Hermann Bahlsen (born 14 November 1859 in Hanover, the capital of the then Kingdom of Hanover; died 6 November 1919 in Hanover) was a German entrepreneur in the food industry as well as the inventor of the Leibniz butter biscuit and founder of the Bahlsen confectionery factory.
Biography
Birth and education
Hermann Bahlsen came from a long-established family of cloth merchants and goldsmiths in Hanover. After completing an apprenticeship in Geneva as a young man, he worked first in his home town and then in London. After returning to Germany, he began to market the “cakes” he had discovered in England.
Establishing a company
In 1888 he became a partner in a factory for English cakes and biscuits in Hannover. A year later he founded his own company, the "Hannoversche Cakesfabrik H. Bahlsen", on Friesenstrasse. Within a few years, the number of employees rose from 10 to over 100, and by the beginning of World War I to around 1,700. In 1893, Bahlsen had the idea of advertising his butter cakes, which unlike those of his competitors were not sold loose but packed in bags, with a