Emil Kohn

This article deals with the banker Emil Kohn. For other people see Emil Cohn .

Emil Kohn (born October 30, 1845 in Markt Erlbach , † March 5, 1906 in Nuremberg ) was a Nuremberg private banker .

family

Emil Kohn came from a family of hops traders in Markt Erlbach: his grandparents were Mayer (1772–1838) and Nanette Kohn. His uncle, Josef Kohn, had moved to Nuremberg in 1845 and about five years later, as the first Jew in 350 years, had received permission to settle there. His father, Anton Kohn (1820–1882) followed him in 1848, founded a hop trade, which later also included banking and bills of exchange. In 1852 the Kohn brothers bought the house at Königstrasse 26, at the corner of Brunnengasse, opposite the Lorenz Church, for 27,500 florins. (It was rebuilt after being destroyed in the war and is now the Müller drugstore.) In 1859 they were one of the founding members of the Israelite Religious Association. Anton was accepted to unity in the Masonic Lodge Joseph in 1860 . He belonged to the Progressive Party , was a member of the magistrate from 1872 and in the district administrator of Middle Franconia from 1876. When the Kohn brothers and their sons separated in 1878, Josef moved his business to Königstrasse 41. In 1867, at the request of his late wife, Josef had set up the Sophie Kohn'sche Polytechnikum Foundation . In his will, Anton determined an amount of 10,000 marks for charitable purposes, which his heirs divided among various organizations. The heirs also set up the Anton Kohn Foundation for impoverished merchants.

Life

Emil Kohn took over his father's company in 1882 with his younger brother Georg Friedrich (1855–1919). Six years later, he concentrated exclusively on running the bank. When in 1905 the Bayerische Hypotheken- und Wechsel-Bank tried in vain to take over the bank, the working capital amounted to eight million marks with a 6.25% profit. He was on the supervisory boards of Elektrizitäts-AG formerly Schuckert , Augsburger Straßenbahn AG and the Löwenbräu brewery ; Georg Friedrich at the Mars Works . From 1887–1896 in the college of municipal representatives, he held the budget department several times. In 1885 he became market adjunct and in 1892 market manager and commercial judge.

1895–1897 Emil had his villa built in the rococo style on the former Campestrasse 10 garden site according to plans by the Nuremberg architect Emil Hecht . An oval, south-westerly oriented staircase connects the building wings to the north and east.

With his wife Wilhelmine (1858–1940), the daughter of Markus Maas from Grünstadt , he had seven children, including:

• Elise (1879–1942) married Oberpostassessor Paul Max Kann (1868–1935), who was replaced as managing director of the Postal Museum in the spring of 1933 by Postal Councilor Andreas Enzensberger, the former head of the Funkwacht. They lived in the villa with their daughters Charlotte and Helene Kann.
• Johanna Kohn (1882–1942), married Gugenheimer
• Martin (1877-1942)
• Richard (1881–1941) was active in various local politics.

aftermath

After his death in 1906, the two sons continued the banking business. With others they participated in the founding of the large power station in Franconia in 1911 . In 1922 they opened a deposit box on Bauerngasse. In the last few years until the summer of 1938, when Richard threatened prison for racial disgrace, they were able to assert themselves against harassment.

When the villa's furnishings were smashed during the Reichspogromnacht in November 1938, at the request of the caretaker, the thugs left his eighty-year-old widow, Wilhelmine, alone. In the course of Aryanization, the building complex in Campestrasse initially became the property of Gauleiter Julius Streicher for ten percent of the unit value; and was used by the Reich Labor Service from 1940. The sons were deported to the Jungfernhof camp in 1941 and 1942 and did not survive this time there.

The villa was won back by his granddaughters, who had spent the war in the USA, in 1946–1952 and sold in 1955 to Gesellschaft Museum eV . Due to the immense maintenance costs of the building, parts of the garden had to be sold to the Campe-Park residential project . In addition, there is now a restaurant, a dance school and an architecture office in the villa. The few surviving company documents were owned by Charlotte's son, John E. Metzger (1919–2013) in the USA.

literature

• Maren Janetzko: The Anton Kohn Bank in Nuremberg (1878-1938) - The history of a Jewish private bank and its owners; University of Erlangen-Nuremberg ; 1997
• Maren Janetzko: Haven't you seen the Kohn bank? (Abridged and revised version)

Individual evidence

1. ^ The synagogue in Markt Erlbach. Retrieved June 1, 2018 . 
2. ↑ Manfred H. Grieb: Nürnberger Künstlerlexikon: Visual artists, artisans, scholars, collectors, cultural workers and patrons from the 12th to the middle of the 20th century . Walter de Gruyter, 2007, ISBN 978-3-11-091296-8 ( google.de [accessed April 10, 2017]).
3. ^ Father of Hans Magnus Enzensberger
4. ^ Ingo Koehler: The "Aryanization" of the private banks in the Third Reich: repression, elimination and the question of reparation . CH Beck, 2005, ISBN 978-3-406-53200-9 ( google.de [accessed April 10, 2017]).
5. ^ Nuremberg, Campestr. 10, residential building; German Empire, formerly Jewish. Owners: Emil and Wilhelmine Kohn - German Digital Library. Retrieved April 10, 2017 . 
6. ^ Center for Jewish History: CJH Digital Collections. Retrieved April 10, 2017 (English).