Jules Porgès
Jules Porgès (born May 25, 1839 in Vienna , † September 20, 1921 in Paris ) was a diamond dealer and financier who played a central role in the development and exploitation of the South African diamond and gold fields. He was the first marginal lord .
Porgès was born as Yehuda Porges and grew up in Prague , where his father was a jeweler . At the beginning of the 1860s, Porgès moved to Paris, changed his name, entered the diamond trade and founded the company Jules Porgès & Cie . After the diamond rush had set in in South Africa, Porgès sent Julius Wernher in 1873 to the diamond mines in Kimberley , Cape Colony, as his representative and diamond buyer . Wernher was very successful and in 1876 Porgès moved to Kimberley himself.
Porgès founds the Compagnie Française de Diamant du Cap de Bonne Espérance , which gradually bought up other diamond mines and combined a significant part of diamond production. Porgès was also active as a financier, as he had good contacts with the Paris stock exchange, where he brought shares in South African mining companies to the market. In 1879 he took Alfred Beit into his company Jules Porgès & Cie , and in 1880 Wernher and Beit became partners.
Porgès also successfully participated in the beginning gold rush, he founded the gold mining and finance company Cornerhouse with others on the market square in Johannesburg . This name was a corruption of the name of the co-founder Hermann Eckstein . The Cornerhaus group was extremely successful in the following years.
When the mining companies were concentrated, Porgès sold his company to Cecil Rhodes De Beers Consolidated Mines Limited in 1887 . He was also involved in the negotiations that resulted in Rhode's main adversary Barney Barnato bringing his mining companies into De Beers.
After Porges had very great deal of money, he left in 1890 in South Africa, his company was taken over by his partners and in & Co Wernher, Beit renamed. He settled back in Paris and built a castle in Rochefort-en-Yvelines .
The city palace Hôtel Porgès (14-18 avenue Montaigne), built in 1892, housed a famous collection of paintings by Rubens , Van Dyck , Rembrandt , Bruegel and Le Lorrain .
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| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Porgès, Jules |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Yehuda Porges |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | French diamond dealer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | May 25, 1839 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Vienna |
| DATE OF DEATH | September 20, 1921 |
| Place of death | Paris |