Antonio Knauth

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Antonio Knauth (born December 2, 1855 in Leipzig , † December 3, 1915 in Bolton , New York ) was a German-American lawyer and manager . He was a partner in the New York law firm Briesen, Steele & Knauth , which specializes in patent law , and acted as their representative in several relevant cases before the US Supreme Court . As a major shareholder , he was co-owner of the Knauth, Nachod & Kühne banking house founded by his father in 1852, with branches in Leipzig and New York. For this he also worked as a corporate lawyer until his death . In addition, he was u. a. Vice President of the New Jersey Worsted Mills listed company Botany Worsted Mills . Antonio Knauth was also socially committed in many ways, for example as President of the Germanistic Society of America at Columbia University in New York.

Life

Saxon origin

Old Thomas School at Thomaskirchhof in Leipzig (before 1885)

Antonio Knauth came from a wealthy Saxon - Lutheran merchant family. He was born in Leipzig in 1855 as the third son of the Gohlis banker Franz Theodor Knauth (1803-1874), who was for many years the Grand Duke of Baden , Granada and the US-American honorary consul in Leipzig, and his second wife, Fanny Elisabeth Knauth (1828-1907), born in Leipzig . His father was a co-founder in 1852 and from then on co-owner of the prestigious international banking house Knauth, Nachod & Kühne with agencies in Leipzig and New York City .

Antonio Knauth grew up with his seven siblings in a bourgeois environment and attended the old humanistic Thomas School in Leipzig at the Thomaskirchhof until 1876 under the rector Friedrich August Eckstein . After graduating from high school , he began to study law and philosophy at the University of Leipzig , which he was to continue later at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Berlin .

New start in the USA

Law degree in New York

After his father's death in 1875, his brothers emigrated to the United States to start a new life. In 1877, with the support of the brothers and American business partners, he followed to the US state of New York . He studied law ( common law ) at the prestigious Law School of Columbia University in New York City . He earned a Bachelor of Laws (LL.B.) two years later in 1879 . Under the former governor of Wisconsin Edward Salomon ( Republican ), who was also of German origin , he worked after his studies as a research assistant (Law Clerk) in New York City. After five years in the US, he was granted US citizenship in 1882 . After passing his New York State Bar Exam , he applied for admission to the New York City Bar Association in 1882 and was thus finally admitted to the bar in 1883.

Management and syndicate work

For the bank Knauth, Nachod & Kühne , in which he held the largest shares after the death of his father, he worked as an in-house lawyer and represented the bank in the USA. The bank was an important factor in the import and export trade with North America for the Kingdom of Saxony. From 1895 Knauth, Nachod & Kühne was listed on the New York Stock Exchange . Your New York office was last on Broadway 120 (Broad Exchange Building) not far from Wall Street . The Leipzig bank was located at Rathausring 13 (today: Martin-Luther-Ring ).

In addition, he was entrepreneurial through his diverse German and American contacts. He was president of the textile company Vigilant Mills Co. in Frankford , Pennsylvania and vice-president of Regina Co. , a Leipzig-based manufacturer of mechanical musical instruments, in Rahway , New Jersey, and the textile factory Botany Worsted Mills , a subsidiary of the Leipzig worsted yarn spinning mill Stöhr & Co. , in Passaic , New Jersey. The latter developed into one of the largest worsted spinning mills in the USA.

Law firm founded in New York

Former offices of the law firm Briesen, Steele & Knauth in the Broad Exchange Building at 25 Broad Street in New York (2010)

In 1886 Knauth joined the law firm Briesen & Steele in New York City, which was henceforth called Briesen, Steele & Knauth . His partners were the well-known lawyers Arthur von Briesen , himself a German immigrant, and Sanford H. Steele . After Steele's retirement, the firm was continued under the name Briesen & Knauth from 1888 to 1915 and as Briesen & Schrenk from 1915 . Located in the Financial District of Manhattan , the law firm advanced to become one of the leading patent law firms in the United States at the turn of the century. The numerous international clients, including private individuals and companies, included a. the Italian inventor and reform pedagogue Maria Montessori , the widow of the kuk court purveyor Andreas Saxlehner and the German photo merchant Emil Werckmeister .

Antonio Knauth was admitted to the New York State Courts for three years before the United States District Court, United States Court of Appeals in New York and New Jersey and in the capital city of Columbia. In addition, he successfully applied for separate admission to the United States Supreme Court , the US Supreme Court in Washington DC. a. the following intellectual property cases:

  • Saxlehner v. Nielsen , 179 US 43 (1900)
  • Saxlehner v. Eisner & Mendelson Co. , 179 US 19 (1900)
  • American Tobacco Co. v. Werckmeister , 207 US 284 (1907)
  • Saxlehner v. Wagner , 216 US 375 (1910)
  • American Lithographic Co. v. Werckmeister , 221 US 603 (1911)
  • Henry v. AB Dick Co. , 224 US 1 (1912)
  • JG Brill Co. v. Bemis Car Box Co. , 236 US 614 (1913)

The American Tobacco Co. v. Werckmeister , Saxlehner v. Wagner , American Lithographic Co. v. Werckmeister and Henry v. AB Dick Co. were among the landmark intellectual property (art, trademark, copyright, and antitrust) decisions of the US Supreme Court.

In addition to his membership of the New York City Bar Association, he was also represented in the American Bar Association and New York County Lawyers' Association , and was a member of the New York Law Institute , the New York Library Association and the Dwight Alumni Association of Columbia University. He has also written several articles for German legal journals.

Civil society engagement

At the suggestion of his older brother Percival, Knauth was involved in various ways in public life in New York. He was u. a. longtime member of the civil rights movement Citizens Union , which criticized the Tammany Hall political network of the Democratic Party in New York City and supported reform candidates. He was also treasurer of the anti-corruption movement Good Government Club in New York's 19th District of the New York State Assembly . He saw himself as a non-partisan independent (neither Democrat nor Republican).

Knauth was also President of the Germanistic Society of America from 1913 to 1915 , which is affiliated with the German House of Columbia University in New York and which continues to promote cultural exchange between the USA and Germany to this day. He was succeeded by Abraham Jacobi . He was also trustee of the Riverside Day Nursery in New York City and director of the Germanic Museum at Harvard University in Cambridge , Massachusetts.

Antonio Knauth was with New York personalities such as Gustav Kobbé , William C. Baird and Leon Lewenberg a member of the prestigious artists' association Tile Club . As an amateur cellist , he performed in New York. He was also an avid chess and bowling player .

family

Knauths apartment at 246 West End Avenue , New York (1913)

From 1884 Antonio Knauth was married to Elise Ribbius Peletier from Utrecht in the Netherlands , who died in 1886 without children. A second marriage was arranged for him through his family with the much younger Else Magdalene Uhlich (1868–1957) from Chemnitz , whom he married in 1893. He had five children with her: Ilse (born 1894), Susanne (1895–1985), Ursula (born 1899), Berthold (born 1905) and Johannes Peter (born 1907). His daughter Susanne Katherina Knauth, who became a respected philosopher, married the Harvard historian William L. Langer . In her youth Antonio Knauth taught her the cello and piano and gave her home lessons for a while, although he refused higher education for women. In doing so, he laid the foundation for his daughter's subsequent academic success.

Other public figures belonged to his extensive family: his brother Percival Knauth (1851-1900) was also a banker and his brother-in-law Henry Pickering Bowditch taught as a physiologist at Harvard. His nephew, Oswald Whitman Knauth , an economist and entrepreneur, co-founded the largest economic research institution in the United States, the National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

In addition to his mother tongue and English , Knauth also spoke French , Spanish and Italian . He lived with his family on Manhattan's posh Upper West Side . When his wife traveled, he stayed at the New York Reform Club near his law office. He died in 1915 after a long and serious illness at his summer residence on Lake George in Bolton Landing, New York. The funeral service took place a day later at St. Michael's Episcopal Church in New York. He left behind a large amount of private correspondence that his descendants have meanwhile digitized.

Publications

  • About the legal force of German judgments in the United States with special consideration of the state of New York . In: Rheinische Zeitschrift für Zivil- und Prozessrecht 1 (1909), p. 93 ff.

literature

Lexicons, manuals and yearbooks

  • Charles E. Fitch: Encyclopedia of Biography of New York. A Life Record of Men and Women Whose Sterling Character and Energy and Industry Have Made Them Preëminent in Their Own and Many Other States . Volume 5, American Historic Society, New York 1916, p. 329.
  • Nelson Greene: History of the Valley of the Hudson. River of Destiny, 1609-1930 . Volume 4, SJ Clarke Publishing Company, Hudson River Valley 1931, p. 264.
  • Lewis R. Hamersly, John W. Leonard, Frank R. Holmes: Who's Who in New York City and State . Volume 4, LR Hamersly Company, New York 1909, p. 790 ( PDF 4.22kB , accessed March 25, 2013).
  • Otto Sprengler: The German element of the city of New York. Biographical yearbook of German-Americans in New York and the surrounding area . Sprengler, New York 1913, p. 158.
  • The Association of the Bar of the City of New York (Ed.): Yearbook . Self-published, New York 1917, p. 179 f.
  • James T. White: The National Cyclopædia of American Biography. Being the History of the United States as Illustrated in the Lives of the Founders, Builders, and Defenders of the Republic, and of the Men and Women who are Doing the Work and Molding the Thought of the Present Time . Volume 26, JT White, New York 1937, p. 413.

Genealogical collection

  • Ted Huthsteiner: Uhlrich-Knauth Lettres, 1883–1951 . [Correspondence from the Knauth family]. Huthsteiner Genealogy, Honeoye 2007, p. 21 ( PDF 610kB accessed on April 1, 2013).
  • Ted Huthsteiner: Modified Register for Petrus von Knauth . [Family tree of the Knauth family]. Huthsteiner Genealogy, Honeoye 2012, p. 21 ( PDF 133.55kB accessed on April 1, 2013).
  • Theodore W. Knauth: A Banking Retrospect . [History of the Knauth family's banking house]. Huthsteiner Genealogy, Zurich 1959, p. 6 ( PDF 396.05kB accessed April 1, 2013).

Web links

Commons : Antonio Knauth  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Agnes Neumayr: Politics of feelings. Susanne K. Langer and Hannah Arendt . Innsbruck University Press, Innsbruck 2009, ISBN 978-3-902571-84-7 , p. 22. (= also dissertation, University of Innsbruck, 2009)
  2. ↑ a b c Theodore W. Knauth: A Banking Retrospect , p. 5.
  3. ^ The Association of the Bar of the City of New York (ed.): Yearbook . P. 180.
  4. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j Hamersly / Leonard / Holmes: Who's Who in New York City and State , p. 790.
  5. ↑ Richard Sachse , Karl Ramshorn, Reinhart Herz: The teachers of the Thomasschule in Leipzig 1832-1912. The high school graduates of the Thomas School in Leipzig 1845–1912 . BG Teubner Verlag, Leipzig 1912, p. 61.
  6. ^ Charles E. Fitch: Encyclopedia of Biography of New York , p. 329.
  7. ^ Nelson Greene: History of the Valley of the Hudson , p. 264.
  8. ^ Theodore W. Knauth: A Banking Retrospect , p. 6.
  9. ↑ Simone Lässig : Jewish ways into the bourgeoisie. Cultural capital and social advancement in the 19th century . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2004, ISBN 3-525-36840-2 , p. 653.
  10. ^ Rand McNally International Bankers' Directory and List of Bank Attorneys . Rand McNally & Company, Chicago 1905.
  11. ↑ Knauth, Nachod & Kühne Move To Equitable Building in May . In: United States Investor 27 (1916) 1, p. 717
  12. ↑ Börsenverein der Deutschen Buchhandels zu Leipzig (Ed.): Adressbuch des Deutschen Buchhandels 1931 . Self-published, Leipzig 1931, p. 214.
  13. ↑ a b c d e f g Antonio Knauth . In: The New York Times , December 5, 1915 ( digitized ).
  14. ↑ Clemens Verenkotte : The Brittle Alliance. American Bonds and German Industry, 1924–1934 . The Author, Freiburg 1991, p. 328. (= Dissertation, University of Freiburg, 1991)
  15. ^ A b Carl Schlegel: Schlegel's American Families of German Ancestry , The American Historical Society, New York 1918, p. 8.
  16. ↑ Gerald Lee Gutek: The Montessori Method . Rowman & Littlefield Publishing, Oxford 2004, ISBN 0-7425-1911-2 , p. 27.
  17. ^ Robert E. Duffy: Art Law. Representing Artists, Dealers, and Collectors . Practicing Law Institute, New York 1977, p. 120.
  18. ^ Marshall A. Leaffer: Understanding copyright law . 3rd edition, Matthew Bender, New York 1999, p. 156.
  19. ^ The Trademark Reporter 72 (1983), p. 29.
  20. ^ Patent, Trademark & ​​Copyright Series 5 (1981) 1, p. 197.
  21. ^ Benjamin W. Rudd: Decisions of the United States Courts Involving Copyright . Volume 23, Copyright Office, Library of Congress, Washington 1972, p. 251.
  22. ↑ Manfred Balz : Property order and technology policy. A comparative study of the Soviet patent and technology law . Mohr, Tübingen 1980, ISBN 978-3-16-641402-7 , p. 318.
  23. ↑ a b c Antonio Knauth dies at Lake George Home . In: The New York Sun , December 4, 1915 ( digitized ).
  24. ^ A b Columbia Alumni News 7 (1915), p. 436.
  25. ^ Tile Club . Parrish Art Museum website. Retrieved April 19, 2013.
  26. ↑ James Terry White: The National Cyclopædia of American Biography , p. 413.
  27. ↑ Ted Huthsteiner: Uhlrich-Knauth Lettres, 1883–1951 , p. 8.
  28. ↑ John R. Shook (Ed.): Dictionary of Modern American Philosophers . Volume 3, Thoemmes Continuum, Bristol 2005, ISBN 1-84371-037-4 , p. 1412.
  29. ↑ Anne Commire (ed.): Women in World History . Volume 9, Yorkin Publications, Waterford 2001, ISBN 0-7876-4068-9 , p. 127.
  30. ↑ Martin Seymour-Smith, Andrew C. Kimmens (Ed.): World authors, 1900–1950 . Volume 2, Wilson, New York 1996, ISBN 978-0-8242-0899-8 , p. 1472.
  31. ↑ Ted Huthsteiner: Modified Register for Petrus von Knauth , p. 18.
  32. ↑ Ted Huthsteiner: Modified Register for Petrus von Knauth , p. 22.
  33. ↑ Ted Huthsteiner: Modified Register for Petrus von Knauth , p. 23.
  34. ^ The Association of the Bar of the City of New York (Ed.): Yearbook , p. 179.
  35. ^ Donald Dryden: Susanne Langer . In: Philip Breed Dematteis, Leemon B. McHenry (Eds.): Dictionary of Literary Biography. American Philosophers Before . 270, Gale Group, Farmington Hills 2003, p. 190.
  36. ↑ Ted Huthsteiner: Uhlrich-Knauth Lettres, 1883–1951 , p. 3.
  37. ↑ Died . In: The New York Times , December 5, 1915. ( Digitized )
  38. ↑ Ted Huthsteiner: Uhlrich-Knauth Lettres, 1883–1951 , p. 2.
personal data
SURNAME Knauth, Antonio
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-American lawyer
DATE OF BIRTH December 2, 1855
PLACE OF BIRTH Leipzig
DATE OF DEATH December 3, 1915
Place of death Bolton , New York