Alexander Moritz Simon

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Alexander Moritz Simon (originally Moses Simon ) (born November 27, 1837 in Hanover ; † January 29, 1905 there ) was a banker and American vice-consul. He founded the later Israelite Horticultural School in Ahlem to improve the living conditions of his Jewish fellow citizens.

Life

The Ahlem Israelite Horticultural School founded by Simon around 1900

family

Alexander Moritz Simon was the fourth of seven children of the main Jewish collector and lottery taker Alexander Simon and his wife Fanny.

Alexander Moritz 'sister Helene (1845–1919) married the Jewish merchant Sigmund Meyer (approx. 1840–73) from Bochum ; The later electric car pioneer Sigmund Meyer emerged from the marriage.

Career

Moritz completed an apprenticeship as a banker in the banking house of the Hanoverian court banker, Ezekiel Simon. In July 1858 he traveled to New York and worked at a bank. Here he got to know the misery of the Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe.

After his return to Hanover in 1863, he applied for civil rights on April 29 and was registered as a banker . On July 16, he and his father founded the bank, money exchange and debt collection business Alexander Simon , which he became head of and which he managed to get through the founding crisis of the 1870s. In 1898 he sold his company to Dresdner Bank .

He was a member of the supervisory boards of the Deutsche Pulverfabrik in Walsrode and Tivoli AG in Hanover. The company ran the Tivoli Concert Garden , which was completed in 1878 by the architect Otto Goetze , immediately adjacent to the Tivoli district and near the Schiffgraben , which quickly became one of the most famous dance halls in Hanover.

Multi-storey car park acquired from Simon at the park in Herrenhausen
Knight's castle built by Simon near the parking garage

In 1890, Simon bought the multi-storey car park . This was a concert hall built in 1874 by the architects Ludolf and Heussner on the acute-angled corner of Appelstrasse. Simon had it expanded in 1891 and demolished and rebuilt in 1894/95 by the architect Max Küster (1862–1941). Simon had it furnished with decorative turrets and a terrace with a view of the Herrenhausen park - hence the name parking garage . Behind the multi-storey car park, Simon had a later privatized city park built, in which he had a knight's castle with originally furnished interiors as well as a Hundinghütte with a stalactite cave and an old German drinking chamber built.

Simon remained unmarried and lived with his parents on Schillerstrasse for a long time. Later he built a villa in the exclusive residential area of ​​the northern part of the city . Ahlem became the center of his life around 1895 .

At the end of the 19th century, many people of Jewish faith from Eastern Europe had immigrated to the German Reich and mostly lived in ghettos and poor conditions in the cities . In Hanover, the number of people increased tenfold from 500 to around 5000 people of Jewish faith at the beginning of the 20th century. Since the 1880s, Moritz Simon has endeavored to improve the economic and social situation of his fellow believers - true to his motto: "Our poor fellow believers can be helped not through alms, but through education for work." (Cf. Hachschara ) In the one he donated He started school in Ohestrasse with practical lessons. The association he founded in 1884 to promote horticultural and handicraft lessons in Jewish elementary schools had not achieved its goals. Therefore, in the autumn of the same year, in the then still independent village of Ahlem , he acquired a 60-acre property at Heisterbergalle 8 and began building his horticultural school. Nine years later, on June 2, 1893, it was opened under the name Israelitische-Erziehungs-Anstalt zu Ahlem near Hanover (renamed Israelitische Gartenbauschule Ahlem in 1919). Manfred Berliner took part in the management . In Peine , Simon founded a training center for teachers.

Alexander Moritz Simon lived frugally and put all his money into his school. He did not have his bath heater repaired and suffered a fatal bathing accident. He was buried in the Jewish cemetery at An der Strangriede . Sartorius Rheinhold took over Simons board position at the Israelite Horticultural School .

Alexander and Fanny Simonsche Foundation

After Alexander Moritz Simons death, the Alexander and Fanny Simonsche Foundation, named after his parents, continued its work. The foundation owned, among other things, two apartment buildings at Wißmannstrasse 11 and 13 in Südstadt . Around 1940 around 132 Jewish people lived in these houses, all of whom were deported , some of them via the collection point in the horticultural school.

Fonts

See also

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ School project page according to Hans-Dieter Schmid (Ed.): Ahlem. The story of a Jewish horticultural school. ( Memento of the original from April 7, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Bremen 2008, pp. 17–54, accessed on April 14, 2010 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.erinnernundzukunft.de
  2. ↑ Isidore Singer and Frederick T. Haneman: Simon, Moritz Alexander , in: Jewish Encyclopedia.com, accessed on March 14, 2015.
  3. ↑ Hans Christoph Graf von Seherr-Thoß:  Meyer, Sigmund (called Hans Sigismund). In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 17, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1994, ISBN 3-428-00198-2 , p. 373 f. ( Digitized version ).
  4. ↑ Photo: Tivoli Concert Garden; between today's Schiffgraben and Königstrasse
  5. ^ Hanover , in: Alexander Moritz Simon . In: Meyers Konversations-Lexikon . 4th edition. Volume 8, Verlag des Bibliographisches Institut, Leipzig / Vienna 1885–1892, p. 141.
  6. ^ History of the parking garage on the website of the University of Hanover
  7. ↑ Picture on a historical postcard ( Memento of the original from May 4, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed March 14, 2015.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.postkarten-archiv.de
  8. ↑ PDF at www.uni-hannover.de ( Memento of the original from December 3, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.uni-hannover.de
  9. ↑ Wolfgang Volz: Herrenhausen: the royal gardens in Hanover , p. 110
  10. ^ Dirk Böttcher: Hannoversches biographical lexicon
  11. ↑ PDF at www.dungelbeck.de ( Memento of the original dated February 22, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.dungelbeck.de
  12. ↑ Biography Bertha Rheinhold, b. Levy and Elise Rheinhold, b. Daniel . Retrieved February 5, 2014
personal data
SURNAME Simon, Alexander Moritz
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Simon, Moses
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Banker, founder of a horticultural school and American vice-consul
DATE OF BIRTH November 27, 1837
PLACE OF BIRTH Hanover
DATE OF DEATH January 29, 1905
Place of death Hanover