Lazard Speyer-Ellissen

This article is about the former German credit institution. It is not to be confused with the US investment bank Lazard Ltd .

James Speyer (1861-1941)

Sir Edgar Speyer (1862-1932)

Lazard Speyer-Ellissen was one of the leading German-Jewish banking houses in Frankfurt am Main in the 19th and early 20th centuries . Since it was founded in 1838, the bank had been heavily focused on German-American financial transactions. It was owned by the Speyer family .

history

In 1838 Lazarus Joseph Speyer (1810–1876) founded the manufactured goods and shipping business Lazard Speyer-Ellissen in Frankfurt am Main , which increasingly devoted itself to banking and bills of exchange. After the death of Lazarus Joseph's father, Joseph Lazarus Speyer (1783–1846), his bank JL Speyer-Ellissen became Lazard Speyer-Ellissen . Lazarus Joseph's brother Philipp Speyer (1815–1876) emigrated to New York in 1837 and set up a bank there in 1845, which was named Philipp Speyer & Co. (renamed Speyer & Co. in 1876 ). Another brother of Lazarus Joseph, Gustav Speyer (1825-1883) also took part in the founding of this bank, but then set up a bank in London in 1861 under the name Speyer Brothers .

The Frankfurt parent company was linked by mutual partnerships with the sister companies in New York and London. In contrast to the well-known Frankfurt banking family Rothschild , who decided against setting up their own bank in the USA , the Speyer family used the large American capital requirements to develop intensive business relationships between Frankfurt and North America.

From the middle of the 19th century, Lazard Speyer-Ellissen placed numerous North American government and city bonds, as well as securities from North American railway companies on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange . Your closest competitors were Kuhn, Loeb & Co. and JP Morgan . After the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861, Lazard Speyer-Ellissen, together with the bank Seligmann & Stettheimer, also based in Frankfurt am Main , succeeded in getting the Frankfurt capital market interested in war bonds from the northern states . In recognition of her successful national and international activities, Lazard Speyer-Ellissen was accepted into the Reich loan and Prussian consortium alongside the Frankfurt banks Jacob SH Stern and MA Rothschild & Sons . Lazard Speyer-Ellissen thus took part in all major government bond issues.

After three prominent members of the Speyer family died in 1876, the company's founder Lazarus Joseph Speyer, his son Jaques Robert Speyer and his brother Philipp Speyer, Ignatz Schuster (1840–1889) became a partner for the first time in the following year did not belong to the Speyer family.

Lazard Speyer-Ellissen was continued from 1902 by Gustav Speyer's brother-in-law Eduard Beit (1860-1933), who was raised to hereditary nobility in 1910 with the predicate "von Speyer" in order to ensure the continued existence of the family name "Speyer" in Frankfurt am Main . In order to gain a better foothold in Central America , Lazard Speyer-Ellissen participated in the founding of the "Central America Bank" in 1905 together with Deutsche Bank , Deutsche Ueberseeische Bank and Schweizerische Kreditanstalt . This should open its first branch in Guatemala , in order to expand later in the other states of Central America. However, it did not succeed in achieving the planned business goal and had to be converted into a construction company as early as 1906 - in order to avoid liquidation that would damage its reputation .

Until the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the three banks of the Speyer family Speyer & Co. (New York), Speyer Brothers (London) and Lazard Speyer-Ellissen (Frankfurt am Main) were owned by Eduard Beit von Speyer and his two brothers-in-law James Speyer ( New York) and Sir Edgar Speyer (London) jointly. After the end of the First World War, Lazard Speyer-Ellissen resumed the interrupted business relations with the financial center New York and deepened them through the participation of Eduard Beit von Speyer and his son Herbert (* 1899) in "Speyer & Co."

The efforts of the Speyer banking family to rebuild their international financial network from the prewar period suffered a severe setback when Gustav's son, Edgar Speyer (1862–1932), left Great Britain in 1922 and emigrated to the USA . Repeated public accusations of disloyalty to Great Britain during the First World War had led him to take this step. He sold all of his British private property and had the London bank "Speyer Brothers" liquidated in 1922.

In search of new, profitable business fields , Lazard Speyer-Ellisson took over the befriended Berlin bank C. Schlesinger-Trier & Co. in 1928. The legal form of Lazard Speyer-Ellissen was then converted into a partnership limited by shares (KGaA). In addition, the Berlin headquarters of C. Schlesinger-Trier & Co. was retained. With the purchase of C. Schlesinger-Trier & Co. , Lazard Speyer-Ellisson not only hoped for better access to the large Berlin financial market in general, but also wanted to gain a foothold in the lending business with industrial companies. This should soon turn out to be a fatal error.

As a result of the outbreak of the global economic crisis in 1929, Lazard Speyer-Ellissen suffered great losses with loans to industrial companies and had to be supported extensively by Speyer & Co. in the early 1930s . After the death of Edgar Speyer in 1932 and Eduard Beit von Speyer a year later, Speyer & Co. was finally forced to agree to the silent liquidation of its former Frankfurt headquarters in 1934. This decision had no direct causal connection with the NSDAP's seizure of power in 1933 and its "Jewish policy". The latter is likely to have indirectly reinforced James Speyer in his decision not to invest any more money in “Lazard Speyer-Ellissen”. Deutsche Bank took over some of the employees .

In 1938, James Speyer (1861–1941) retired and decided to close Speyer & Co. in New York rather than leave the bank under his name to business partners. Accordingly, the last of the three Speyer family banks was liquidated in 1939.

Partner

Surname	Life dates	Duration of partnership:
Lazarus Joseph Speyer	1810-1876	1838-1876
Gustav Speyer	1825-1883	1838-1883
Georg Speyer	1835-1902	1868-1902
Jaques Robert Speyer	1837-1876	1868-1876
Ignatz Schuster	1840-1889	1877-1885
Wilhelm Bonn	1843-1910	1886-1903
Bernhard Schuster		1896-1903
Eduard Beit (from Speyer)	1860-1933	1896-1928
Lucien Picard	1854-1935	1904-1923
Carl Bergmann	1874-1935	1924-1927
Albert Bing		1906-1921

In 1928 the bank “Lazard Speyer-Ellissen” changed its legal form to a partnership limited by shares (KGaA). Accordingly, there were no longer any partners, only shareholders .

literature

• Birmingham, Stephen: Our Crowd: The Great Jewish Families of New York. Syracuse University Press, Syracuse (New York) 1996, ISBN 0815604114 .
• Ulrich Eisenbach:  Speyer (since 1792 also Speier). In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 24, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-428-11205-0 , pp. 674-676 ( digitized version ).
• Wolfgang Klötzer (Hrsg.): Frankfurter Biographie . Personal history lexicon . Second volume. M – Z (=  publications of the Frankfurt Historical Commission . Volume XIX , no. 2 ). Waldemar Kramer, Frankfurt am Main 1996, ISBN 3-7829-0459-1 , p. 403-406 .
• Hans-Otto Schembs : Georg and Franziska Speyer - founders and patrons for Frankfurt a. M. Kramer, Frankfurt am Main 2001, ISBN 3-7829-0526-1 .
• Michael Jurk: The other Rothschilds: Frankfurt private bankers in the 18th and 19th centuries. In: Georg Heuberger: The Rothschilds - Contributions to the history of a European family. Thorbecke, Frankfurt am Main 1995, ISBN 3-7995-1202-0 . P. 46 ff.
• Paul H. Emden: Money Powers of Europe in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Appleton-Century, New York 1938, pp. 274-277.
• Morten Reitmayer: Bankers in the Empire - Social Profile and Habitus of German High Finance (= Critical Studies in History . Volume 136). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1999, ISBN 3-525-35799-0 .

Web links

• Speyer. In: Judengasse.de. Jewish Museum Frankfurt , accessed on August 3, 2015 (article about the Speyer family). 

References and comments

1. ^ Ulrich Eisenbach:  Speyer (also Speier since 1792). In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 24, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-428-11205-0 , pp. 674-676 ( digitized version ).
2. ^ Wilkins, Mira: "The History of Foreign Investment in the United States to 1914", Harvard University Press, London 1989, p. 99, ISBN 978-0674396661
3. ^ Ulrich Eisenbach:  Speyer (also Speier since 1792). In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 24, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-428-11205-0 , pp. 674-676 ( digitized version ).
4. ↑ Jurk, Michael: “The other Rothschilds: Frankfurter Privatbankiers in the 18th and 19th centuries”, p. 46 ff., Published in: Heuberger, Georg: “The Rothschilds - Contributions to the History of a European Family”, Jan Thorbecke Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1995, p. 46 f., ISBN 3-7995-1202-0 .
5. ^ Leanne Langley: Banker, Baronet, Savior, 'Spy': Sir Edgar Speyer and the Queen's Hall Proms, 1902-14
6. ↑ Jurk, Michael: “The other Rothschilds: Frankfurter Privatbankiers in the 18th and 19th centuries”, p. 46 ff., Published in: Heuberger, Georg: “The Rothschilds - Contributions to the History of a European Family”, Jan Thorbecke Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1995, p. 47 f., ISBN 3-7995-1202-0 .
7. ↑ Morten Reitmayer: Bankers in the Empire - social profile and habitus of German high finance (= critical studies on historical science . Volume 136). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1999, ISBN 3-525-35799-0 , p. 200.
8. ^ Ulrich Eisenbach:  Speyer (also Speier since 1792). In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 24, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-428-11205-0 , pp. 674-676 ( digitized version ).
9. ↑ Lothar Gall / Gerald D. Feldman / Harold James / Carl-Ludwig Holtfrerich / Hans E. Büschgen: Die Deutsche Bank (1870-1995) , Verlag CH Beck, Munich 1995, p. 64, ISBN 3-406-38945-7 .
10. ^ Ingo Köhler: business citizen and entrepreneur. On the marriage behavior of German private bankers in the transition to the 20th century , p. 133, in Dieter Ziegler (Hrsg.): Großbürgertum und Unternehmer. The German business elite in the 20th century , bourgeoisie Volume 17, Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, Göttingen 2000, ISBN 3-525-35682-X .
11. ^ Paul H. Emden: Money Powers of Europe in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries , D. Appleton-Century Company, New York 1938, p. 275.
12. ^ The London Gazette , April 4, 1922, p. 2763.
13. ↑ The Bank C. Schlesinger Trier & Co. was not until 1927 from the acquisition of the Frankfurt Bank JC Trier & Co. by the Berliner Bank C. Schlesinger & Co. emerged
14. ^ Paul H. Emden: Money Powers of Europe in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries , D. Appleton-Century Company, New York 1938, pp. 276 f.
15. ^ Paul H. Emden: "Money Powers of Europe in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries", D. Appleton-Century Company, New York 1938, pp. 276 f.
16. ^ Ingo Köhler: The "Aryanization" of the private banks in the Third Reich , published in the series of publications for the journal for corporate history , Volume 14, Verlag CH Beck, Munich 2005, p. 400, ISBN 3-406-53200-4 .
17. ^ Paul H. Emden: "Money Powers of Europe in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries", D. Appleton-Century Company, New York 1938, p. 277.
18. ↑ Manfred Pohl: “”, p. 221, published in Franz-Josef Eichhorn (Ed.): “The Renaissance of Private Bankers”, Gabler Verlag, Wiesbaden 1996, ISBN 978-3-322-82579-7 .
19. ↑ Susie J. Pak: Gentleman Bankers - The world of JP Morgan , Harvard Studies in Business History (Book 51) 2013, ISBN 978-0-674-07303-6 ( preview in Google Book Search)