Max Landesmann

Max Landesmann (born September 27, 1884 in Aussig , † June 12, 1972 in New York City ) was an Austrian banker. He was one of the partners in the Jacquier & Securius banking house .

Life and activity

Career until 1933

Landesmann completed a banking apprenticeship at the banking firm Marcus & Volmar in Berlin. He then worked for Deutsche Bank and later became Director of the London Angloaustrian Bank in London.

During the First World War, Landesmann was used as an officer in the Austro-Hungarian Army.

With a contract dated December 31, 1919, Landesmann joined the banking house Jacquier & Securius, whereby it was stipulated that he should have a 15% share in the bank's profits and losses. At the same time, the other two partners in the bank - Erich Frenkel and Alfred Panofsky - guaranteed him an annual income of 75,000 marks. The Jacquier & Securius banking house was particularly important as the German representation of interests of the Czech lignite and heavy industry group Petschek. The close business cooperation between the three bankers and the Petschek family was also based on family ties (see section "Family").

With a contract dated December 21, 1921, Landesmann's share of earnings at Jacquier & Securius was increased to 20% at the expense of Hermann Frenkel, whereby the salary guarantee was no longer applicable. The entry of Friedrich Minoux in the bank to January 1, 1924 had for him an increase in his profit share to 22.5% (contract of 14 December 1923) result. In the following three articles of association, which were concluded by December 27, 1932, his shares also fluctuated around this value.

In addition to his partnership with Jacquier & Securius, Landesmann was a member of the supervisory boards of Eintracht Braunkohlenwerke AG, Neuwelzow, and Braunkohlenwerke Borna AG, Borna. Both companies were listed and belonged to the Ignatz-Petschek group. He was entitled to the royalties from these seats as special income outside the partner bank.

Career after 1933 and emigration

Although Landesmann had already resigned from the Jewish community on July 2, 1924, after the National Socialists came to power he was viewed as a Jew by the Nazi regime that was establishing itself in Germany and, in line with the National Socialist policy of exclusion towards this minority, gradually ousted from business life: as a partner he resigned from Jacquier & Securius on September 1, 1933. The bank later became part of the Deutsche Bau- und Bodenbank, which was related to the National Socialists. Landesmann also resigned from the supervisory board of Schultheiss-Patzendorf AG in 1933 - along with sixteen other, predominantly Jewish, supervisory board members - due to political circumstances.

As a Czech citizen, however, in the following years - up to the Munich Agreement of 1938 - Landesmann was better off than Jews with German citizenship: on November 26, 1937, he was still serving on the Supervisory Board of Borna AG. He used his villa in Berlin-Dahlem until March 1939. Kahmann suspects that after 1933, Landesmann frequently commuted between Aussig and Berlin.

In 1939, after Czechoslovakia had come completely under German control in March 1939 and the repressive measures against people defined as Jewish in Germany by the National Socialists, Landesmann emigrated to Great Britain. Unlike Panofsky, he did not try to turn his German fortune into money. In this context, Kahlmann suspects that Landesmann, who had been trained in England, had moved larger assets to there in good time.

Due to his close ties with the Petschek Group, he came under the sights of the National Socialist police forces at that time: Since the National Socialist state annexed the large company as a Jewish property after the de facto annexation of Czechoslovakia in 1939, the Reich Security Main Office carried out extensive research into the whereabouts of the group values ​​- the total value of the Petschek group was estimated at 350 million RM - plowed: In particular, they were interested in identifying the Petschek values ​​in England and in getting hold of the most important emigrated members of the Petschek family and their "straw men" in order to To be able to squeeze out the information that was necessary to locate these values: Besides the brothers Karl, Ernst and Wilhelm Petschke, Landesmann (whose name was mistakenly given as "Max Landau") and Panofsky were at the top of the wanted list of the RSHA. In the event of a successful invasion of the British island by the Wehrmacht, he was also placed on the special wanted list GB in 1940 , a list of people who were to be located and arrested with special priority by the occupying forces following special SS units after the occupation of the country.

family

Landesmann was married to Hildegard Fritsche. They didn't have any children.

Landesmann was connected to his partner Panofsky, as Panofsky's wife Helene Panofsky, née Bloch, was the daughter of his sister Luise Bloch, née Landesmann. In addition, there were relationships with the Petscheks, who, like the countrymen, came from Aussig.

literature

• Henning Kahmann: The bankers from Jacquier & Securius 1933-1945: a legal-historical case study on the "Aryanization" of a Berlin bank , 2002.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Henning Kahmann: The bankers from Jacquier & Securius 1933-1945: a legal-historical case study on the "Aryanization" of a Berlin bank , 2002, p. 209.
2. ^ Entry on Max Landesmann on the special wanted list GB (reproduced on the website of the Imperial War Museum in London).