Gossler family

Several family members served as senators in Hamburg in the 19th and early 20th century, and Hermann Gossler was head of state in 1874.

The family's earliest known ancestor Claus Gossler (1630–1713), who was most likely a velvet weaver, was a burgher of Hamburg from 1656 and lived in the parish of St. Catherine.

He eventually succeeded his brother-in-law Seyler as head of Berenberg Bank, and was in turn succeeded as head of the company by his own son Johann Heinrich Gossler (III), who also served as consul-general of Hawaii.

He was ennobled by Prussia in 1889 and granted the title of Baron by the Prussian king in 1910;[5] the ennoblement was controversial in the strictly republican city-republic of Hamburg, where nobility did not exist and where (foreign) nobles were traditionally barred from holding political office and even from owning property;[6] according to Richard J. Evans, "the wealthy of nineteenth-century Hamburg were for the most part stern republicans, abhorring titles, refusing to accord any deference to the Prussian nobility, and determinedly loyal to their urban background and mercantile heritage.

John's younger brother, Baron Cornelius von Berenberg-Gossler, succeeded his father as head of Berenberg Bank in 1913.