Anna Margaretha "Greta" Donner (

née The birth name is the name of the person given upon their birth. The term may be applied to the surname, the given name or to the entire name. Where births are required to be officially registered, the entire name entered onto a births registe ...

Lyhtberg; 11 February 1726 – 24 September 1774) was a

Swedish Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...

businessperson. She was known as "Donner Mum", "Madam Donner", and "Madam Herr Donner" ("Milady Lord Donner").

Life

Born in

Visby Visby () is an urban areas in Sweden, urban area in Sweden and the seat of Gotland Municipality in Gotland County on the island of Gotland with 24,330 inhabitants . Visby is also the episcopal see for the Diocese of Visby. The Hanseatic League, ...

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. It borders Norway to the west and north, and Finland to the east. At , Sweden is the largest Nordic count ...

merchant A merchant is a person who trades in goods produced by other people, especially one who trades with foreign countries. Merchants have been known for as long as humans have engaged in trade and commerce. Merchants and merchant networks operated i ...

s Mathias Lythberg and Johanna Wihadi, Greta was given a good education and was active as her father's business assistant. She had six siblings, but only two of them lived to adulthood. In 1744, she married the

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...

merchant Jürgen Hinrich Donner from

Lübeck Lübeck (; or ; Latin: ), officially the Hanseatic League, Hanseatic City of Lübeck (), is a city in Northern Germany. With around 220,000 inhabitants, it is the second-largest city on the German Baltic Sea, Baltic coast and the second-larg ...

. Greta was constantly pregnant during her marriage, giving birth to five children in just six years, although only two of them survived infancy, namely Georg Mathias and Jacob Niclas. She and her husband settled in

Gotland Gotland (; ; ''Gutland'' in Gutnish), also historically spelled Gottland or Gothland (), is Sweden's largest island. It is also a Provinces of Sweden, province/Counties of Sweden, county (Swedish län), Municipalities of Sweden, municipality, a ...

in 1746; they bought a building, where they founded an empire of import and export with

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and

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. The building is now known as ”The Donner House”, and the

square In geometry, a square is a regular polygon, regular quadrilateral. It has four straight sides of equal length and four equal angles. Squares are special cases of rectangles, which have four equal angles, and of rhombuses, which have four equal si ...

by which the building is located was to be known as ”Donner's place”. Greta was the company's accountant. When she became a widow in 1751 at the age of just 25, she took sole control over the business as director. She made herself responsible for the export and created a merchant fleet with twenty ships. She also founded a factory on Gotland. She was appreciated by her employees and was called ”Donner Mum” by some and ”Madam Donner” by others: some of her German business-partners could not imagine a woman as the head of such a big business empire, and they sometimes called her "Madam Herr Donner" ("Milady Lord Donner"). She helped her two sons start their own business, but she did not allow them any influence in her own affairs, and she did not acquaint them with the main business until after she acquired

tuberculosis Tuberculosis (TB), also known colloquially as the "white death", or historically as consumption, is a contagious disease usually caused by ''Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can al ...

, of which she died at Visby in 1774. The Donner empire expanded under her sons Georg and Jacob, both of whom included their wives in their work, but the business eventually went bankrupt in 1845.

References

*
Donnerska huset i Visby
* Boken om Gotland - Andra delen, 1945, AB Sylve Norrbys Bokhandel * Gotland 1500-1900, ett särtryck ur Den svenska historien, Gotlands Fornsal * Lingegård Ingeborg, 1985, Gotländska föregångskvinnor, Taurus förlag * Svahnström Gunnar, 1984, Visby under tusen år, Almqvist & Wiksell Förlag AB * Öhman Roger, 1994, Vägen till Gotlands historia, Visby, Gotlands Fornsal/Gotlands Läromedelscentral

Life

See also

References

Further reading