Jakob Heinrich Schiff

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Jakob Heinrich Schiff
Jakob Heinrich Schiff 1913, etching by Hermann Struck

Jakob Heinrich Schiff (born January 10, 1847 in Frankfurt am Main , † September 25, 1920 in New York City , also Jakob Schiff , Jacob Schiff or Jacob Henry Schiff ) was a New York banker and philanthropist.

Early years of life

Jakob Heinrich Schiff was born in 1847 as the fifth child of Moses Schiff and Clara Schiff, b. Niederhofheim, born into a wealthy Jewish family of bankers and rabbis in Frankfurt am Main. He had two brothers: Herman, who later went to London, and Ludwig, who stayed in Frankfurt.

He attended the Philanthropin and completed an apprenticeship in a Frankfurt trading office. At the age of eighteen, Schiff emigrated to the USA for the first time in 1865 . He settled in New York and was licensed as a securities dealer there in 1866 . In the same year he founded the brokerage company "Budge, Schiff & Company" with Henry Budge and Leo Lehmann . In 1870 Schiff became a US citizen. After Budge, Schiff & Company had to be dissolved for lack of economic success in 1872, Schiff returned to Germany.

First he became head of the Hamburg branch of the "London & Hanseatic Bank" (subsidiary of the "Commerz- und Diskonto-Bank", today Commerzbank AG ) in 1873 , but returned to Frankfurt in the same year because of the death of his father. There he met Abraham Kuhn, one of the founders of the New York investment bank Kuhn, Loeb & Co. Impressed by the expertise of the young ship, Kuhn persuaded him to emigrate to the USA for a second time and to work at Kuhn on January 1, 1875, Loeb & Co. to compete.

Head of Kuhn, Loeb & Co.

Jakob Schiff quickly made a career at Kuhn, Loeb & Co. This was underlined in 1875 by his marriage to Therese Loeb, a daughter of Salomon Loeb , the co-founder of Kuhn, Loeb & Co.

Due to his knowledge and connections in the German financial market, Schiff was able to attract a lot of German capital for up-and-coming US companies, especially US railroad companies. This made Schiff rise to the undisputed head of Kuhn, Loeb & Co. by 1885 and made the banking house the most important financier of the emerging American railroad industry at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.

He gained fame in the financial world in 1897 when the bank succeeded in ending the Union Pacific Railroad bankruptcy proceedings and allowing Edward Henry Harriman to take control of the company. Under Schiff's leadership, Loeb, Kuhn & Co. also supported Harriman in 1901 in his fight against the Great Northern Railway , which was ruled by JP Morgan and James J. Hill , for the takeover of Northern Pacific Railroad . Schiff finally arranged in 1902 a merger of the counterparties and the merger of their shares in the Great Northern Railway and the Northern Pacific Railroad in a trust , the Northern Securities Company .

Schiff was also involved in financing the growth of large industrial companies such as B. Westinghouse Electric , US Rubber Company , Armor and American Telephone & Telegraph . He has also served on the boards of many major US companies, including the National City Bank of New York , the Equitable Life Assurance Society , Wells Fargo & Company and the Union Pacific Railroad .

Under Jakob Schiff's leadership, Kuhn, Loeb & Co. also issued government bonds , both for the USA and for foreign countries. Schiff became famous in particular for the sale of Japanese bonds to finance the Russo-Japanese War 1904–05. He justified his pro-Japanese stance with the strong anti-Semitism and the associated pogroms in the Russian Empire . In 1905 Schiff received the Japanese Order of the Sacred Treasure and in 1907 the Japanese Order of the Rising Sun , 2nd class. Schiff was the first foreigner to be personally honored by the Japanese Emperor Meiji .

When the First World War broke out, Schiff, who despite his American citizenship felt that he was German and spoke only German in his New York house, was still drawing German war bonds . He granted a loan to the Allies in 1915 only on condition that the Russian Empire should not benefit from it. It was not until the unrestricted submarine warfare started by the German Reich and the United States' entry into the war that it caused the ship to unreservedly side with the Allies. However, he continued to campaign for a quick end to the war with President Woodrow Wilson , if necessary without an Allied victory . During the war he only issued loans that were used to finance humanitarian tasks.

Later years of life

In the later years of his life, Jakob Schiff turned increasingly to charitable activities and became one of the greatest Jewish philanthropists in the United States. He is said to have donated around $ 100 million over the course of his life. A large number of Jewish and non-Jewish institutions received extensive donations from him . The latter included the Boy Scouts of America , the American Museum of Natural History , the Metropolitan Museum of Art , the American Fine Arts Society, and the American Geographical Society . Originally an opponent of Zionism , he supported the establishment of the Technion in Haifa and, from 1918, the Zionist Organization of America.

Jakob Schiff did not forget his old hometown Frankfurt either. In addition to repeated visits, he made donations to various Frankfurt institutions, including the Paul Ehrlich Institute , the Frankfurt City Library , the Jewish Orphanage and the Jewish Hospital . Schiff was also one of the founders of the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University , where he particularly donated the chair of the Oriental Seminary in 1914 . He was an honorary member of the Senkenberg Natural Research Society ; In 1907, on his mediation, the Senckenberg Museum received an approximately 20-meter-long skeleton of a diplodocus , which is still one of the main attractions of the museum today. Schiff also financed the transport of the fossil to Frankfurt. According to him, which is Jacob Schiff street in Frankfurt's Dornbusch named.

literature

Web links

Commons : Jacob Schiff  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Cyrus Adler: Jacob Henry Schiff: A Biographical Sketch . The American Jewish Committee, New York 1921, p. 12
  2. ↑ Adler, p. 14.
  3. ↑ Pamela Rotner Sakamoto: Japanese Diplomats and Jewish Refugees . Praeger Publishers, Westport 1998, p. 17.
personal data
SURNAME Ship, Jakob Heinrich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ship, Jacob
BRIEF DESCRIPTION banker
DATE OF BIRTH January 10, 1847
PLACE OF BIRTH Frankfurt am Main
DATE OF DEATH September 25, 1920
Place of death New York City