Conrad Johann Matthiessen

Conrad Johann Matthiessen (25 July 175123 January 1822) was a leading Hamburg merchant and banker during the French Revolutionary Wars. An enthusiastic backer of the revolution during its early phases, in 1796 he married a French woman, though they were divorced five years later.

Biography Matthiessen's father was Hieronymus Matthiessen, another prosperous Hamburg merchant. His mother, born Susanne Texier, came from a Huguenot family, and was an elder sister to the German-Dutch diplomat, Peter Texier.

He became a partner in the trading house of "Matthiesen & Sillem". He is better known, however, on account of his networking and travelling. He numbered Georg Heinrich Sieveking and Caspar Voght among his closest friends. Among the women in the group his closer friends included Elise Reimarus, Magdalena Pauli and the writer-poet Elisa von der Recke who describes him in her diary as a "pure, noble and beautiful soul ... better suited for Heaven than for Earth". He was a member and regular presence at the "Monday Society", founded in 1784 by Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock and Johann Georg Büsch. During the winter of 1790/91 he stayed in Paris, becoming a member of "Club 87" and established a connection with de La Rochefoucauld. By July 1791 he was back in Hamburg where he was elected to membership of the "Kollegium der Armenanstalt", overseeing Caspar Voght's Allgemeine Armenanstalt (welfare and support institution for the poor). Later his trips to Paris became increasingly frequent, and he made it a personal priority to provide support for Parisians in need. During his final years he was providing support for eighty families, visiting them all for as long as his strength permitted it. Together the three of them developed the house as a summer residence which quickly became known as a meeting point for Hamburg's wealthy cosmopolitan elite.

Conrad Johann Matthiessen died in Paris on 23 January 1822.