Ernest Cassel

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Philip Alexius de László : Sir Ernest Cassel, oil on canvas, 1900

Sir Ernest Cassel , GCB , GCMG , GCVO , PC (born March 3, 1852 in Cologne , † September 21, 1921 in London ), also known as "Windsor-Cassel" due to his "lordly" wealth and his good relationships with the royal family, was a British banker of German descent.

Youth and career advancement

Ernest Cassel was born as Ernst Cassel in Cologne. He was the youngest of three children from Amalaia and Jacob Cassel. His father was a Jewish banker based in Cologne . At the age of fourteen, Cassel began an apprenticeship as a banker at JL Eltzbacher's bank in Cologne, which specialized in the financing of large industrial groups and foreign business. In 1869, at the age of just 17, Cassel came to England , where he found employment in a company in Liverpool which had specialized in trading grain. Thanks to his keen business acumen and his extraordinary manpower, which enabled him to cope with an enormous workload every day, he soon found employment at the Anglo-Egyptian Bank in Paris .

The Franco-Prussian War of 1870 and the anti-German mood it created in Paris forced Cassel, who came from Prussia, to return to London . There he took on a position as an accountant at Bankhaus Bischoffsheim & Goldschmidt . The only nineteen year old Ernst quickly made friends with the family of the partner Louis-Raphaël Bischoffsheim (1800–1873).

Cassel's good relationships with the Bischoffsheim family , as well as his quick perception, a tenacious will and an instinctive judgment in financial matters led him to the management level of the prestigious bank at the age of only twenty-two. There he was able to secure some long-lost risky investments, but also to increase his own salary from £ 200 to £ 5,000 plus commission within a year . He was also able to invest his own money profitably. Before he was 30 years old, Cassel had considerable personal fortune, over £ 150,000.

The established businessman

Anders Zorn : Ernest Cassel 1886

The increasing success opened Cassel access to the most respected London circles from the nobility, politics and high finance. In 1878 he married Annette Maxwell, the marriage resulted in a daughter, Amalia Mary Maud (Maudie) Cassel, who married Sir Wilfred Ashley - who later became the 1st Baron of Temple. Cassel's granddaughter from this connection was Edwina Ashley , who became a member of the wider royal family as the wife of Louis Mountbatten in 1922.

Annette Maxwell Cassel died of tuberculosis in 1881 after only three years of marriage . Following her wish on her deathbed, Cassel, who admittedly always felt himself to be a Jew, converted to Catholicism. After the death of his mother (1874) and his father and brother Max (1875), Cassel left his own inheritance to sister Wilhelmina and her children Felix and Anna. He later brought Wilhelmina Cassel and her children to London and let her do the household chores.

Anders Zorn: Ernest Cassel 1909
Villa Cassel, Riederalp

Cassel began running his own business in 1884 but continued to operate from his offices in the Bischoffheims' banking house on Throgmorton Street. He did not open his own office until 1898. He invested in Siberian gold mines and ore mining in Sweden . In addition, he held shares in steel companies and railway companies, financed irrigation projects in Egypt and government bonds for Mexico , China and Uruguay .

In 1889 he founded his own stud together with Lord Willoughby de Broke . From 1896 he began to take part in horse races with pedigree horses he bred himself. At one of these races he met Edward, Prince of Wales - a well-known horse lover and frequent visitor to races - with whom he remained on friendly terms throughout his life. In addition, Cassel also maintained relations with the liberal politicians and later Prime Ministers Herbert Henry Asquith and Winston Churchill , whom he supported financially, especially in his early years.

In 1913, Cassel was a co-founder of GAG Immobilien Köln .

At the beginning of the 20th century he changed his name from Ernst Cassel to Ernest Cassel. In 1902 his friend Edward, now more than Edward VII crowned king, appointed Cassel as his private financial advisor and secret chamberlain. He also became a Privy Councilor in 1902 .

Cassel, who had been charitable all his life, donated more than £ 2,000,000 over the years. In 1910 he founded the King Edward VII Foundation for the amicable exchange between British and Germans. In 1921, shortly before his death, he founded the Cassel Hospital for the mentally injured during the First World War .

As early as 1900, Cassel donated the Swedish community of Grängesberg a community center with a concert hall, library and meeting room, bathhouse, a park with a sports field and a school kitchen.

When Cassel died in 1921, he was buried in Kensal Green Cemetery in London in front of the Anglican cemetery chapel.

Cassel left behind a fortune that, in today's currency, would be worth around 270 million euros. Most of his fortune went to his granddaughter Edwina Ashley: £ 2 million, his country estate in Hampshire and his London townhouse, Brooke House. Numerous orders and awards testify to the high social rank that Cassel held in his time. His Villa Cassel , located in Riederalp , Switzerland , is now used as a center by the nature conservation organization Pro Natura .

Cassel as an art collector

Cassel is one of the most important art collectors of the Edwardian era. His collection in London's Park Lane included paintings by van Dyck and Reynolds , in particular the so-called Cassel Silver . This is a cutlery set, a product of early English silversmithing, the individual parts of which were made between 1496 and 1799. It includes, among other things, chocolate cups and a gold-plated and silver-plated water jug. Since no British museum had the financial means to purchase all of the Cassel Silver pieces, eight museums formed a consortium of interests that jointly acquired the set in order to distribute the items among several museums. Eleven of its parts can be found today in the British Museum in London.

literature

  • Ulrich Halder: Villa Cassel: its builder, its guests, its changes . Swiss Confederation for Nature Conservation (SBN), 1988 ISBN 3-85587-004-7 .
  • John F. Oppenheimer (Red.) And a .: Lexicon of Judaism. 2nd Edition. Bertelsmann Lexikon Verlag, Gütersloh u. a. 1971, ISBN 3-570-05964-2 , col. 140.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Cassel, Ernest
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British banker of German descent
DATE OF BIRTH March 3, 1852
PLACE OF BIRTH Cologne
DATE OF DEATH September 21, 1921
Place of death London