Alfred Nathan (philanthropist)

Alfred Louis Nathan (born December 8, 1870 in Fürth , † October 9, 1922 in Bad Reichenhall ) was a German lawyer and philanthropist .

Career

Grave of Alfred Nathan in the old Jewish cemetery in Fürth .

Nathan was born the son of a Jewish banker. He attended pre-school and the Latin school in Mathildenstrasse in Fürth and then went to the humanistic grammar school in Erlangen. From 1888 to 1893 he studied law in Munich . After graduation, he returned to his hometown and joined the Bavarian judicial service as a legal intern at the district and regional court of Fürth. In 1895 he came to the Bad Reichenhall district office , but in the same year switched to the city magistrate in Munich. In the following year he joined the office of the Fürth lawyer Gunzenhäuser, and in 1897 he set up his own law firm in Munich. Due to a lung disease, he moved back to Bad Reichenhall in 1900 and finally gave up his job entirely.

After the early death of his wealthy father in 1888, Nathan’s mother set up a charity foundation for the poor and needy in the amount of 40,000 marks. When his mother died in November 1906, Nathan became the heir of the huge fortune, which he also used for charitable purposes in continuation of his mother's work. In 1907 he was accepted into the Fürth Freemason Lodge for Truth and Friendship .

He set up the Nathanstift in Fürth and donated a total of around two million marks until his death. In Bad Reichenhall he gave, among other things, 30,000 marks for the construction of a poor house, 210,000 marks for a military rest home and 10,000 marks for vacant places for officers. He regularly donated 1,000 marks at Christmas for giving presents to poor children. Further donations went to the boys' school and for the construction of the Bildstöckl Chapel . In 1908 he had the Amalienruhe observation tower built above Karlsteins , and in 1910 he donated the centaur fountain on Bahnhofplatz. A bust of Prince Regent Luitpold initiated by him in the spa garden was removed during the Nazi era.

Nathan was also active as a poet and published volumes of poetry.

Honors

In 1906 Nathan was made an honorary citizen in his native town of Fürth and in his adopted home Bad Reichenhall . In 1914 a street (Alfred-Nathan-Straße) was named after him in Bad Reichenhall. Its Jewish origins led to the name being changed to Riedelstrasse in 1933. Today the connecting road between Traunfeldstrasse and Paepkestrasse at Rupertuspark, where the military recreation home he donated is located, is named after him.

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  Centaur fountain in Bad Reichenhall

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  Alfred-Nathan-Strasse in Bad Reichenhall

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  Military rest home in Bad Reichenhall

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  Amalienruhe in Bad Reichenhall

literature

• Manfred Mümmler: poet, thinker, democrat. The city of Fürth was a stop on her life path. Seventeen biographies. Mümmler, Emskirchen 1991

Web links

Commons : Alfred Nathan  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Alfred Nathan in the catalog of the German National Library