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 HanseaticBerenberg 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.
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]
On 15 May 1824, she married the businessman Benjamin Wegner in St. Nicholas' Church, Hamburg; born in Königsberg, he had two years earlier moved to Norway as director-general and co-owner of the Blue Color Works, a mining company and the world's largest manufacturer of cobalt blue as well as Norway's largest industrial enterprise. He later also acquired several other enterprises and estates in Norway. They lived at Fossum Manor until 1836, when they acquired Frogner Manor in what is now the borough of Frogner in west end Oslo; the estate also included Frognerseteren and parts of Nordmarka. The 1820s neoclassicalHenriette Wegner Pavilion in Frogner Park was a wedding gift given to her, and was moved from the family's former home Fossum Manor in the late 1830s.[2]
Henriette Wegner, ca. 1860
As the wife of one of Norway's leading industrialists and mistress of Frogner Manor, she was one of the leading women of Norwegian high society, particularly from the 1830s, when the family moved from rural Modum to Frogner Manor outside the capital. Following the death of her father, she was a co-owner of Berenberg Bank in Hamburg until 31 December 1836, although her interests were managed by her brother-in-law.[3] By contemporaries, she was described as a "lovable" character.[4][5] She was also noted for her social commitment, and was chairwoman and board member of the Norwegian Charity for the Homeless for over twenty years. She also endowed a substantial amount to helping the homeless.[6][7][8][9]
The author Willibald Alexis describes his visit to Benjamin and Henriette Wegner at Fossum Manor in the book Herbstreise durch Scandinavien ("An Autumn Journey through Scandinavia") from 1828.[5]
She had six children, of which five survived into adulthood. Her oldest son Johann Ludwig Wegner (1830–1893) was a judge and married Blanca Bretteville, a daughter of Prime Minister Christian Zetlitz Bretteville; her second son Heinrich Benjamin Wegner (1833–1911) was a timber merchant and married Henriette Vibe, a daughter of the classical philologist Ludvig Vibe; her oldest daughter Sophie Wegner (1838–1906) married colonel and aide-de-camp to king Charles Hans Jacob Nørregaard; her youngest daughter Anna Henriette Wegner (1841–1918) married the theologian Bernhard Pauss; her youngest son George Wegner (1847–1881) was a supreme court barrister.
She was interred on 30 November 1875 at Gamle Aker Cemetery in Oslo.[4]
References
^ abPercy Ernst Schramm, Neun Generationen: Dreihundert Jahre deutscher Kulturgeschichte im Lichte der Schicksale einer Hamburger Bürgerfamilie (1648–1948), vol. I, Göttingen 1963
^Lars Roede: "Industriherren Benjamin Wegner på Frogner," in Lars Roede, Frogner hovedgård: Bondegård, herskapsgård, byens gård (pp. 148–161), Pax forlag, 2012
.jpeg)
.jpeg)
.jpeg)
