Gillis Hooftman
Dutch merchant, banker and shipbuilder (1521–1581)
Gillis Hooftman van Eyckelberg, (German: Ägidius Hauptmann; 1521 – 19 January 1581, Antwerp) was a Dutch merchant, trader, banker, and shipbuilder from the Duchy of Limburg. Hooftman was one of richest men of his time in the prosperous city of Antwerp, the trading center of the Spanish Netherlands.
Life and work
Gillis Hooftman was the son of Erken (Arnold) Arnt Hauptmann (d. 1545), a bailiff of the Lathof in the Stockem neighborhood of Eupen, and of Tryntgen (Katharina) Hoesch. The family originated from the Rhineland, and its earlier name of Eichelberg was changed to a Limburger form, van Eyckelberg. A fiefdom in Eupen-Stockem named after Hauptmann, as is the "Hauptmann Column" was erected to help travelers find their way through the marshlands of the High Fens.
The international trade in timber was the key to the success of his trading house. His business contacts reached as far as Russia, and eventually Hooftman was in a position to purchase several trading vessels. Sources state that Hooftman may have owned more than 100 ships at his peak. These ships sailed to ports in the Baltic Sea, and also pioneered Dutch trading with ports of the Arctic Ocean, and North Africa.
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This entry incorporates text from “Gillis Hooftman” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.