Frédéric Emile Baron d'Erlanger

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Frédéric Emile d'Erlanger (1869)

Frédéric Emile Baron d'Erlanger (born June 19, 1832 in Frankfurt am Main ; † May 22, 1911 in Versailles ), born Friedrich Emil Erlanger, was a German-French-British banker and consul.

life and career

As the eldest son of Raphael von Erlanger, Erlanger had to work early on in the increasingly extensive banking and bills of exchange business. At the age of 19 he was declared of age and took over the brokerage business from his father so successfully that he was appointed Consul General of Greece by the Greek government of Otto I. He visited the Stockholm royal court and was involved in successful Swedish and Portuguese state refinancing. The Portuguese royal house with queen and husband Ferdinand II of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha named his father Raphael and Friedrich Emil the hereditary Portuguese baron .

In 1853 Friedrich Emile fell ill and withdrew from the business. To restore his health, he undertook educational trips to Greece and Egypt . Here he met the Suez Canal planner Lesseps and was enthusiastic about his idea. After recovering, he became a partner in his father's Frankfurt banking house Erlanger & Söhne .

After founding his own bank, "Emile Erlanger & Cie.", In 1859, he became one of the dominant bankers in the Paris financial center in the second half of the 19th century. He is considered to be the inventor of high risk bonds, especially for developing countries. He invested in railways and mines in South Africa , Rhodesia , North and South America and Europe, in Russian and Tunisian government bonds, speculation with American southern cotton (Erlanger Loan) during the American Civil War, and financing of the Simplon tunnel between the Valais and the Aosta Valley , at that time the largest railway tunnel in Europe .

His banking house in Erlanger financed the construction of a transatlantic French telephone cable in 1869 together with Paul Julius Reuter (1816–1899), among other things the founder of the Reuters news agency, and it was his wife Mathilde Baronesse d'Erlanger who made the historically first call.

Shortly before the outbreak of the Franco-German War , Erlanger founded a new bank, Erlanger & Co., in London in 1870, but kept a branch in Paris at 35, boulevard Haussmann. In Great Britain he concentrated again on the issue of securities, including a bond issued by the Central American state of Costa Rica in 1872 , which shortly thereafter became insolvent. In this context, Erlanger had to appear as a witness before a British Royal Commission of Inquiry in 1875.

The Erlanger Health System in Chattanooga , Tennessee

In the second half of the 1870s, Erlanger made major investments in North American railways. To this end, he set up a consortium controlled by him, which initially took over the “Alabama Great Southern Railway” and then the “Cincinnati, New Orleans and Texas Pacific Railway” (CNO & TP) via the British company “Alabama Great Southern Railway Company Limited”. Finally, Erlanger controlled a railroad network in the southern United States, with a focus on the states of Alabama and Louisiana . This network was also known as the “Erlanger System” and covered more than 1,100 miles . In 1889, on the occasion of an inspection tour of their American railroad investments in Chattanooga (Tennessee) in the US state of Tennessee , the couple d'Erlangers donated start-up capital to build a hospital, which today still reminds of the sponsors as Erlanger Medical Center . The naming of Erlanger City in the US state of Kentucky also results from financial donations from the couple d'Erlanger.

As influential members of the upper bourgeoisie who maintained personal relationships with the rulers of numerous countries, they also promoted Richard Wagner and his music as a music lover , including the first performance of Tannhauser at the Paris Opera after the Franco-German War. D'Erlanger also donated various works of art, such as the allegorical tapestries depicting Duke Albas as the 17th century for the Hampton Court Palace of the British crown. The d'Erlanger couple also financed the rescue of the murals from the “Quinta del Sordo”. This house they bought had been Goya's temporary residence . They had their "Pinturas negras" from 1873 saved from destruction at great expense. They had these “black pictures”, which were painted directly on the plaster, carefully removed and transferred onto canvas. After their unsuccessful exhibition at the Paris World Exhibition of 1878, he bequeathed these works to the Prado in Madrid in 1880 , where they can still be seen today in the so-called New Prado .

In Italy, the couple d'Erlanger rented the Villa Foscari , built by Andrea Palladio in 1559/60 near the town of Malcontenta on the Brenta River, and had restoration work carried out. Frédéric Emile Baron d'Erlanger died on May 22, 1911 in Versailles. The management of the successful bank was already taken over by his second oldest son, Emile Beaumont Baron d'Erlanger.

family

First marriage

On June 30, 1858, Friedrich Emil Erlanger married Odette Louise Florence Lafitte (born June 20, 1840 Paris ; † 1931), who was eight years his junior, and thus found access to Parisian society. Her grandfather was a banker, governor of the Bank of France, finance minister and at times Prime Minister of France. In 1859 Erlanger founded his own bank in Paris, "Emile Erlanger & Cie.", Which worked closely with his father's bank in Frankfurt am Main. He changed his name and called himself Frédéric Emile Baron d'Erlanger from then on . His marriage, however, failed. She remained childless and was dissolved on December 5, 1862.

In 1860 his father Raphael was raised to hereditary baron status by the Duke of Saxony-Meiningen and later even by the Austrian Emperor and was awarded the Grand Cross of the Order of Franz Josef.

Second marriage

On October 3, 1864, Frédéric Emile Baron d'Erlanger married the American Marguérite Mathilde Slidell (born November 19, 1842 New Orleans ; † February 18, 1927 Paris ). She was the daughter of the influential American lawyer, businessman and politician John Slidell (* 1793 New York ; † 1871 Cowes , Isle of Man ), who was the ambassador of the apostate southern states of America at the court of Emperor Napoleon III at the wedding date . was, and Maria Mathilde Deslonde (* 1795 New Orleans; † 1870 Brighton England ), who also came from an influential southern family , whose ancestors moved from Brest , France to the French-speaking southern part of the USA in the 17th century .

Frédéric Emile Baron d'Erlanger met his second wife earlier on a trip to America in New Orleans. She grew up as a staunch Southern Unionist of the later Confederate States of America on a flourishing plantation 90 miles north of New Orleans in Louisiana. That was the Belle Pointe plantation in Laplace, Louisiana . She later moved to Paris with her parents, brother Alfred and sister Marie Rosine, where she and her sister attracted a great deal of attention on arrival due to their extraordinary beauty. Her sister Marie Rosine married the Comte de Saint-Roman in Villejuif , she married the successful Frankfurt banker's son Frédéric Emile Baron d'Erlanger. In the elegant 16th arrondissement of Paris, a villa that still exists today was built, one of which was later named "rue Erlanger" in his honor, the other "avenue Erlanger". Shortly before the outbreak of the Franco-German war , he moved his business and private life to Great Britain in 1870 . There he moved into a villa in London , 139 Piccadilly , which had previously belonged to Lord Byron . Soon after , Frédéric Emile Baron d'Erlanger, who was still in Germany , took British citizenship, like all his family members. He was also given the right to carry on his foreign nobility title against strong opposition.

The couple had four children:

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Erlanger Loan in: Encyclopædia Britannica
personal data
SURNAME Erlanger, Frédéric Emile Baron d '
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Erlanger, Friedrich Emil
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German banker and consul
DATE OF BIRTH June 19, 1832
PLACE OF BIRTH Frankfurt am Main
DATE OF DEATH May 22, 1911
Place of death Versailles