MYSTERIES IN
ANGOSTURA MUSEUM
STORY OF FOUNDER
DR. SIEGERT
COMES TO LIFE
By Judy Raymond
Trinidad Guardian
January 10, 2000
Page 15
"The story of Dr. Siegert is one of war," says Jerry Besson,
explaining why a cannon occupies a prominent place in the Angostura Museum.
Dr.
JGB Siegert is known as the inventor of Angostura Bitters, but he wasn't just a
stolid German businessman. In fact he
doesn't seem to have had much interest in or aptitude for business at all: 30
years after he first started making his biters, sales amounted to a mere 20
dozen cases a year, according to historian Fr. Anthony de Verteuil.
Siegert
was really an adventurer, and the course of his life was indeed, as Besson
says, directed by the wars that shaped the history of two continents.
Besson,
who set up the museum last year at the Angostura plant in Laventille, sings the
praises of some of the men who led the company into the modern era: Siegert's
great-grandson Robert, Albert Gomez and Tommy Gatcliffe, all of them chemists
as well as captains of industry, and all represented in the exhibits.
But
the story of the founder of the company outstrips them all for romance and
excitement, and although he never set foot in Trinidad, it's his spirit, two
centuries old, that fills the museum.
At
19 Johann Siegert took part in a battle that determined the fate of Europe, and
five years later he flung himself into a tide of history that carried him away
to the New World, where he joined the struggle for the mastery of Latin
America. First an army doctor to the
Prussian troops of Marshal von Blücher, Siegert became Surgeon General to the army of the Liberator,
Simon Bolívar.
Born
in 1796, Johann Gottlieb Benjamin Siegert studied medicine in Berlin and tended
to the wounded at the 1815 Battle of Waterloo, where 125,000 Prussians came to
the rescue of the Duke of Wellington and defeated Napoleon of France.
One
of he casualties of the battle was General Sir Thomas Picton, formerly the
first British Governor of the crown colony of Trinidad.
But
Siegert survived and in 1820, in pursuit of another great cause, made his way
to Venezuela, along with some fellow Prussians and thousands of British
veterans of the Napoleonic wars who had gone to the aid of Bolívar's army. Siegert sailed 240 miles up the Orinoco to
where the river narrowed at the port of Angostura (the name means
"straits"' in Spanish). This
was the headquarters of Bolívar's revolutionary government and his campaign to
free the Spanish colonies of northern South America, and there Siegert was put
in charge of the military hospital.
A
set of 19th century surgical tools laid out in a case at the museum
consists mostly of scalpels, saws and knives, and looks as if it was designed
to inflict pain, not to cure it. It's
no wonder that in his new home in the rainforest Dr. Siegert began to
investigate the local herbs and other plants for possible medicinal uses.
By
June 1821 Venezuela had wrested its independence from Spain, and the Liberator
moved his campaign westwards, to Ecuador, Peru and Colombia, where he died in
1830.
But
Dr. Siegert remained behind in Angostura (which was renamed Ciudad Bolívar in
1846) and pursued his growing interest in botany and chemistry. His test tubes, beakers and other equipment
have survived.
"Everything's
here, they haven't thrown away a thing," says Besson. "The trick is to find it."
Siegert's
chemical apparatus is set out next to the percolator he used to produce various
remedies, among them the famous "amargos aromáticos" that he first
devised as a tonic and began to sell in 1824.
Perhaps he drew on the botanical knowledge of the local Amerindians,
although the single ingredient named on the label is gentian, extracts of which
were used in Europe as an aid to digestion.
On
the floor next to the desk is a sack full of what looks like wood chips. They are actually, says Besson, the raw
ingredients for Angostura bitters: aromatic bark and other tropical
botanicals. But they don't give away
any clues: the dry chips crumble in your hand and don't smell of anything,
though the air is filled with the familiar fragrance of the bitters, being
concocted behind closed doors elsewhere in the building.
The
formula is still a secret, though it's no longer restricted to members of the
Siegert family, but has been passed on to company executives.
The
recipe for the bitters isn't the only mystery.
"Angostura is full of treasures and secrets," says
Besson. "There are iron boxes here
that haven't been opened since 1892."
So
when the idea of a museum was first suggested by Angostura chairman Tommy
Gatcliffe three years ago, Besson was able to forage for materials in a
storeroom full of "documents, objects, rubbish, obsolete machinery…"
An
advertising executive by profession, Besson is also the man behind Paria Publishing,
which produces historical works, and was able to sift through the bric-a-brac
with a knowledgeable eye. (He suggests
that although other firms and institutions might not have as much memorabilia
as Angostura, they could also consider setting up similar museums: he envisages
a Petrotrin museum inside a replica of the ship that Sir Walter Raleigh caulked
with tar from the Pitch Lake, and a Carib Brewery museum that would showcase
Amerindian history).
Besson's
finds at Angostura include a photograph of the ramshackle Siegert family home
in Venezuela and a model of the clipper Dr. Siegert which carried rum
and bitters around the globe, but which sank in the Bocas in 1895. in a corner stands an old anvil from the
coopery that still produces the barrels in which Angostura rums are matured.
The
cannon too was found at George Street; perhaps the company brought it in 1875
when the Siegerts migrated from Angostura (which had been renamed Ciudad
Bolivar in 1846). Dr. Siegert had died
in 1870, but war continued to play a part in the history of the Siegert family,
for it was a dozen years of renewed civil unrest in Venezuela that drove out
Carlos Siegert, followed by his brothers Luis and Alfredo.
Dr.
Siegert's bitters had first been exported in 1830, to England, via
Trinidad. But Carlos, who may have
inherited some of his father's adventurousness, marketed them aggressively all
over the world, traveling as far as Australia, and collecting a fistful of gold
medals from trade fairs in the process.
He never fought in a war, but he often battled over copyright, for his
bitters were so successful that wherever they went, imitations soon followed
(some of the counterfeit bottles are on display).
Visiting
school children are most fascinated by the working still that bubbles in one
corner, in a replica of a laboratory.
But pride of place in the museum goes to the foundation stone brought
from the George Street factory, which commemorates Dr. Siegert and, though
they're not spelt out, the idealism and daring that led him from bourgeois
Germany to live and die on the banks of the Orinoco, half a world away.
Visits to the museum can be arranged through Angostura
hospitality manager Glenn Davis, who can be contacted at 623-1841.