Abraham Gumbel

Abraham Gumbel (born October 21, 1852 in Stein am Kocher ; † December 25, 1930 in Heilbronn ) was a Heilbronn banker and social democratic critic of the First World War .

Career

Abraham Gumbel was a son of Gütche and Isaak Gumbel (born December 15, 1825 in Stein a. K.). Isaak Gumbel, along with his brother Moses (Max) Gumbel, was one of the first Jews to be allowed to settle in the city again since the Jews were expelled from Heilbronn in the 14th century. Moses Gumbel came to the city in 1860, Isaac followed a year later. At that time he had a fortune of 16,000 guilders. On September 24, 1861, the local council and citizens' committee approved his naturalization for a fee of 390 guilders. Of this amount, 120 guilders went to Isaak Gumbel himself, 60 to his wife Gütche and 30 to each of their seven children.

The family moved into the house at Kramstrasse 54, which was later given the address Kaiserstrasse 34. Isaak Gumbel is the owner of this house, which stood next to Kilian's Church , in 1867 .

Even before their naturalization in Heilbronn, Moses and Isaak Gumbel were active in the banking business and in trading in local products; possibly they did their business in Heilbronn initially from the Gasthaus zur Sonne in Sülmerstrasse. They founded their bank, the Gumbel brothers , in 1860. This made it the second private bank in Heilbronn after the Rümelin bank founded in 1856 . It was based in the family home at Kramstrasse 54; later Isaak Gumbel bought the neighboring house No. 52.

Abraham Gumbel attended school with Christian children, as stipulated by the School Act of 1828. After completing his high school at the Karlsgymnasium , he was trained by his father and uncle. In 1877 he was recorded in the Heilbronn address book as a "clerk"; At that time he still lived in the family home on Kramstrasse.

The master carpenter Gustav Kittler had founded a local social democratic association in 1874, which Abraham Gumbel established together with Kittler. In 1878 the two of them turned against the socialist laws and had 4,000 copies of a leaflet printed in Stuttgart - the printing works in Heilbronn had refused the order - in which they distanced themselves from the attacks on the emperor, but attacked the authorities sharply. Before these 4000 sheets with the title Trau! Look! Whom? were distributed, the Royal Oberamt, to which Kittler had duly given a specimen copy, imposed a ban and had them confiscated. Kittler and one other man were arrested, Gumbel was not. However, he was also mentioned on a list of social democratic agitators that the Upper Office sent to the Ministry of the Interior in Stuttgart. That he was not arrested may be because he did not sign as the responsible editor. Ulrich Maier assumes, however, that he was involved in the design of the text. Gumbel supported the families of the detainees and provided Kittler with reading material while in custody; he is also said to have leaked a number of the party newspaper Süddeutsche Volkszeitung to him.

Abraham Gumbel moved his business activities to Reutlingen for a few years . There he ran an exchange business and at times also an agency for the General Pension Fund of the Grand Duchy of Baden, as well as an emigration agency. He lost the license for the latter after he had also attracted attention in Reutlingen through social democratic activities. Presumably he went to Paris around 1881 , where he probably worked as a bank clerk. In the journal Der Sozialdemokrat, which is banned in Germany and published in Zurich, he published an article on September 11, 1884 entitled How do we position ourselves on the stock exchange tax? Since he did not argue in line with the party line, but welcomed the tax proposed by Bismarck , he was violently hostile.

In 1887 he left the SPD and returned to his father's business in Heilbronn. Two years later he married Elise Aron (born December 26, 1868 in Freudental ) and took over the management of the Gumbel brothers' banking house . His wife became an authorized signatory. The daughter Anna was born in 1890, the son Hans followed in 1891 and another son named Max in 1893.

Abraham and Elise Gumbel operated the Gumbel bank and bills of exchange business on the market until the merger with the Stuttgart bank Stahl & Federer . However, Gumbel soon disliked the new form of business, because as early as 1909 he removed his share in the AG.

In 1909 he founded the Heilbronner Bankverein , the forerunner of today's Volksbank Heilbronn , by converting the family's bank into a limited liability company, which he was managing director until his death. The company proved successful and increased its volume significantly. While in 1913 it still had 1,034 accounts, their number increased to 4,157 by 1930. The balance sheet total increased from 2.3 million to 6.1 million marks. On the occasion of his death on December 25, 1930, he was honored in the annual report of the bank association: “A man with indomitable will, he was a model of the rock solid banker that the Heilbronner Bankverein, which primarily owes its development to him, in his Meaning and being continued according to its solid principles, that was his legacy. ”Until the end of 1917, the Heilbronner Bankverein was based in Marktplatz 2 in Heilbronn.

In 1906 Abraham Gumbel, now a wealthy man, had the two houses next to Kilian's Church torn down and replaced with a neo-baroque building designed by the Stuttgart architects Graf & Röckle. The residential and commercial building was controversial even before its completion, as it was feared that it would block the view of the tower of Kilian's Church. In 1917 the seat of the Heilbronner Bankverein was relocated here.

When his youngest son Max (* July 2, 1893 in Heilbronn; † August 24, 1914) fell in the first days of the First World War, the first Heilbronn Jew to be killed in this world war, Gumbel became one of the most determined opponents of the war and a critic of the Hohenzollern regime. Due to his private research on the question of war guilt, he was later considered one of the best experts on the subject in Germany. His political stance was of decisive importance for his nephew, the pacifist and mathematician Emil Julius Gumbel . He wrote about 40 articles in the Sonntags-Zeitung alone on the subject of war guilt and militarism in the Wilhelmine era. In contrast to articles on economic policy, however, he did not sign these texts with his full name, but used the pseudonym "Emel". According to Ulrich Maier, this word comes from Arabic and means "wish, hope, goal". Abraham Gumbel soon became one of the leading figures in the Heilbronn group of the German Peace Society, which had been founded by Carl Betz in 1903 , dissolved in between and rebuilt in 1920. Nationalist and monarchist contemporaries resisted his investigations and conclusions; At an election meeting of the German People's Party on November 29, 1921, Gumbel was shouted down, as Erich Schairer reported. In his speech he would have warned against heading for a new war.

In the post-war and inflationary period he also appeared in several newspaper articles for responsible, social economic policy and foregoing speculative profits. He also called for a Reichsbank independent of the government.

Abraham Gumbel died shortly after his 78th birthday. Emil Julius Gumbel wrote an obituary that was published in the Heilbronner Sonntags-Zeitung on January 4, 1931.

Elise Gumbel outlived her husband by a few years. She sold the house on Kaiserstraße in 1936 before the so-called " Aryanization " for 220,000 Reichsmarks to the Heilbronner Bankverein and moved to Stuttgart, where she died in 1938. Like her husband, she was cremated, the grave of the Gumbel couple in Heilbronn's main cemetery existed until 1975 or 1976.

Her daughter Anna was killed in an extermination camp. The son Hans died before the beginning of the Third Reich . His widow, who was not Jewish, was able to save her children by hiding them in an institution for the deaf and dumb.

Abraham Gumbel's tombstone bore the inscription:

Abraham Gumbel
vir integrity in his profession
in his work for the banking industry
anima candida in his exemplary efforts
for humanity and peace.

Honors

In 2009, a bust of Gumbel created by Gunther Stilling was placed in the Heilbronner Volksbank . In 2013, an event hall in the extension of the Heilbronn bank on the Allee was named after Abraham Gumbel.

Writings of Abraham Gumbel

• How do we respond to the stock exchange tax? In: The Social Democrat, September 11, 1884 (anonymous)
• Our luck's grave digger. A dispute with the Pan-Germans about the question of guilt for the war . Publishing house of the German Peace Society, Stuttgart 1919 (published under the initials A. G. )
• Wrong diagnosis . In: Süddeutsche Sonntags-Zeitung (SZ), January 16, 1921
• Has HE found the truth? Verlag das Andere Deutschland, undated (1921, published under the pseudonym Emel )
• The guilt of 110th In: The Other Germany, July 17, 1926 (published under the pseudonym Emel )
• The descent of German scholars . In: Das Andere Deutschland, July 10, 1926 (published under the pseudonym Emel )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Or Isaac, as Ulrich Maier wrote, cf. Ulrich Maier: social democrat, banker, peace activist. Abraham Gumbel (1852–1930) , in: Christhard Schrenk (ed.), Heilbronner Köpfe VII. Life pictures from four centuries (= Small series of publications from the Heilbronn Archives 61), Heilbronn City Archives 2014, p. 111–132, here p. 113.
2. ^ Ulrich Maier: social democrat, banker, peace activist. Abraham Gumbel (1852–1930) , in: Christhard Schrenk (ed.), Heilbronner Köpfe VII. Life pictures from four centuries (= Small series of publications from the Heilbronn Archives 61), Heilbronn City Archives 2014, p. 111–132, here p. 113.
3. ^ Ulrich Maier: social democrat, banker, peace activist. Abraham Gumbel (1852–1930) , in: Christhard Schrenk (ed.), Heilbronner Köpfe VII. Life pictures from four centuries (= Small series of publications from the Heilbronn Archives 61), Heilbronn City Archives 2014, p. 111–132, here p. 114.
4. ↑ So Wolfgang Schmierer, From worker education to workers policy , Hanover 19170, p. 245, and Christoph Rieber, Das Sozialistengesetz und die Sozialdemokratie in Württemberg, 1878–1890 , Stuttgart 1984, p. 748 and p. 826
5. ^ Ulrich Maier: social democrat, banker, peace activist. Abraham Gumbel (1852–1930) , in: Christhard Schrenk (ed.), Heilbronner Köpfe VII. Life pictures from four centuries (= Small series of publications from the Heilbronn Archives 61), Heilbronn City Archives 2014, p. 111–132, here p. 116 f.
6. ^ Ulrich Maier: social democrat, banker, peace activist. Abraham Gumbel (1852–1930) , in: Christhard Schrenk (ed.), Heilbronner Köpfe VII. Life pictures from four centuries (= Small series of publications from the Heilbronn Archives 61), Heilbronn City Archives 2014, p. 111–132, here p. 118.
7. ↑ See Helmut Hirsch (Hrsg.): Eduard Bernstein's correspondence with Friedrich Engels . Van Gorkum, Assen 1970, ISBN 90-232-0715-7 ( Sources and studies on the history of the German and Austrian labor movement . New series 1), p. 178, p. 183f., P. 295, p. 299
8. ^ Ulrich Maier: social democrat, banker, peace activist. Abraham Gumbel (1852–1930) , in: Christhard Schrenk (ed.), Heilbronner Köpfe VII. Life pictures from four centuries (= Small series of publications from the Heilbronn Archives 61), Heilbronn City Archives 2014, p. 111–132, here p. 119.
9. ^ ^{A b c} Ulrich Maier: social democrat, banker, peace activist. Abraham Gumbel (1852–1930) , in: Christhard Schrenk (ed.), Heilbronner Köpfe VII. Life pictures from four centuries (= Small series of publications from the Heilbronn Archives 61), Heilbronn City Archives 2014, p. 111–132, here p. 122.
10. ↑ Hans Franke (see literature), p. 200
11. ^ Ulrich Maier: social democrat, banker, peace activist. Abraham Gumbel (1852–1930) , in: Christhard Schrenk (ed.), Heilbronner Köpfe VII. Life pictures from four centuries (= Small series of publications from the Heilbronn Archives 61), Heilbronn City Archives 2014, p. 111–132, here p. 121.
12. ^ Ulrich Maier: social democrat, banker, peace activist. Abraham Gumbel (1852–1930) , in: Christhard Schrenk (ed.), Heilbronner Köpfe VII. Life pictures from four centuries (= Small series of publications from the Heilbronn Archives 61), Heilbronn City Archives 2014, p. 111–132, here p. 124.
13. ^ Ulrich Maier: social democrat, banker, peace activist. Abraham Gumbel (1852–1930) , in: Christhard Schrenk (ed.), Heilbronner Köpfe VII. Life pictures from four centuries (= Small series of publications from the Heilbronn Archives 61), Heilbronn City Archives 2014, p. 111–132, here p. 127.
14. ^ Ulrich Maier: social democrat, banker, peace activist. Abraham Gumbel (1852–1930) , in: Christhard Schrenk (ed.), Heilbronner Köpfe VII. Life pictures from four centuries (= Small series of publications from the Heilbronn Archives 61), Heilbronn City Archives 2014, p. 111–132, here p. 129.
15. ^ ^{A b} Ulrich Maier: Social Democrat, Banker, Peace Activist. Abraham Gumbel (1852–1930) , in: Christhard Schrenk (ed.), Heilbronner Köpfe VII. Life pictures from four centuries (= Small series of publications from the Heilbronn Archives 61), Heilbronn City Archives 2014, p. 111–132, here p. 132.
16. ^ Ulrich Maier: social democrat, banker, peace activist. Abraham Gumbel (1852–1930) , in: Christhard Schrenk (ed.), Heilbronner Köpfe VII. Life pictures from four centuries (= Small series of publications from the Heilbronn Archives 61), Heilbronn City Archives 2014, p. 111–132, here p. 111 f.
17. ^ Ulrich Maier: social democrat, banker, peace activist. Abraham Gumbel (1852–1930) , in: Christhard Schrenk (ed.), Heilbronner Köpfe VII. Life pictures from four centuries (= Small series of publications from the Heilbronn Archives 61), Heilbronn City Archives 2014, p. 111–132, here p. 111

literature

• Arthur David Brenner: Emil J. Gumbel: Weimar German Pacifist and Professor. Brill, Boston / Leiden 2001, ISBN 0-391-04101-0 , pp. 17f. u.ö.
• Hans Franke: History and Fate of the Jews in Heilbronn. From the Middle Ages to the time of the National Socialist persecution (1050–1945) . Heilbronn City Archives, Heilbronn 1963 ( Publications of the Heilbronn City Archives . Volume 11)
• Emil Julius Gumbel: Abraham Gumbel died . In: Süddeutsche Sonntags-Zeitung (SZ), January 4, 1931
• Ulrich Maier: social democrat, banker, peace activist. Abraham Gumbel (1852–1930) , in: Christhard Schrenk (ed.), Heilbronner Köpfe VII. Pictures of life from four centuries (= Small series of publications from the Heilbronn Archives 61), Heilbronn City Archives 2014, ISBN 978-3-940646-16- 3 , pp. 111-132
• Christoph Rieber: The Socialist Law and Social Democracy in Württemberg, 1878-1890 . Müller and Gräff, Stuttgart 1984, ISBN 3-87532-078-6 ( Writings on Southwest German regional studies . Volume 19)
• Wolfgang Schmierer: From workers 'education to workers' policy. The beginnings of the labor movement in Württemberg 1862 / 1863–1878 . Publishing house for literature and current affairs, Hanover 1970
• Lothar Wieland: Abraham Gumbel . In: Helmut Donat , Karl Holl (ed.): The peace movement. Organized pacifism in Germany, Austria and Switzerland . Econ-Verlag, Düsseldorf 1983, pp. 167-168