Category:C. Woermann (company)

C. Woermann 

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Instance of	business commercial company
Industry	international trade
Location	Germany
Headquarters location	Hamburg
Founded by	Carl Woermann
official website
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Woermann is the name of a German dynasty of merchants which had its heighdays from the second half of the nineteenth well into the 20th century. The name is tied to European-African trade and shipping and to the colonial history of the former German colonies Cameroon, Namibia and Togo. Part of the company still exists today as a mid-sized company in the African-European trade.

Founded by Carl Woermann (1813-1880), the German company C. Woermann was a merchant and shipping company for overseas trade. Carl Woermann's son Adolph Woermann (1847-1910) – who also had political ambitions and was elected to the German "Reichstag" – enlarged the company and separated the shipping (henceforth the Woermann-Linie, i.e. Woermann Line) from the trade itself. He was also virtually in control of the the shipping line Deutsche Ost-Afrika-Linie (DOAL), which served Eastern Africa and which Adolph Woermann co-founded with other German shipping companies. Adolph Woermann became one of the most important merchants in African trade and the owner of the world's largest privately-owned shipping company. He was engaged in the formation of the German African colonies, especially of Cameroon and today's Namibia.

Karl Woermann was Carl Woermann's oldest son (i.e. Adolph Woermann's older brother); he did not work for his family's company and became a famous art historian.