David Hansemann

Germany state institutions Liberalism and republicanism 1790–1864 ○ Natural causes

Aachen businessman who was finance minister in Camphausen's March ministry of 1848 and founded the Disconto-Gesellschaft

Born in 1790 at Finkenwerder near Hamburg, the son of a Protestant minister, he built up businesses in Aachen from 1817 and promoted railway building in the Rhine Province, becoming vice-president of the Rhenish Railway Company. He entered the Rhenish provincial diet in 1843 and the United Diet in 1847, and was counted among the leading compromise-minded liberals. In Camphausen's March ministry of 1848 he became minister of finance, keeping the post under Rudolf von Auerswald until his resignation on 8 September. The Prussian nobility thought him a dangerous radical, while radicals saw him as a servant of the elite; Marx called him a "liberal lick-spittle". He left politics and in 1851 founded the Disconto-Gesellschaft. He died at Schlangenbad in 1864.

Also known as: David Justus Ludwig Hansemann