oath on July 26, 1844 , he married Caroline Pauline Elisabeth Meyer (1818-1854) on August 7, 1844. The wedding took place in the country house of Behn's father-in-law in Hamm . On September 4, 1844, Behn and his wife left Hamburg on the Danish sailor Indianeren for Singapore, which they reached on December 28 of the same year. Behn and Meyer successfully cooperated there until the end of 1848, until Meyer traveled back to Hamburg at the end of 1848. Presumably due to differences regarding the future business direction, Meyer wrote to his business partner in October 1849 that he would be leaving the joint company at the end of the same year. Meyer then continued the business of Behn, Meyer & Co. in Hamburg from January 1, 1850. In mid-1852, Behn also returned to Hamburg to take Meyer's place and to look after the interests of Behn, Meyer & Co. in Hamburg. Friedrich Albert Schreiber and Arnold Otto Meyer , a younger brother of Valentin Lorenz Meyers, took over the management of the company in Singapore . Behn reserved the right to leave the company until the end of 1856. The Hamburg sailing ship Singapore , acquired together with Meyer, was to be transferred to Behn. On July 1, 1852, Behn founded the August Behn company in Hamburg , with which he operated a shipping company.

On December 31, 1856, Behn gave his shares in Behn, Meyer & Co. in Singapore and the trading company in Hamburg. At the time of leaving the company, Behn could be considered rich. In May 1857 he donated 500  Straits dollars each to charities in Singapore. In Hamburg he worked as a shipowner until 1879 and ran a small shipyard in Övelgönne . In 1862 his company had ten ships that could load a total of 1811 Commerzlasten . In 1872 Behn acquired shares in the German Transatlantic Steamship Company, the so-called Adler Line, which was later taken over by HAPAG .

August Behn lived in a house at Alte Gröningerstraße 30. Around 1863 he bought a large piece of land at today's Liebermannstraße 19 in Othmarschen . In 1864 Behn had a two-story house built in Gothic style and a park-like garden laid out here. In 1882 the property was bought by the Senator and later Mayor Dr. Johannes Christian Eugen Lehmann acquired.

August Behn, who suffered from depression towards the end of his life, died on June 5, 1886 in his hometown. The companies he co-founded in Singapore and Hamburg still exist today as Behn Meyer Holding AG.

voluntary work

In addition to his professional activities, Behn did volunteer work: During his time in Singapore he took over the office of the Bremen consul in 1843 and on February 2, 1844 he became consul of Hamburg. From 1851 he also took over the Prussian consulate in Singapore. From 1857 to 1861 he acted as a commercial judge and from 1870 to 1872 as a judge at the Hamburg Higher Court.

Behn also repeatedly called for a German society for the classification of ships to be established. Due to his commitment, Germanischer Lloyd was founded in 1867 .

family

Six children were born from his marriage to Caroline Pauline Elisabeth Meyer, who died on June 18, 1854 at the age of 35. On July 17, 1857, Behn married Therese Sieveking (1818–1869) in Ottensen, who gave birth to seven children. In his third and last marriage, he married Eleonore Henriette Catharina Wendt (* 1848, † 1926) in Hamburg on August 14, 1872, with whom he had two daughters.

literature

• Claus Gossler: Behn, Theodor August . In: Franklin Kopitzsch, Dirk Brietzke (Hrsg.): Hamburgische Biographie . tape 4 . Wallstein, Göttingen 2008, ISBN 978-3-8353-0229-7 , pp. 39-41 .
• Dr. phil. Ernst Hieke (Ed.): On the history of the companies Behn, Meyer & Co. founded in Singapore on November 1, 1840 and Arnold Otto Meyer founded in Hamburg on June 1, 1857 (=  publications by the Wirtschaftsgeschichtliche Forschungsstelle e.V., Hamburg . tape 19 ). Hans Christians Verlag, Hamburg 1957.
• Paul Theodor Hoffmann: The Elbchaussee: Your country seats, people and fates . 7th revised and supplemented edition. Broschek Verlag, Hamburg 1966, DNB  457014199 .
• Dr. jur. Bernhard Koerner (Hrsg.): German gender book (Genealogisches Handbuch Bürgerlicher Familien) . tape 21 . (Third Hamburg band.). Verlag von CA Starke, Görlitz 1912, DNB  010007776 , p. 12 ff . ( Digitized in the Internet Archive [accessed December 22, 2015]).
• Dr. Otto Mathies: Hamburg's shipping company 1814–1914 . L. Friedrichsen & Co., Hamburg 1924, DNB  366593625 .
• Peter Dietrich Wilhelm Tonnies (Ed.): Chronicle of the Hamburg sea insurance business in 1824 . Accompanied by several related articles. FH Nestler, Hamburg 1825, p. 39–42 and 138 ( digitized from Google Books [accessed December 22, 2015]).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} See Koerner 1912, p. 12ff
2. ↑ ^{a b c} See Hieke 1957, p. 51
3. ↑ See Gossler 2008, p. 39
4. ↑ See Koerner 1912, p. 6
5. ↑ See Tonnies 1825, pp. 39–42
6. ↑ ^{a b c d e} See Hieke 1957, p. 52
7. ↑ ^{a b} See Hieke 1957, p. 53
8. ↑ See Hieke 1957, p. 54
9. ↑ A supercargo is an agent who accompanies a shipload on behalf of its sender and owner to the sales ports in order to sell it here and also to buy a return freight for the proceeds. Cf. Meyers Konversationslexikon , Volume 9, Page 508, Verlag des Bibliographisches Institut, Leipzig and Vienna, 1885-1892
10. ↑ See Hieke 1957, pp. 54f
11. ↑ See Hieke 1957, p. 59f
12. ↑ See Hieke 1957, p. 61
13. ↑ See Hieke 1957, pp. 69ff
14. ↑ See Hieke 1957, pp. 75ff
15. ↑ See Hieke 1957, p. 86f
16. ↑ See Hieke 1957, pp. 90f
17. ↑ See Hieke 1957, p. 105 ff.
18. ↑ See Mathies 1924, p. 69.
19. ↑ ^{a b} See Gossler 2008, p. 41
20. ↑ See Paul Th. Hoffmann 1966, p. 111
21. ↑ Jürgen Hoffmann Trading company with roots in the tiger state World Online from December 27, 2009. Accessed October 5, 2015.
22. ↑ GStA PK, I. HA Rep. 81 Consulate General Bremen after 1807, No. 60 (order to Delius of April 5, 1851)

Web links

• History of the company on the website of the Behn Meyer Group, English
• Behn Meyer in the Wer-zu-Whom company directory