Henriette Wegner
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
October 1, 1805
Henriette Wegner | |
|---|---|
.jpeg) Henriette Wegner, drawn by her sister Molly in 1827, aged 22 | |
| Born | Henriette Seyler October 1, 1805 |
| Died | November 25, 1875 (aged 70) |
| Resting place | Old Aker Cemetery, Oslo |
| Citizenship | Hamburg, France, Norway |
| Spouse | Benjamin Wegner |
| Parent(s) | L.E. Seyler and Anna Henriette Gossler |
Henriette Wegner (born 1 October 1805 in Hamburg, died 25 November 1875 in Christiania), née Henriette Seyler, was a Norwegian businesswoman and philanthropist. She was a member of the Hanseatic Berenberg banking dynasty of Hamburg and moved to Norway in 1824 when she married the mining magnate Benjamin Wegner. She was briefly a co-owner of Berenberg Bank, and became one of the wealthiest women of Norway on her husband's death as the main owner of one of the country's largest forest estates.
She was known for her work for the homeless and for improving the situation of women. With her long-time friend Hedvig Maribo she founded Norway's first women's organization, the Association for the Support of Poor Mothers, and served as one of its directors. She was a long-term board member of the Norwegian Charity for the Homeless. Henriette Wegner Pavilion in Frogner Park and the mine Henriette Grube at Blaafarveværket are named for her.
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Born Henriette Seyler in the city-republic of Hamburg, she was the youngest daughter of the banker L.E. Seyler and Anna Henriette Gossler, and a granddaughter of the Swiss-born theatre director Abel Seyler and of the Hamburg bankers Johann Hinrich Gossler and Elisabeth Berenberg, whose Belgian-origined family had founded Berenberg Bank in 1590. Her father L.E. Seyler was a co-owner of Berenberg Bank for 48 years as well as President of the Commerz-Deputation and a member of the Hamburg Parliament, and her family was one of Hamburg's most prominent Hanseatic families. On her father's side, she was a descendant of the Swiss Calvinist theologian Friedrich Seyler and of the Basel patrician families Burckhardt, Socin, Merian, Faesch and Meyer zum Pfeil; on her mother's side she was also descended from families like Amsinck and Welser.[1]
The year after her birth, Hamburg was occupied by Napoleonic France and then briefly incorporated into the Bouches-de-l'Elbe département of the French Empire, before again becoming a sovereign city-republic after the Napoleonic Wars. During the French occupation, her father was held as a hostage along with a handful of the city's other prominent merchants for some time, and Berenberg Bank later moved its headquarters to their private home. Like most of Hamburg's elite, the family was fiercely Anglophile.[1]
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