Freiherr (; male, abbreviated as ), (; his wife, abbreviated as , literally "free lord" or "free lady") and (, his unmarried daughters and maiden aunts) are designations used as titles of nobility in the German-speaking areas of the Holy Roman Empir ...

Ernst Merck (20 November 1811 – 6 July 1863) was a German businessman and politician. Ernst Freiherr von Merck

Merck, born in

Hamburg Hamburg (, ; nds, label=Hamburg German, Low Saxon, Hamborg ), officially the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg (german: Freie und Hansestadt Hamburg; nds, label=Low Saxon, Friee un Hansestadt Hamborg),. is the List of cities in Germany by popul ...

, was a member of the

Frankfurt Parliament The Frankfurt Parliament (german: Frankfurter Nationalversammlung, literally ''Frankfurt National Assembly'') was the first freely elected parliament for all German states, including the German-populated areas of Austria-Hungary, elected on 1 Ma ...

for a year from 1848 to 1849. Merck was also the cavalry chief of the Hamburg Citizen Militia, founder of the Zoological Garden in Hamburg, and initiator of an association to rescue shipwrecked persons. In 1853, Merck was appointed Austrian Consul General in Hamburg. He invested at that time in the railway lines of Austria and in 1856 co-founded and joined the board of the

Empress Elisabeth Railway The Empress Elisabeth Railway (german: Kaiserin Elisabeth-Bahn, KEB) was the name of a former railway company during the time of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. Its rail network was centred on the Western Railway line from Vienna to Salzburg wit ...

, named after the

Empress of Austria This is a list of the Austrian empresses, archduchesses, duchesses and margravines, wives of the rulers of Austria. The monarchy in Austria was abolished at the end of the First World War in 1918. The different titles lasted just a little und ...

. Thanks to his work, he was raised in 1860 by Emperor

Franz Joseph Franz Joseph I or Francis Joseph I (german: Franz Joseph Karl, hu, Ferenc József Károly, 18 August 1830 – 21 November 1916) was Emperor of Austria, King of Hungary, and the other states of the Habsburg monarchy from 2 December 1848 until his ...

to the rank of baron in the hereditary Austrian nobility. This was not positively received by the citizens of Hamburg, which was a republic. Even his half-brother, Syndicus Carl Merck (1809-1880) took occasion to complain that recently Hanseatic citizens "hunted for Orders and nobility and the other satisfactions for vanity."Renate Hauschild-Thiessen: Adel und Bürgertum in Hamburg, 1997, section. XXXI

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* {{DEFAULTSORT:Merck, Ernst 1811 births 1863 deaths Members of the Frankfurt Parliament 19th-century German businesspeople Politicians from Hamburg Barons of Germany Hamburg America Line