The letters surviving in Luetkens archive offer a vivid insight into his trading activities and negotiations with his business partners. The Luetkens archive still contains all the letters that Luetkens kept in his chest in 1745. In total it consists of 2,286 letters – both business and personal letters – Luetkens’ large letter book and many other business records. The remarkable thing about the archive is that both incoming and outgoing letters in three languages – German, French and Dutch – have survived. These letters allow the reconstruction of two-sided letter exchanges between  correspondents, including over sixty correspondents from whom letters have also survived. As a result, it is possible to not only look at Luetkens as an isolated example of a mercantile career, but to present the Hamburg merchant as a part of a large community and network of European – mostly Protestant – merchants active in the Atlantic trade. A great variety of different letter types and styles are represented in the archive, from personal and love letters, to business letters or letters between brothers. The archive offers us the full range of correspondence practices in the life of a merchant and communication practices amongst the middle class in the eighteenth century.

In addition to the letters, various other records have survived, from typical mercantile records such as bills of exchange, bills of lading, accounts or price currents to personal records, such as a small notebook with personal expenses which Luetkens kept during his travels. Based on the items listed in his pocketbook of expenses, it is even possible to reconstruct Luetkens’ outward appearance in the form of a mannequin – similar to the drawing of the Bavarian diplomat presented by Justin Schröder in his case studies. Also preserved are lists of furniture for the future trading house, including a mahogany card playing table, a large, gilded mirror, valuable kitchenware, a chest of drawers and several other items which Luetkens ordered and bought with the help of his brother and shipped to Hamburg. In sum the Hamburg merchant in France ordered a ‘stately interior for a house’. He also sent jewellery to his future wife by letter –unfortunately no longer preserved. All these finds testify not only to Luetkens’ wealth, but also to an upper middle-class lifestyle, which he continued even after his return. In the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe in Hamburg,  the Bel Etage of Luetkens’ merchant house in Katharinenstraße 17 in Hamburg is still on display today. The furnishings and orders for this house began as early as 1745. Luetkens had the capital necessary to purchase and install into his new house this magnificent golden panelling in the Louis Seize style in France, thanks to his good connections in France. It was these connections that helped his trading house to become a major sugar importer in Hamburg shortly after his return France. The Bel Etage is thus ultimately a contemporary testimony of how a Hanseatic merchant profited from  the French plantation economy and the French colonial system. Luetkens actively supported both with his trading activities throughout his life.

The role that merchants like Luetkens played in the colonial system of the early modern period, in the trade with the colonial superpowers France, Spain, but also England, was that of second-tier colonial merchants. France was an attractive travel destination for many German merchants at the time. Luetkens deliberately chose the French west coast for his establishment phase as a central phase of his career. In France foreign merchants were excluded from direct trade with the French colonies by mercantilist policies – in particular by L'exclusive, which restricted access to direct trade to French merchants – but Hanseatic merchants in French cities nevertheless enjoyed privileges in France and were allowed to participate actively in the French market. They were allowed to settle in France, rent warehouses and establish joint trading houses with French merchants. They were even exempt from customs duties on many goods. The exclusion from direct trade with the French colonies thus did not prevent Hamburg merchants such as Luetkens from travelling to France and trading there. In metropolitan France they engaged in re-export and onward transport of colonial goods to Hamburg and Central Europe instead of direct trade. Almost all onward transport of French sugar, Luetkens specialty, to central Europe went via neutral channels and neutral merchants. Hamburg merchants were allowed in particular to trade in surplus goods that found no buyers on the French market. For the purpose of redistributing French goods during his voyage, Luetkens built up a dense logistical supply and support network as well as a regular shipping connection between Hamburg and the most important transshipping ports in the Atlantic trade.

Merchants like Luetkens were commission agents, logistical middlemen, shipowners and middlemen. Thus their business success was built upon the French plantation system as well as the colonial economy and administration just like the success of the French merchants. These merchants supported and profited from the colonial economies of the time. Several German merchants also participated in the Atlantic slave trade. Luetkens was not involved in the trafficking of enslaved persons, but he still did his part to ensure that the plantation economy prospered. It is significant in this respect that the only artefacts apart from the many written sources preserved in the Luetkens archive today are linen samples and a cotton sample. Linen, especially from Silesia in Germany, was an important good in the triangular trade. Luetkens’ role in it was to distribute and supply these locally produced goods to France.

Read the article “Buying Patience: Ordering and Purchasing Wedding Jewellery and Furniture through Intimate Networks during Eighteenth-Century Mercantile Marriage Initiation and Preparation”, Itinerario, 1-15.