User:Virtualiter/August Hoffmann

August Hoffmann (1828–1914) founded Villa Independencia with friends in Uruguay and became director of LEMCO.

August's grandparents were the Hamburg "Assecuradeur" (Assecuradeur) Claus Adolf Beatus Crasemann (1762–1829) and Catharina Rebecca Ernsetine Laué (1773–1853).
His uncles are mostly merchants in the grandparents' business. From 1840 onwards, Uncle Christoph Adolf was a member of the committee to establish a railway connection between Berlin and Hamburg, and from 1845 to 1847 he was an assistant at St. Nikolai, etc.

The eldest son of the "Armenschullehrer" (charity school teacher) Franz August Hoffmann (1799–1877), began his commercial career as a clerk in the Hamburg trading company Winterhoff & Pieper and continued it in 1849 in the business of his uncles Adolf and Claas Crasemann.

In 1850 he considered going to California because of the gold rush there, but decided at short notice to go to Rio de Janeiro because many clerks had died there during the yellow fever epidemic and there was a great demand for workers. Hoffmann initially found work in Brazil with the Hamburg company Elvers, Boie & Co. (which stopped payments during the 1857 crisis), later he took a better position with the Hanseatic trading house G. & W. Halfmann. The poor business situation in Río and an offer of a job as a salesman and conductor in the German and French branch in the North American company Zimmermann, Frazier & Co., with free Apartment, station and a salary of 1200-1500 Spanish thalers per month, prompted him to move to Montevideo in 1854. Two years later he was given "Prokura" (procuration), but was dismissed without notice due to intrigues in May 1857. In the following years Hoffmann worked as an assistant and finally as an associate of the English exchange and money broker Lowry and also ran a banking business with his partner.

The navigable Rio Uruguay offers a natural harbor bay. In the belief that the natural harbor and its surroundings were a promising place, Hoffmann formed a cooperative in 1858 with his friends James Lowry, G. Hodgkin, the Errascin brothers (brothers-in-law of Juan D. Jackson) and Ricardo Hughes to buy a 130 sq. km site for 72,000 patacones. They divided the area between themselves and decided to develop the area. The planned town was to be called Villa Independencia and the nearby natural deep-water port was to be named "Fray Bentos". (The port owes this name to a pious hermit who lived there for many years, named "Brother Bentos", who tried to bring Christianity to the Indians.) The first industrial settlement at the port in the same year was a "Salzfleischfabrik" (salt junk factory) to supply the passing ships.

In 1861 he received a visit from his friend Georg Christian Giebert, who was working on road construction in neighboring Brazil - and now sees the many cattles the skin removed. Georg Giebert had read Justus von Liebig's "Chemische Briefe" (1847) and had therefore heard of his Meat extract, but did not know him. On 20 October 1862 Giebert met with the barons in Munich, where Liebig advised him to have the practical method of meat extract production explained and demonstrated to him by Mr Max Joseph von Pettenkofer in the court pharmacy. In Deptford in England he had a pilot plant built and in Antwerp, with the support of Felix Gabriël Grisar (1811-1887) he set up the company "Fray Bentos Giebert & Co.". After several unsuccessful attempts and some improvements to the process, he was finally able to start regular production on August 25, 1862, slaughtering ten animals a day. Giebert took over the management in Montevideo.
August Hoffmann was appointed director of the Liebigs Co. (LEMCO) in 1866 (or 1867).
In 1870, Giebert called in Eduard Kemmerich because a specialist was needed to take care of medical eventualities in the factory - who later founded his own factory in Sankt Elena, Argentina, in 1882 and competed at the World Exhibitions in 1885 and 1894.

In the meantime, Hoffmann separated from Lowry in 1864, who became director of an English bank, continued his work as a broker and merchant banker on his own account and married Rosa Tornquist, the daughter of Peter Georg Ernst Tornquist, in 1866. Hoffmann also served as one of the directors of an Italian bank, as chairman of the German club "Frohsinn" between 1868 and 1870 and as a member of the immigration commission founded in 1865.

Sources

• Richard Adolph Crasemann: Die Familie C. A. Crasemann in 100 Jahren : zur 100jährigen Wiederkehr des Geburtstages seines Vaters C. A. Crasemann zusammengestellt und der Familie gewidmet von Richard Adolph Crasemann; 1897
• https://sondersammlungen.iai.spk-berlin.de/sondersammlungen/nachlaesse/a-z-liste/sammlung/132/act/show/ctl/ImgArchieve.html
• https://opac.iai.spk-berlin.de/DB=1/CMD?ACT=SRCHA&TRM=ppn+%20719926378
• Jörn Helmuth Arfs: Die Beziehungen der Hansestadt Hamburg zu den La Plata-Staaten 1815-1866; 1991; S. 203 (August Hoffmann 1828-1914. Ein Lebenslauf in Briefen. Zusammengestellt von Sra. Quincke de Bergengruen zusammen mit Elisabeth von Sanden Montevideo 1965,2.Fassung). Dem Autor freundlich zur Verfügung gestellt von Herrn Olaf Bergengruen (Montevideo) .