Carl Joseph Ballin

Carl Joseph Ballin completed an apprenticeship on June 22, 1852, which he had begun on April 18, 1850 with Alexander Elkan in the store "Seiden - Mode - Tuche" in Weimar . Presumably, he joined his father's business in Oldenburg immediately after his successful graduation. In mid-May of 1854, his father Gottschalk Ballin transferred his manufactory goods store to his son Carl and his nephew Siegfried Hahlo. In August of the same year, the store was run for the first time under the name "Ballin Nachfolger (C. Ballin und Hahlo)". After a few years in the manufactured goods store in Oldenburg, Carl Ballin moved on to Bremen in 1962 and learned the banking business there at "J. C. Rubens" until 1864 (or 1865)

Carl Ballin joined his father's Gottschalk banking business in mid-1865. This had grown substantially in size in 1854, which is why it was separated from the manufactory goods store. From 1866, Siegfried Hahlo continued to run the manufactory goods store as an independent business under his own name.

In 1872, Carl Ballin took over sole management of the bank. His brother Wilhelm joined the family business in 1893. Before that, he had completed his apprenticeship in the banking business of John Raphael Loewenherz in Berlin between 1888 and 1890.

On April 7, 1912, the Grand Duke Friedrich August of Oldenburg awarded the banking business the designation "Hofbankhaus C. & G. Ballin." Nine years later, in January 1921, "C. & G. Ballin" was taken over by the Commerz- und Privatbank (in the meantime: Merkur Bank and today's Commerzbank at Heiligengeiststraße 29). In 1971, the building in which the Hofbankhaus was located was demolished and replaced by a new building which housed an insurance company. However, the representative entrance door of the Hofbankhaus was preserved. It was installed in the corner house Lange Straße/Schüttingstraße. Even today, the door is still there.

Carl Joseph Ballin had his residence in Oldenburg built in 1857 on the northern Rosenstrasse - today Raiffeisenstrasse. The villa still bears the family name today.

In 1908, Ballin commissioned the architect Heinrich Schelling to rebuild and expand the house into a late Wilhelminian villa. The main building remained intact and was extended by additions to the right and left. Carl Ballin died in 1918. From then on, his son Wilhelm Ballin, who was also a banker, lived in the house. In 1925 he sold the villa to the physician Dr. med. Walter Koennecke. After Koennecke's death, Heinrich Hanenkamp became the owner. Subsequently, the villa was bought by the Hassenbürger family in 1946. Else and Franz Hassenbürger converted the house into a hotel and café. Until the mid-1960s, the villa bore the name "Café Hassenbürger".

After standing empty for several years, the villa became the property of the city of Oldenburg in 1980 and has been part of the city museum since 1986. In 1999, the former residence was connected to the main building of the city museum and the two villas of the Theodor Francksen Foundation through further reconstruction measures. Behind Ballin's villa lie some 150 years of eventful history, and the changes continue. In the meantime, the first floor rooms of the villa are used for exhibitions and events by the Oldenburg City Museum.