 In 1880 Johann (known as John) Berenberg Gossler, longtime head of Berenberg Bank and son of Johann Heinrich Gossler (III), was granted the name Berenberg-Gossler by the Hamburg Senate.He was ennobled by Prussia in 1889 and granted the title of Baron by the Prussian king in 1910; the ennoblement was controversial in the strictly republican city-republic of Hamburg, where nobility did not exist and where (foreign) nobles were traditionally barred from holding political office and even from owning property; according to Richard J. Evans, "the wealthy of nineteenth-century Hamburg were for the most part stern republicans, abhorring titles, refusing to accord any deference to the Prussian nobility, and determinedly loyal to their urban background and mercantile heritage.