Karl Sieveking

His mother, Johanna Margaretha Sieveking, was the daughter of the physician, natural historian and economist Johann Albert Heinrich Reimarus.

After a brief period as secretary to his uncle Charles-Frédéric Reinhard, who was French Minister Plenipotentiary in the Kingdom of Westphalia, Sieveking first went back to Göttingen, obtaining a post-doctoral qualification.

In 1827 he negotiated a trade agreement in Rio de Janeiro with the newly independent Brazil and opened the lucrative South American market to Hamburg merchants.

However, when the Colonial Office said any Germans settling there would be treated as aliens, the proposed leader of the venture, John Beit, took the expedition to Nelson, New Zealand instead.

In addition, he made it possible to found the Rauhe Haus for neglected children by giving Johann Hinrich Wichern a piece of land from his private property.