Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky
Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky (21 November 1710 – 9 August 1775) was a Prussian merchant with a successful trade in trinkets, silk, taft, porcelain, grain and bills of exchange.
Gotzkowsky died impoverished and having left behind an autobiography: Geschichte eines patriotischen Kaufmanns (1768), which was translated into French and reprinted three times in the 18th century.
Gotzkowsky was born in Konitz (Chojnice) in Royal Prussia, Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and descended from an impoverished family of Polish nobility[citation needed].
[1][2] He established him in his jewel and trinket shop and he quickly acquired customers in the highest circles; Sophia Dorothea of Hanover was his best client.
On 11 October Gotzkowsky took over the negotiations on behalf of the city council and was able to persuade Heinrich von Tottleben to reduce the levy to 1.5 million thalers.
[6] Gotzkowsky succeeded to involve a Hamburg bank, owned by Philipp Heinrich II von Stenglin (1718–1793) to pay the amount, but the Russians received only 57.437 thaler in debased Saxonian coins.
Gotzkowsky mentions that Ephraim & Itzig sent him loads of (debased) coins at the beginning of October, which he stored in his cellar.
[10] In the summer of 1761 he ordered 400.000 thaler in debased coins not from the Prussian mint masters, but from Heinrich Carl von Schimmelmann.
Because of a shortage in Prussia, the transaction could have been profitable for Gotzkowsky and De Neufville, collaborating with two partners (Von Stein and Leveaux).
[19] When it became clear that half of the grain turned out to be of bad quality, Gotzkowsky preferred to change the contract and offered to pay 2/3 of 1.2 million guilders.
[21][22] Gotzkowsky had also an impressive number of paintings in stock which he had not sold to Frederick during the war and managed a silkworks, a jewelry business in Leipzig with J.R. Streckfuss, a porcelain factory (now KPM) that was not running at his satisfactory, all at the same time.
[23] The deferrals resulted to an international financial crisis in Hamburg (90-97), Frankfurt (30), Berlin (33), Danzig, Breslau, Stockholm, London and Amsterdam (38).
[26][27][28] On 10 August Frederick obliged Veitel-Heine Ephraim and Daniel Itzig under the absolute condition to support Gotzkowsky with 400,000 thaler.
[30] On Monday 22 August Frederick set up an "Immediate Exchange Commission", a special court for the tricky bill bankruptcy whose origin he simply could not explain.
[34] Gotzkowsky bought paintings by Antonio Maria Zanetti from the Palazzo Labia and Andrea Celesti in Venice, Rembrandts in Amsterdam for the collection of Frederick II, who had set up the Picture Gallery.
[37] A focal point of Berlin society during the war years was the residence of Gotzkowsky, whose gardens and paintings were admired both by the old nobility and new bourgeoisie.
[40] In 1761, Frederick ordered Gotzkowsky to take over the porcelain factory of Wilhelm Caspar Wegely, which had struggled because of the Seven Years' War.
[43] The former silk and porcelain factory was from 1825 up to 1851 in the possession of Abraham Mendelssohn Bartholdy, who had built a very representative mansion on the property.
