Ancestry and Early Life
The Mannerheim family descends from a German businessman and mill owner from Hamburg, Hinrich Marhein (1618–1667), who emigrated to Gävle in Sweden and adopted the Swedish spelling of his first name, Henrik. His son Augustin Marhein changed his surname to Mannerheim and was raised to the nobility by King Charles XI in 1693. Augustin Mannerheim's son, Johan Augusin Mannerheim, an artillery colonel and mill manager, was raised to the status of Baron at the same time as his brother in 1768. The Mannerheim family came to Finland, then an integral part of Sweden, in the latter part of the 18th century. It was long believed that Hinrich Marhein had emigrated to Sweden from the Netherlands, but recent studies have shown this belief to be erroneous. Baron Mannerheim was also of Scottish ancestry on his paternal side, his ancestor George Wright (the founder of the Von Wright line of Finnish nobility) having emigrated from Dundee to Sweden in the 17th century.