Merchants beyond the seas

True pioneers of a new era they are, the two Hamburg merchants Theodor August Behn and Valentin Lorenz Meyer, both born just after the Congress of Vienna (1815). Hamburg is liberated from Napoleon’s continental block, the seas are open for free trade and Hamburg will become the gateway to the world (“das Tor zur Welt”). The “century of the merchant” begins. The two young men from Hamburg establish the first German overseas trading house in the still sparsely populated Singapore: Behn, Meyer & Co. In the course of an adventurous and exciting development the company will grow through the crises and wars of the centuries, to become at times the largest German trading house in Asia and Germany. In 2015 Behn Meyer celebrated its 175th anniversary and continues to develop as a dynamic international distribution and manufacturing company. This is its story, the story of a world-renowned family enterprise from Hamburg with its roots in Southeast Asia.