Ludwig Knoop

Ludwig Knoop ( born May 15, 1821 in Bremen, † August 16, 1894 ) was an Bremer wholesale merchant. The textile processing has made him one of the most successful entrepreneurs of the 19th century.

Life

Ludwig Knoop was the fourth of eight children in an impoverished Bremen merchant family. He attended the local school in the parish. After his commercial apprenticeship in 1835, he went in 1838 to his uncle, the textile company De Jersey & Co. operation in Manchester. England was in the area of ​​mechanized cotton spinning and weaving pioneer in Europe, and Knoop got there the industrial textile processing know.

Commitment in Russia

As the company expanded to Russia, Knoop went to the branch to Moscow. In the Russian Empire, he soon became one of the most successful and wealthiest entrepreneurs.

1843 married Ludwig Knoop Knoop and Louise ( 1824-1894 ), a daughter of the Baltic German merchant Johann Christoph Hoyer. The couple had six children: Louise, John, Theodore, Adele, Andrew and Emilie.

With the import of English machines for further processing of cotton he built together with the Russian entrepreneur Savva Morozov W. from Moscow in 1849 when Vladimir Nikolskoje the first machine spinning on, the other soon followed. In 1852 he started his own business and supported the industrialization across a broad area: He founded well over a hundred weavers, dyers and printers and participated in numerous banks, insurance companies and other textile factories involved. One of the largest cotton mills was established in 1857 on the Estonian island of Krenholm at Narva, where 4,500 people work. Although he paid low wages, but to its social merits included the introduction of health insurance and the supply of workers with factory homes, kindergartens and schools.

On May 6, 1877, the Russian Tsar Alexander II Ludwig Knoop gave the title of baron.

To Knoop 1881 founded a company that took over several years trading voyages between the Weser and the Yenisei. It made it possible that the naturalist Karl Graf von Waldburg- Zeil 1881 could take his last journey to Siberia. Although the trip was successful, the results were sobering. Too often blocking the way ice barriers. Knoop undertook in 1884 his last trip to Russia. He decided because of the research results to set the merchant ship voyages to Western Siberia.

Ludwig Knoop was also a director of the North German Lloyd, from whom he bought up the fleet pro forma during the Franco-German War and was sailing under the Russian flag, in order to protect them from expropriation by the French for a short time.

Knoops Park and Castle Mühlethal

His sons were still in Bremen to school and also Knoops heart still clung to his hometown. In 1859 he bought the in Bremen Switzerland in St. Magnus Located estate Mühlethal. Knoop extended the old house and spent 1861-1868 there the summer with his family. In order to live there all year, he instructed the Bremen architect Gustav Runge, to build him a bigger house. 1871 the family moved Knoop in the castle Mühlethal. The landscaper Wilhelm Benque, who also previously designed the Bremen citizens Park, put him to the castle an English landscape park in which is accessible as Knoops Park to the public today.

The estate was the meeting place for many upscale guests (including the Prussian commander, Count von Moltke, the captain and explorer Eduard Dallmann ). In order to receive the guests he built from the train station of St. Magnus, and put on a small harbor on the Lesum. Through the purchase of additional lands to his estate enlarged, so that the families of his children received their country seats.

Burial and honors

• Knoop was buried in the family mausoleum in the cemetery Waller in Bremen.
• The Knoops Park in St. Magnus has been named after him.
• In Knoops Park since 1994 he is a bronze statue by sculptor Claus Homfeld which the Waldemar Koch Foundation has funded.

Family

To the family of Ludwig Knoop are partly known personalities and old traditional companies:

• The company Knoop was founded as a tobacco factory and spice action of the grandfather Daniel Diedrich Knoop in the 18th century in the Bremen Stephaniviertel and by the grandchildren Andreas Heinrich - continued and Daniel Diedrich as Gebr Knoop - brother of Ludwig Knoop. Daniel Dietrich was 1873/75 according to plans by Johann Georg Poppe in Horn- Lehe build the "lock Kreyenfeld Horst" that later was owned by the shipowner Rickmers Willy.
• Heinrich Wilhelm Kulenkampff, the son of Ludwig Knoop, took over in 1883 the company Gebr Knoop. and became sole owner in 1888. The company existed until 1952, most recently based in the Kohlhökerstraße 53 in Bremen.
• Ernst Albrecht, former Prime Minister of Lower Saxony is a great-great grandson of Knoop.
• Ursula von der Leyen, daughter of Ernst Albrecht, Federal Minister of Defence since 17 December 2013 is a great-great- great-granddaughter.