Franz Ernst Schütte dating history

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Franz Ernst Schütte (21 November 1836 – 1 February 1911) was a German entrepreneur-businessman who during his lifetime became celebrated for the extent of his wealth. Although his business activities extended across several different sectors, including shipbuilding and land reclamation-development, it was on account of his oil importing activities, which included the establishment of the "Deutsch-Amerikanische Petroleum Gesellschaft" (DAPG / "German-American Petroleum Company") in 1890, that Schütte acquired the popular soubriquet "The Petroleum King". (The DAPG company was renamed "Esso AG" in 1950.) In his home city Schütte is also remembered as a massively effective Bremen benefactor, both through his own donations and through his effectiveness as a fund raiser among fellow members of the city's business elite, during what was a period of unprecedented commercial expansion. The city owes its "new" city hall and its Botanical Gardens to his philanthropy, along with the rebuilding between 1888 and 1901 of the west end of Bremen Cathedral in the confident "Gothic revival" style favoured for prestigious public buildings in central and western Europe during this period.