Georg Heinrich Sieveking
Encyclopedia
Georg Heinrich Sieveking (1 January 1751 in Hamburg
, Germany
– 25 January 1799 in Hamburg, Germany) was a German merchant
and follower of the Enlightenment
. Together with his friend and business partner, Caspar Voght
, he led one of the largest trading firms in the Hanseatic League
during the second half of the 18th century. On 14 July 1790, the first anniversary of the Storming of the Bastille
, a freedom celebration organized by Sieveking occurred in Harvestehude, a neighborhood of Hamburg, which received attention far beyond the city. In 1796, a few years before his death, Sieveking succeeded in abolishing the 1793 Hamburg-imposed Embargo
es against Paris.
, and his grandfather was Ahasver Hinrich (1668–1729) the First, who entered the merchant's trade by founding a business that specialised in trading linen in Versmold. His son Peter Niclaes (1718–1763) followed him in the cloth trade, but went to Hamburg, where he became a citizen in 1747. Only 2 years later he married Catharina Margaretha Büsch, the daughter of a wine merchant who had come to Hamburg from Lüneburg
, whose brother Georg Heinrich Büsch had risen to become a Senator of Hamburg. Her first son, born in 1751, was named after him. In accordance with family tradition, he was designated to enter the merchant business, which actually also suited him due to his mathematical talent. Together with his brother Heinrich Christian Sieveking, who was a year younger, he was taught by a private tutor, until both were sent to hear the mathematics lectures of Johann Georg Büsch at the Hamburg commercial academy in 1764.
Instead of concentrating on a specific sector of trade, Voght und Sieveking traded a wide range of goods, on the basis of a broad spectrum of clients. The focus of their import business was initially on the ports of the French Atlantic coast and of England, but already with the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War, ships of the firm from the ports of the American East Coast laden with tobacco, rice and indigo arrived in the Hanseatic city. Voght stated of himself: "Ich war der erste Hamburger Kaufmann, der aus Mocca Kaffee, aus Baltimore Toback, aus Surinam Kaffee, aus Afrika Gummi holte" ("I was the first Hamburg businessman to bring coffee from Mocha
, tobacco from Baltimore
, coffee from Suriname
, rubber from Africa
"). It was Georg Heinrich Sieveking, however, who was the real driving force behind the business, which was run jointly until 1793. Whilst Voght crossed all of Europe on his extensive travels, his partner Sieveking took care of running the business in Hamburg mostly on his own. Voght himself underlined this fact, when he wrote in a letter to all business partners in July 1793 that his friend had been the sole decision-maker of the firm for some years ("le seul gérant de notre commerce").
and Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock
, whom they gushingly admired as the composer of the Messias. Sieveking further developed his Enlightenment ideas as a Freemason in the Hamburg Lodge "St. Georg zur grünenden Fichte" ("St George of the verdant spruce), and became its Worshipful Master in 1789. In a speech at the Lodge on freedom he already in 1777 advanced a moderated concept of freedom:
Sieveking and his friends saw their ideals put into practice when the French Revolution
started in 1789, at least until the revolutionary idea of freedom was taken to absurd lengths by the Terreur of Robespierre.
, praised it in his "Patriot Français" – but remained without consequence for the political culture of Hamburg. The Senate of Hamburg did not take account of it, and Sauveur Joseph Gandolphe, the French chargé d'affaires in Hamburg, declined to attend, claiming that "the celebration in Harvestehude could have led to the excitement of a population that was at this point the calmest in all of Europe". He even suspected merely commercial motives in Sievekings and Voght's activities. The firm had greatly profited from grain exports to France, and Gandolphe suspected that the celebration of Harvestehude had merely been staged to please the French and pave the way for further exchanges.
, and shipping them to France from there. The relations between the Hamburgers and France, until then the city's most important trading partner by far, were still strong despite the prohibitions: this provoked the ire of Austria
and its ally, Prussia
. In February 1793 the Lower Saxonian circle, led by Prussia, and supported by the imperial envoy Binder von Kriegelstein, demanded the expulsion of the French envoy in Hamburg, François Le Hoc. At the end of 1792, he had founded a reading society in Hamburg with the journalist Friedrich Wilhelm von Schütz on the model of the Jacobin club of Mainz, of which Sieveking had been elected president, and for this reason alone was suspected of incitement. When the Hamburg Senate finally submitted to the pressure and expelled Le Hoc, he cancelled the trade treaty concluded between Hamburg and Paris in 1789 in his letter of protest. Furthermore, the National Convention
ordered the confiscation of all Hamburg ships in French ports and imposed a trade embargo on the Hanseatic city. Although the embargo was subsequently imposed quite mildly by the French, and the Hamburg merchants continued to do everything they could to circumvent the German prohibition via Altona, the volume of trade between Hamburg and France declined drastically.
Already in March 1795, the Hamburg Chamber of Commerce had therefore raised the idea of a special envoy to Paris, in order to reverse the embargo. Due to his high standing in Paris, Sieveking was the obvious choice, and he arrived in Paris as special envoy on the night of 31 March 1796 with his delegation, which included the President of the Hamburg Cathedral chapter
Friedrich Johann Lorenz Meyer. There, a period of relative political stability had returned, after the crushing of the anti-revolutionary uprising of 13 Vendémaire (5 October 1795) by Napoleon and Paul de Barras. On 12 April 1796 Sieveking was granted an audience with the French Directory
, where a solution to the conflict could not be reached, however. His plan to support France's finances by raising the exchange rate for the mostly devalued assignat
s was rejected by the French as insufficient, and by the Hamburg Senate as impossible. On 27 April Sieveking received 300 000 Marks from the Hamburg Chamber of Commerce to be used at his own discretion, and he did not hesitate to in using it to bribe Barras and other powerful figures of the Republic. In May 1796, after a meeting with the French finance minister Ramel-Nogaret, a fortunate turn of events occurred. The Directory ratified a treaty on 14 June 1796 which provided for the payment of 13 million livres, which Sieveking guaranteed personally. That same evening, Barras met with Sieveking, and told him: "Votre affaire est finie" ("Your business here is finished"). The official signing took place ten days later, and a worried Sieveking wrote to Hamburg the same day: "ob ich das Opfer meines Patriotismus sein werde, das werden meine Mitbürger entscheiden" ("whether I shall be the victim of my own patriotism, that will be for my fellow citizens to decide"). But his fears proved unfounded. On his return in July 1796, Sieveking was received with honours. In his report before the assembled members of the chamber of commerce he said that this moment was one of the finest and most important of his life and claimed: "Ich schwöre es bei Ihrer Achtung, bei meiner Ehre, ich habe Hamburg gerettet" (I swear by your esteem, by my honour, I have saved Hamburg").
wrote in a letter: "The memory of the deceased will surely remain unforgettable amongst all his friends, and surely few have had the good luck to be so generally and sincerely pitied and missed". The firm of Sieveking was only able to survive the great Hamburg trade depression of 1799 with difficulty, but then went bankrupt in the course of the Continental System
and was dissolved in April 1811.
Hamburg
-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...
, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
– 25 January 1799 in Hamburg, Germany) was a German merchant
Merchant
A merchant is a businessperson who trades in commodities that were produced by others, in order to earn a profit.Merchants can be one of two types:# A wholesale merchant operates in the chain between producer and retail merchant...
and follower of the Enlightenment
Age of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment was an elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted intellectual interchange and opposed intolerance and abuses in church and state...
. Together with his friend and business partner, Caspar Voght
Caspar Voght
Caspar Voght , later Caspar Reichsfreiherr von Voght , was a German merchant and social reformer from Hamburg...
, he led one of the largest trading firms in the Hanseatic League
Hanseatic League
The Hanseatic League was an economic alliance of trading cities and their merchant guilds that dominated trade along the coast of Northern Europe...
during the second half of the 18th century. On 14 July 1790, the first anniversary of the Storming of the Bastille
Storming of the Bastille
The storming of the Bastille occurred in Paris on the morning of 14 July 1789. The medieval fortress and prison in Paris known as the Bastille represented royal authority in the centre of Paris. While the prison only contained seven inmates at the time of its storming, its fall was the flashpoint...
, a freedom celebration organized by Sieveking occurred in Harvestehude, a neighborhood of Hamburg, which received attention far beyond the city. In 1796, a few years before his death, Sieveking succeeded in abolishing the 1793 Hamburg-imposed Embargo
Embargo
An embargo is the partial or complete prohibition of commerce and trade with a particular country, in order to isolate it. Embargoes are considered strong diplomatic measures imposed in an effort, by the imposing country, to elicit a given national-interest result from the country on which it is...
es against Paris.
Family and early life
His father's side of the family came from WestphaliaWestphalia
Westphalia is a region in Germany, centred on the cities of Arnsberg, Bielefeld, Dortmund, Minden and Münster.Westphalia is roughly the region between the rivers Rhine and Weser, located north and south of the Ruhr River. No exact definition of borders can be given, because the name "Westphalia"...
, and his grandfather was Ahasver Hinrich (1668–1729) the First, who entered the merchant's trade by founding a business that specialised in trading linen in Versmold. His son Peter Niclaes (1718–1763) followed him in the cloth trade, but went to Hamburg, where he became a citizen in 1747. Only 2 years later he married Catharina Margaretha Büsch, the daughter of a wine merchant who had come to Hamburg from Lüneburg
Lüneburg
Lüneburg is a town in the German state of Lower Saxony. It is located about southeast of fellow Hanseatic city Hamburg. It is part of the Hamburg Metropolitan Region, and one of Hamburg's inner suburbs...
, whose brother Georg Heinrich Büsch had risen to become a Senator of Hamburg. Her first son, born in 1751, was named after him. In accordance with family tradition, he was designated to enter the merchant business, which actually also suited him due to his mathematical talent. Together with his brother Heinrich Christian Sieveking, who was a year younger, he was taught by a private tutor, until both were sent to hear the mathematics lectures of Johann Georg Büsch at the Hamburg commercial academy in 1764.
The firm Voght & Sieveking
On 1 August 1766 Sieveking joined the firm of the Hamburg Senator Voght as an apprentice. During his apprentice period he proved himself so diligent that Voght granted him a stake in the firm in 1771, alongside his own son, Caspar. After the Senator's death in 1781, they both continued the business of the firm together, at first under the name "Caspar Voght & Co.", then, after 1788, as "Voght und Sieveking". By Sieveking's 40th birthday on 28 January 1791, Voght had granted him a third of all profits, later he granted him one half. On 1 July 1793, Caspar Voght transferred all activitied to Sieveking, apart from the trade with America, and dedicated himself to other pursuits.Instead of concentrating on a specific sector of trade, Voght und Sieveking traded a wide range of goods, on the basis of a broad spectrum of clients. The focus of their import business was initially on the ports of the French Atlantic coast and of England, but already with the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War, ships of the firm from the ports of the American East Coast laden with tobacco, rice and indigo arrived in the Hanseatic city. Voght stated of himself: "Ich war der erste Hamburger Kaufmann, der aus Mocca Kaffee, aus Baltimore Toback, aus Surinam Kaffee, aus Afrika Gummi holte" ("I was the first Hamburg businessman to bring coffee from Mocha
Mocha, Yemen
Mocha or Mokha is a port city on the Red Sea coast of Yemen. Until it was eclipsed in the 19th century by Aden and Hodeida, Mocha was the principal port for Yemen's capital Sana'a.-Overview:...
, tobacco from Baltimore
Baltimore
Baltimore is the largest independent city in the United States and the largest city and cultural center of the US state of Maryland. The city is located in central Maryland along the tidal portion of the Patapsco River, an arm of the Chesapeake Bay. Baltimore is sometimes referred to as Baltimore...
, coffee from Suriname
Suriname
Suriname , officially the Republic of Suriname , is a country in northern South America. It borders French Guiana to the east, Guyana to the west, Brazil to the south, and on the north by the Atlantic Ocean. Suriname was a former colony of the British and of the Dutch, and was previously known as...
, rubber from Africa
Africa
Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...
"). It was Georg Heinrich Sieveking, however, who was the real driving force behind the business, which was run jointly until 1793. Whilst Voght crossed all of Europe on his extensive travels, his partner Sieveking took care of running the business in Hamburg mostly on his own. Voght himself underlined this fact, when he wrote in a letter to all business partners in July 1793 that his friend had been the sole decision-maker of the firm for some years ("le seul gérant de notre commerce").
Friends and Freemasonry
From an early age, Sieveking had shown a great interest in literature. Alongside his childhood friends Johann Michael Hudtwalcker (born 1747) and Caspar Voght (born 1752) he composed poetry and prose, and performed plays with Hudtwalcker's sisters. Sieveking's wife Johanna Magdalena Sieveking (née Reimarus) maintained a literary salon in Hamburg, which represented similar ideas. Some of the greatest role models of this circle around Sieveking were Gotthold Ephraim LessingGotthold Ephraim Lessing
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing was a German writer, philosopher, dramatist, publicist, and art critic, and one of the most outstanding representatives of the Enlightenment era. His plays and theoretical writings substantially influenced the development of German literature...
and Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock
Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock
Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock was a German poet.-Biography:Klopstock was born at Quedlinburg, the eldest son of a lawyer.Both in his birthplace and on the estate of Friedeburg on the Saale, which his father later rented, young Klopstock passed a happy childhood; and more attention having been given...
, whom they gushingly admired as the composer of the Messias. Sieveking further developed his Enlightenment ideas as a Freemason in the Hamburg Lodge "St. Georg zur grünenden Fichte" ("St George of the verdant spruce), and became its Worshipful Master in 1789. In a speech at the Lodge on freedom he already in 1777 advanced a moderated concept of freedom:
"Lawlessness is precisely what freedom is not: Even the noble Architect of the great Universe, the most free of all Beings, is governed in all His actions by the eternal and immutable laws of beauty, wisdom and strength, of order and harmony. He is free who is guided by sensible reasons and not by outside force. Freedom in the state does not mean independence from the laws, but safety from unreasonable laws and arbitrary interference in our rights by the authorities."
"Freiheit ist eben nicht Gesetzlosigkeit: Selbst der erhabene Baumeister des großen Weltalls, der das freieste aller Wesen ist, wird in jeder seiner Handlungen durch die ewigen, unveränderlichen Gesetze der Schönheit, Weisheit und Stärke, der Ordnung und Harmonie regiert. Frei ist der, welcher in seiner Wahl durch vernünftige Gründe und nicht durch fremde Gewalt bestimmt ist. Freiheit im Staate heißt nicht Unabhängigkeit von den Gesetzen, sondern Sicherheit vor unvernünftigen Gesetzen und eigenmächtigen Eingriffen der Obrigkeit in unsere Rechte".
Sieveking and his friends saw their ideals put into practice when the French Revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
started in 1789, at least until the revolutionary idea of freedom was taken to absurd lengths by the Terreur of Robespierre.
Freedom celebration in Harvestehude
Whilst the first anniversary of the storming of the Bastille was celebrated in Paris on the Champ de Mars, in Harvestehude in front of the gates of Hamburg a freedom festival took place, organized by Georg Heinrich Sieveking. The most prominent amongst the 80 guests were Adolph Freiherr Knigge and Sieveking's idol Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock.
Reactions
The celebration caused a furore far beyond the borders of Hamburg – even the leader of the Girondists, Jacques Pierre BrissotJacques Pierre Brissot
Jacques Pierre Brissot , who assumed the name of de Warville, was a leading member of the Girondist movement during the French Revolution. Some sources give his name as Jean Pierre Brissot.-Biography:...
, praised it in his "Patriot Français" – but remained without consequence for the political culture of Hamburg. The Senate of Hamburg did not take account of it, and Sauveur Joseph Gandolphe, the French chargé d'affaires in Hamburg, declined to attend, claiming that "the celebration in Harvestehude could have led to the excitement of a population that was at this point the calmest in all of Europe". He even suspected merely commercial motives in Sievekings and Voght's activities. The firm had greatly profited from grain exports to France, and Gandolphe suspected that the celebration of Harvestehude had merely been staged to please the French and pave the way for further exchanges.
An meine Mitbürger
After the Revolution in France had grown increasingly radicalised and the French King Louis XVI had been executed in January 1793, Sieveking came under increasing pressure in Hamburg. He finally countered the accusation that he was a Jacobin with an open letter with the title An meine Mitbürger ("To my fellow citizens"), in which he strongly denied having been pleased at the King's death. At the same time he condemned the excesses of the Revolution as "anarchy, intrigues, disobedience of the law, irreligiosity, cruelty and murder", but did not declare himself fundamentally opposed to the principles of the Revolution, based on the ideas of the Enlightenment. His business partner Voght, on the other hand, went further: he later accepted the title of "Baron" and argued for a restriction of the freedom of the press. In a letter to Magdalene Pauli, Voght wrote soberly in 1794: "Wie ein entzückender Traum schweben die Jahre 89 und 90 vor meiner Seele. Ich bin schrecklich erwacht." ("The years 89 and 90 hover before my soul like a delightful dream. I have awakened terribly.")Imperial war, Le Hoc's expulsion and the embargo
When the War of the First Coalition (1792–1797) against France was officially declared an imperial war, restrictions came into force for the trade between Hamburg and France. Specifically the export of grain and meat, which were vital for the war, was prohibited. A number of merchants – including Sieveking – attempted to circumvent this rule by transporting their goods to the Danish port of AltonaAltona, Hamburg
Altona is the westernmost urban borough of the German city state of Hamburg, on the right bank of the Elbe river. From 1640 to 1864 Altona was under the administration of the Danish monarchy. Altona was an independent city until 1937...
, and shipping them to France from there. The relations between the Hamburgers and France, until then the city's most important trading partner by far, were still strong despite the prohibitions: this provoked the ire of Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
and its ally, Prussia
Prussia
Prussia was a German kingdom and historic state originating out of the Duchy of Prussia and the Margraviate of Brandenburg. For centuries, the House of Hohenzollern ruled Prussia, successfully expanding its size by way of an unusually well-organized and effective army. Prussia shaped the history...
. In February 1793 the Lower Saxonian circle, led by Prussia, and supported by the imperial envoy Binder von Kriegelstein, demanded the expulsion of the French envoy in Hamburg, François Le Hoc. At the end of 1792, he had founded a reading society in Hamburg with the journalist Friedrich Wilhelm von Schütz on the model of the Jacobin club of Mainz, of which Sieveking had been elected president, and for this reason alone was suspected of incitement. When the Hamburg Senate finally submitted to the pressure and expelled Le Hoc, he cancelled the trade treaty concluded between Hamburg and Paris in 1789 in his letter of protest. Furthermore, the National Convention
National Convention
During the French Revolution, the National Convention or Convention, in France, comprised the constitutional and legislative assembly which sat from 20 September 1792 to 26 October 1795 . It held executive power in France during the first years of the French First Republic...
ordered the confiscation of all Hamburg ships in French ports and imposed a trade embargo on the Hanseatic city. Although the embargo was subsequently imposed quite mildly by the French, and the Hamburg merchants continued to do everything they could to circumvent the German prohibition via Altona, the volume of trade between Hamburg and France declined drastically.
Sieveking in Paris
Cathedral chapter
In accordance with canon law, a cathedral chapter is a college of clerics formed to advise a bishop and, in the case of a vacancy of the episcopal see in some countries, to govern the diocese in his stead. These councils are made up of canons and dignitaries; in the Roman Catholic church their...
Friedrich Johann Lorenz Meyer. There, a period of relative political stability had returned, after the crushing of the anti-revolutionary uprising of 13 Vendémaire (5 October 1795) by Napoleon and Paul de Barras. On 12 April 1796 Sieveking was granted an audience with the French Directory
French Directory
The Directory was a body of five Directors that held executive power in France following the Convention and preceding the Consulate...
, where a solution to the conflict could not be reached, however. His plan to support France's finances by raising the exchange rate for the mostly devalued assignat
Assignat
Assignat was the type of a monetary instrument used during the time of the French Revolution, and the French Revolutionary Wars.- France :...
s was rejected by the French as insufficient, and by the Hamburg Senate as impossible. On 27 April Sieveking received 300 000 Marks from the Hamburg Chamber of Commerce to be used at his own discretion, and he did not hesitate to in using it to bribe Barras and other powerful figures of the Republic. In May 1796, after a meeting with the French finance minister Ramel-Nogaret, a fortunate turn of events occurred. The Directory ratified a treaty on 14 June 1796 which provided for the payment of 13 million livres, which Sieveking guaranteed personally. That same evening, Barras met with Sieveking, and told him: "Votre affaire est finie" ("Your business here is finished"). The official signing took place ten days later, and a worried Sieveking wrote to Hamburg the same day: "ob ich das Opfer meines Patriotismus sein werde, das werden meine Mitbürger entscheiden" ("whether I shall be the victim of my own patriotism, that will be for my fellow citizens to decide"). But his fears proved unfounded. On his return in July 1796, Sieveking was received with honours. In his report before the assembled members of the chamber of commerce he said that this moment was one of the finest and most important of his life and claimed: "Ich schwöre es bei Ihrer Achtung, bei meiner Ehre, ich habe Hamburg gerettet" (I swear by your esteem, by my honour, I have saved Hamburg").
Death
On 25 January 1799, Georg Heinrich Sieveking died suddenly and unexpectedly. Wilhelm von HumboldtWilhelm von Humboldt
Friedrich Wilhelm Christian Karl Ferdinand Freiherr von Humboldt was a German philosopher, government functionary, diplomat, and founder of Humboldt Universität. He is especially remembered as a linguist who made important contributions to the philosophy of language and to the theory and practice...
wrote in a letter: "The memory of the deceased will surely remain unforgettable amongst all his friends, and surely few have had the good luck to be so generally and sincerely pitied and missed". The firm of Sieveking was only able to survive the great Hamburg trade depression of 1799 with difficulty, but then went bankrupt in the course of the Continental System
Continental System
The Continental System or Continental Blockade was the foreign policy of Napoleon I of France in his struggle against the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland during the Napoleonic Wars. It was a large-scale embargo against British trade, which began on November 21, 1806...
and was dissolved in April 1811.