Johann Smidt

Johann Smidt (November 5, 1773 – May 7, 1857) was an important Bremen politician, theologian, and founder of Bremerhaven.

Smidt was a son of the Reformed preacher Johann Smidt sen., pastor at St. Stephen Church in Bremen. Smidt jun. studied theology in Jena, and was one of the founders of the Gesellschaft der freien Männer (Community of free men). He was ordained Reformed preacher in Zürich in 1797. He then became Professor of History at the Gymnasium illustre in his hometown. He then became 'Syndikus' (company lawyer) for the Älterleute (aldermen, Bremen's merchants corporation of constitutional rank) and in 1800 'Ratsherr' (councilman), a position in which he exerted considerable influence on the governmental and commercial development of the cities of the Hanseatic League.

In particular as he acted as Bremen's diplomatic representative at the Congress of Vienna and preserved the independence of the Hanseatic cities and put through their acceptance into the German Confederation of sovereign states after the Battle of Leipzig in 1813. In the final revision of the decisions of the Congress on the rights of the Jews, Smidt - unauthorised and unconsented by the other parties - changed the text from "The confessors of Jewish faith are preserved the rights already conceded to them in the confederal states", by replacing the single word "in", which ensued serious consequences, into: "The confessors of Jewish faith are preserved the rights already conceded to them by the confederal states." In the Confederation's Bundesversammlung, he battled the politics of Klemens Wenzel Lothar von Metternich, and was particularly involved in the negotiations which in 1820 established free shipping on the Weser.