Cornelius Berenberg

Cornelius Berenberg was a merchant-banker, member of the Berenberg family and owner of the Berenberg Bank who became a grand burgher of Hamburg.

His grandfather, Hans (1561-1626) fled from Antwerp to avoid religious persecution and settled in Hamburg, where in companion with his brother Paul, he established the Berenberg merchant house in 1590. Their main business occupations were trade in cloth and the general import and export business.

Cornelius additionally developed the firm into a very lucrative business. He established trade links with France, Spain and Portugal in the west, Italy in the south, and Scandinavia and Russia in the east. One part of that success lay in the Berenberg’s family connections, especially with the colonies of wealthy Dutch merchants in Lisabon and Livorno.

Cornelius realized that the fortune that he amassed in trade could be additionally augmented through investment in baking business, and thus he developed the financial activities within the firm’s operations.

He married Anna Margaretha Colin (1649–1684), with whom he had a son, a senator and banker Rudolf Berenberg.