Jakob Michael

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Jakob Michael (born February 28, 1894 in Frankfurt am Main , † September 7, 1979 in New York City ) was a German-American entrepreneur and philanthropist .

family

He came from a Jewish family. The father was the businessman Karl (Elieser) Michael. The mother was Berta (née Kohn). He himself married Erna Sondheimer in 1924. The marriage resulted in two sons and a daughter. The son Ernest Arthur was a math professor at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Entrepreneur

After attending secondary school and doing a commercial apprenticeship in a metal trading company, he traded radium and uranium in Paris . To this end, he founded a metal trading company with his father. Michael served as a soldier in World War I , but was released from military service in 1916. He founded Starck, Michael & Co with a partner . They bought old spoil heaps in the Ore Mountains and extracted tungsten from the remains for the armaments industry. The company made considerable profits. In addition to the metal trade, he also operated wholesale chemical products.

After the end of the war he managed to build up a considerable fortune through skilful investments and by taking advantage of the currency collapse as a result of increasing inflation . He used this to acquire numerous company shares, especially in the chemical industry. In connection with the currency stabilization in 1923, he sold a large part of his shareholdings . In the following time, which was characterized by a lack of money, he placed his capital extremely profitably and was able to lend his money at high interest rates.

In 1924 he combined his holdings in a Holding J. Michael AG for the chemical and metallurgical industry based in Berlin. Through this he exercised control over companies in the chemical and metal industries, vehicle and engine construction companies, waterworks and bridge construction companies. The core of its business activity was the Industrie- und Privatbank AG. Michael also used them to conduct financing, insurance and real estate transactions.

In Berlin, in particular, he bought numerous properties and commercial properties. To manage them, he founded Terra AG for real estate. Through his involvement, he also exerted significant influence on some banking institutions in Germany and Austria. A Textil-Kredit AG founded in 1924 specialized in loans for the textile industry. Via the AG for participation in insurance companies, he exerted strong influence on several insurance companies, including Iduna insurance . He was also involved in various rail and tram companies. Since 1926 he also entered the department store business by acquiring several companies. His fortune was estimated at 150 million marks in 1925 . In addition to Hugo Stinnes , Otto Wolff and Hugo J. Herzfeld , Michael was one of the most successful entrepreneurs who knew how to take advantage of the war economy and the post-war crisis. In 1925, when Germany's richest man was involved in the Barmat-Kutisker scandal , he did not comply with the public prosecutor's request to return to Berlin from Switzerland.

He lived in the Netherlands from 1931 or 1932 before emigrating to the United States in 1939 . There he founded New Jersey Industries Inc. and participated in various companies. Parts of his real estate were placed under compulsory administration during the National Socialist rule and some of his department stores were Aryanized . He himself was expatriated and in 1938 his property was declared forfeited to the Reich. Before that, however, he had founded Emil Köster AG . The authorities in Nazi Germany did not realize that this apparently American-dominated company was majority owned by Jakob Michael. In this way he was able to save a large part of his holdings and the Defaka department stores from expropriation. In 1954 he sold his department stores in Germany to Helmut Horten for 60 million DM after Friedrich Flick had refused. The heirs later tried to return the Aryanized land and real estate.

philanthropist

In 1926 he financed the renovation of the Renaissance theater in Berlin . Michael belonged to numerous Jewish organizations. He donated a considerable part of his fortune to scientific and cultural institutions. He founded an institute for atomic science at the Weizmann Institute , a college for Hebrew studies at Yeshiva University and an institute at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. In Israel he financed a children's home and a school.

He was a collector of old Jewish ceremonial items and Jewish music. He donated a collection of 25,000 examples of Jewish music to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem . A considerable collection of religious books and objects including a dismantled synagogue from Vittorio Veneto went to the Israel Museum .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ (caption :) The richest man in Germany on the run (...). In:  The interesting sheet , No. 9/1925 (XLIV. Year), February 26, 1925, p. 6 and p. 7 (text) (Online at ANNO ). Template: ANNO / Maintenance / dib.
  2. ↑ a b Peter Boelke: " Certificate of inheritance from the concentration camp ", Der Spiegel May 19, 1997.
  3. ^ " Ladies ' Paradise ", Der Spiegel , May 18, 1955.
personal data
SURNAME Michael, Jakob
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-American entrepreneur
DATE OF BIRTH February 28, 1894
PLACE OF BIRTH Frankfurt am Main
DATE OF DEATH 7th September 1979
Place of death New York City