The Johann Jakob Herstatt family
In contrast to his brother Johann Herstatt, Johann Jakob Herstatt opted for a lucrative wine wholesale business. In addition, he founded a flourishing sugar factory and rose to become a “sugar baron”.
While the Continental Blockade was rather detrimental to the previous main business of “silk and foil ribbons”, it was rather beneficial for sugar production. It led to a serious shortage of raw materials for cane sugar, which had previously been sourced from the colonies, and thus made the domestic production of sugar from beet profitable. Johann Jakob Herstatt (1743-1811) was married to Margaretha von der Leyen (1735-1826).
Although the two had 6 children, it was only through their son Jakob Konrad (1774-1829) married to Anna Helena Borchardt (1781-1845) that the name Herstatt was passed on to the next generations. His son Heinrich Jakob Herstatt (1816-1897), married to Elise Eich (1820-1909) had only one adult son named Jakob Peter Herstatt (1844-1917). When he married Auguste Rubino (1836-1897), who was already 40 years old at the time, in 1876, the parents were very disappointed, as can be seen from an entry in the family chronicle. There was hardly any chance of offspring. The Johann Jakob Herstatt name line thus died out. Most of the ancestral pictures of this family branch were acquired by the Cologne City Museum. Of all things, the child’s picture of Johann Jakob ended up in the possession of the Johann David Herstatt line in 2014 via detours.