Berenberg

Berenberg

The Berenberg-Gossler-Seyler banking dynasty (also referred to as the House of Berenberg or the Berenbergs) is a Hanseatic dynasty of merchants, bankers and senators in Hamburg, and one of the world's oldest existing banking dynasties with a history spanning over 400 years. The family is descended from Dutch brothers Hans and Paul Berenberg from Antwerp, who fled persecution of Protestants in the Low Countries in 1585 and established the merchant house now known as Berenberg Bank in Hamburg in 1590. Berenberg Bank is Germany's oldest bank, the world's second oldest bank and also the world's oldest family owned bank. The Berenbergs have been merchant bankers and investment bankers since the 17th century.

Although the Berenberg family became extinct in the male line in 1773, the bank and the name were passed on to their descendants in the female line—via Elisabeth Berenberg (1749–1822)—in the Gossler and Seyler families, after Elisabeth's husband Johann Hinrich Gossler was made co-owner and heir by his father in law Johann Berenberg in 1769. A branch of the Gossler family was granted the name Berenberg-Gossler by the Senate of Hamburg in 1880 and subsequently ennobled by Prussia. The bank is still owned by their descendants, the Baronial family von Berenberg-Gossler.

The family belonged to the ruling class of the city republic, known as Grand Burghers or Hanseaten, enjoying hereditary legal privileges (abolished 1918), and the Berenbergs were represented in the senate from 1735. From 1821, several Gosslers were also senators, with Hermann Gossler becoming First Mayor and President of the Senate (i.e. head of state of the city republic and equal to the federal princes). Richard J. Evans describes the family as one of Hamburg's "great business families." The Berenberg/Gossler family usually intermarried with other Hanseatic families, often of Dutch descent, and has for several hundred years had a particularly close relationship with the Amsinck family.