Carl Albrecht — merchant with roots in the Russian Empire
Friedrich Carl Albrecht was born in Bremen in 1875, the son of the cotton merchant George Alexander Albrecht and Baroness Louise Dorothea Betty von Knoop, eldest daughter of Baron Ludwig Knoop. He was therefore a grandson of the largest cotton industrialist of the Russian Empire, and he continued in the same trade, becoming a leading cotton merchant of the Hanseatic city.
His marriage extended the pattern. He married Mary Ladson Robertson, of a Charleston planter family in South Carolina, joining the Bremen import trade to the American producing end of the same commodity. In the space of two generations the family had married across the whole chain: the mills of the Russian Empire, the European port that financed and distributed, and the plantations that grew the crop.
The Russian side of that structure ended after 1917 with the nationalisation of the Knoop enterprises, and the Bremen cotton business did not survive the century's disruptions in its old form. Carl Albrecht died in Charleston in 1952. His son was the physician and philosopher Carl Eduard Albrecht, and his descendants include Ernst Albrecht and Ursula von der Leyen.
Tracing the roots — Moscow (Russia)
His generation joined three cotton fortunes: the Russian Empire's mills, the Bremen trade, and the American South.
Friedrich Carl Albrecht (1875-1952), major cotton merchant of the city-state of Bremen. Grandson of Baron Ludwig Knoop through his mother, Louise Dorothea Betty von Knoop. He married Mary Ladson Robertson (1883-1960) of a Charleston, South Carolina planter family, and died in Charleston in 1952.
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Moscow (Russia). At the time, this region lay within the Russian Empire, which spanned from Poland to the Pacific.