Theodor Wille
Theodor Wille (born September 27, 1818 in Kiel , † January 9, 1892 in Hamburg ) was a German wholesale merchant, shipowner and entrepreneur.
Life
Theodor Wille was the son of a businessman. His father Anton Heinrich Wille was a co-owner of the Kiel company Diederichsen & Wille , which was active in the grain and coal trade. His mother Margarethe Dorothea, b. Harder, died shortly after his birth. In 1835 he began a commercial apprenticeship in Hamburg. He came to Brazil when he was twenty . He soon recognized the increasing importance of the coffee trade . On March 1, 1844, he founded the export company Theodor Wille & Co. and made Santos his headquarters. In doing so, he simplified the export of coffee via the port of Santos ; relocating transport routes in Great Britain , bypassing the middleman, reduced transport costs significantly and made coffee affordable in Central Europe. From August 1844 he was the first Prussian vice consul in Santos.
In 1847 he returned to Germany as a wealthy entrepreneur and further expanded his trading company in Hamburg, Kiel and Glückstadt . In Brazil, branches were added in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo . The company mainly imported coffee from Brazil and exported textiles, machines and locomotives in return.
In addition to the coffee trade, he worked in the shipping and insurance business. In 1870 he was the driving force behind the founding of the Hamburg-based Commerz- und Disconto-Bank , today's Commerzbank .
After his death, various members of the Diederichsen family, who were related by marriage to him, including Heinrich Diederichsen from 1900 , but also non-family members such as Otto Uebele in 1919, took over the company, which became one of the world's largest coffee exporters.
estate
Theodor Wille died unmarried and without descendants. At the time of his death he was one of the richest citizens of Hamburg. He bequeathed his fortune of 1.8 million gold marks, which was enormous at the time, to the city of Kiel to secure mortgage positions in order to use the interest for school purposes ..... and the University of Kiel . The magistrate was to give part of the interest to descendants of his relatives for educational purposes. The interest resulted in the Seeburg (Kiel) , the school museum, the teachers' library, the gym at Waisenhofstrasse 3 / Kleiner Kuhberg 14, the shipbuilding and mechanical engineering school and today's cityscape.
memory
The Willestrasse in Kiel was named after Theodor Wille .
He was buried in Kiel in the Südfriedhof ; his grave is maintained as an honor grave by the city of Kiel.
In 1901 Heinrich Diederichsen named the screw steamer Theodor Wille , built for his shipping company at the Thomas Turnbull and Son shipyard in Whitby , at that time it was the largest ship based in German Baltic Sea ports.
Today's company
The company Theodor Wille is a logistics company to date, however, headquartered not in Hamburg but in the Swiss train , and has mainly to supply services for the military and supply chain management specialized. In November 2015, Theodor Wille Intertrade (TWI) was taken over by the US company Atlantic Dive Supply (ADS), which mainly worked for the United States Department of Defense , but remained as a subsidiary under its own company.
literature
- Siegfried Zimmermann: Theodor Wille: 1844-1969. Hamburg: Hanseatischer Merkur 1969 (publications of the Economic History Research Center eV Hamburg 32)
- Detlef Krause: The Commerz- und Disconto-Bank 1870-1920 / 23: Bank history as system history. Stuttgart: Steiner 2004, zugl .: Berlin, Humboldt-Univ., Diss., 2003, ISBN 3-515-08486-X (Contributions to the company's history 19), esp.p. 58f.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Graves of honor in Kiel: Theodor Wille , accessed on September 1, 2016
- ↑ Willestraße - The story of a street in Kiel , accessed on August 7, 2018
- ↑ Field Q, No. 31-33
- ↑ Hansa 38 (1901), p. 381
- ↑ TWI Joins the ADS, Inc. Family , notification dated November 3, 2015, accessed on September 1, 2016
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Will, Theodor |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German wholesaler, shipowner and entrepreneur |
| DATE OF BIRTH | September 27, 1818 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Kiel |
| DATE OF DEATH | January 9, 1892 |
| Place of death | Hamburg |