Max Steinthal
Max Steinthal (born December 24, 1850 in Berlin ; † December 8, 1940 there ) was a banker director and subsequently chairman of the supervisory board of Deutsche Bank . One of his main achievements is the financing of the Berlin elevated and underground railway, previously generally regarded as unprofitable.
Life path
job
Max Steinthal received his schooling only at home and later at the Königstädtische Realschule . Steinthal graduated from high school at the age of 16 and then began a banking apprenticeship at A. Paderstein, which kept him busy after completing his training. Steinthal quickly made a career there. As a twenty-year-old, he was noticed on the Berlin stock exchange for his agility, so that he received a single power of attorney in the same year . He became a board member at the age of 21.
On a trip to Sylt , Steinthal got to know Hermann Wallich , one of the two directors of Deutsche Bank, whom Steinthal had only vaguely known until then. This meeting made such a strong impression on Wallich that he suggested that Steinthal be given another director post at Deutsche Bank. When Steinthal met Georg von Siemens , Wallich's colleague in the management, for the first time during the negotiations , he is said to have answered Siemens' question “So you want to become an authorized officer of Deutsche Bank?” With “No, not that, but your director”. On December 15, 1873, Steinthal began working as a colleague of Wallich and Siemens on the board of directors of Deutsche Bank.
The first years of his work for the German bank dedicated Steinthal very successful the stock exchanges - and arbitrage . From around 1890, Deutsche Bank began to expand its business to include the financing of industrial companies. At the suggestion of Werner von Siemens , Deutsche Bank took the lead in a consortium that transformed the tube rolling mills owned by the Mannesmann family in Remscheid into a stock corporation, Deutsch-Österreichische Mannesmannröhren-Werke A.-G., with share capital of 35 Transferred millions of gold marks . However, the development of the stock corporation did not meet the high expectations. Steinthal took over the reorganization of the plant from 1892, from 1896 as chairman of the supervisory board. In addition, he determined an under-balance of 20 million gold marks due to over-valued patents and production facilities. This was followed by lengthy legal proceedings with the Mannesmann brothers, which were concluded with a settlement in April 1900 . In 1905/06 Steinthal successfully restructured the company, and a dividend was paid out for the first time .
Steinthal first got in touch with plans to build an electric overhead and underground railway in Berlin in 1891 when he happened to be in Naples at the same time as Werner von Siemens and was talking about his projects. In the course of the negotiations that followed, Siemens & Halske and Deutsche Bank decided to set up a subsidiary to build and operate the railway. In October 1897 the elevated railway company was brought into being with a share capital of 12.5 million gold marks , Steinthal took over the post of deputy chairman of the supervisory board and in 1908 advanced to chairman of the supervisory board. Despite numerous doubts from third parties about the profitability of the company, Steinthal trusted the detailed traffic forecasts that Gustav Kemmann had prepared on behalf of Deutsche Bank and which were met with the utmost precision. The Hochbahngesellschaft was able to distribute a dividend right from the start.
After the main lines of the elevated railway company were opened, the approval of new lines turned out to be difficult, because the city of Berlin wanted to reserve the right to expand the rapid transit network itself. It was Steinthal's idea not to follow the existing traffic flows with new lines, but to combine the expansion of the high-speed train network with the development of new settlement areas. At Steinthal's instigation, Deutsche Bank acquired such large undeveloped areas in Westend and founded Neu-Westend A.-G. for property utilization . The costs of building the underground line to Westend were borne by the increase in the value of the developed land. The development on Schönhauser Allee was carried out in the same way with the Boden-Gesellschaft at Hochbahnhof Schönhauser Allee A.-G.
Steinthal achieved an important negotiating success when a traffic tax was introduced in Prussia in 1917 . In talks with the responsible ministers and the parliamentary group leaders in the Reichstag , Steinthal managed to include a passage in the traffic tax law according to which the tax rate could be reduced for electric high-speed trains. On the basis of this paragraph, the elevated railway company was exempt from traffic tax.
As a representative of capital, Steinthal viewed the transition of the elevated railway company into municipal ownership as critical. When he handed over the position of chairman of the supervisory board to Ernst Reuter on April 8, 1927 , he said in his farewell speech: “You can imagine that it was by no means desirable for me to put the elevated railway in municipal hands, that is, in hands outside the previous ones Administration, has come. But I had to submit to the circumstances. "
Until the end of 1905 Steinthal was active on the board of directors of Deutsche Bank. He then moved to the bank's supervisory board, which he chaired from 1923 to 1932. In May 1935 he withdrew from the board of directors in order, as he himself put it, not to cause problems for the bank - Steinthal was of Jewish descent.
family
Max Steinthal was born in Berlin on December 24, 1850. His parents, wholesale merchant Eduard Steinthal and Johanna Steinthal, née Goldstein, had come to Berlin from Anhalt. Max Steinthal had three siblings, his older brother Leopold and his two younger sisters Sophie and Elvira. They all grew up in their parents' house at Neue Friedrichstrasse 22.
Steinthal rented his first own apartment in 1876 at Vossstrasse 31 in Berlin-Mitte . At the beginning of April 1889 he met Fanny Lindenthal, who came from Vienna , with whom he became engaged that same month and whom he married on July 4, 1889 in the City Temple , the main synagogue of Vienna. They were married by Adolf Jellinek . On August 24th, 1889, the couple moved into their first joint domicile at Roonstraße 9 in Berlin-Tiergarten, directly on Königsplatz, today's Republic Square .
In 1890 Fanny Steinthal gave birth to her son Erich. He was followed by six other children of the couple; Daisy (1891), Eva (1892), Werner (1894), Eduard (1896), Ruth (1898) and Peter (1899). The Jewish religion into which Max and Fanny Steinthal were born was not “lived” in the Steinthal family. Max Steinthal himself only went to the nearby Fasanenstrasse synagogue once a year to personally make his annual donation. The Steinthalschen children were even baptized Protestants .
Since the apartment on Roonstraße soon became too small due to the large number of children, Max Steinthal bought the property at Uhlandstraße 191 in Charlottenburg and had a villa built by his friend, architect Richard Wolffenstein . In 1894 the Steinthals moved there.
By the turn of the century, Villa Steinthal had developed into a meeting place for Berlin's financial and economic bourgeoisie. There were often receptions and concerts in the representative reception hall of the villa.
On his 35th wedding anniversary (1924), Max Steinthal gave his wife the 170 hectare “Neue Mühle” estate on the Maxsee near Müncheberg . The estate became a family meeting place on the weekends, and the grandchildren, who now existed, regularly spent their summer holidays there.
After the National Socialists came to power, the last family celebration took place in 1934 for the 45th wedding anniversary of Max and Fanny Steinthal. Most of the couple's children fled Germany in the following years. They made their way to Great Britain , Sweden , Brazil and the United States . Max and Fanny Steinthal could no longer bring themselves to this step and endured the reprisals of the National Socialists. In 1939, they were forced to sell their real estate holdings well below value and other assets were confiscated . From November 1940 they had to live in two hotel rooms in the Eden Hotel on Budapester Strasse.
Max Steinthal died a short time later at the age of almost ninety on December 8, 1940 and was buried on December 19 in the family grave in the interdenominational forest cemetery in Heerstraße (grave location: Erb. 2-D). On October 5, 1941, he was followed by his wife Fanny, who was also buried in the Steinthalschen family grave on October 16.
society
In addition to the clearly profit-oriented way of working at Deutsche Bank, Steinthal was always characterized by pronounced social commitment. At Deutsche Bank, Steinthal financed a choral society, an orchestra and a fencing club from private capital. Outside the bank, Steinthal supported the Jewish hospital . He was also a member of the charity organizations Gesellschaft der Freunde (since 1878) and Magine Rèim (since 1894) as well as the Kaiser-Friedrich-Museumsverein and in 1929 a founding member of the Verein der Freunde der Nationalgalerie .
Max Steinthal belonged to the newly created “financial bourgeoisie” and, together with some of his banker colleagues, was one of the ten richest citizens of Berlin, most of whom only worked in Berlin but lived in one of the suburbs.
Steinthal used his private wealth throughout his life to support social and scientific projects. In 1905, for example, he donated 100,000 gold marks to the city of Charlottenburg for the 200th anniversary of its existence for the construction of a forest school. With the same amount he sponsored the establishment of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society for the Promotion of Science and Research , of which he was one of the founding members in 1911. The friendship of the Steinthals with Wilhelm von Bode was of mutual benefit. While Steinthal advised Bode on investing, Bode brokered the acquisition of paintings.
The art collection
Max Steinthal's art collection included paintings by Frans Snyders , Joaquín Sorolla and Giovanni Segantini as well as works by Lovis Corinth , Édouard Manet , Camille Pissarro , Edvard Munch , Pablo Picasso , Max Liebermann and many others. After the reign of the National Socialists, the Steinthal Collection was considered lost. Only in 2003 were 60 works of art rediscovered in Dresden and exhibited in the Jewish Museum in Berlin. Fanny Steinthal's collection of miniatures is still missing .
Honors
In 1902, Max Steinthal was given the honorary title of Kommerzienrat , which was awarded to personalities in business after substantial "foundations for the common good".
In klosterstraße has already inaugurated a plaque at the opening in July 1913th This provides information on the development of the underground. On the right and left edges of the panel are 16 relief portraits of personalities who contributed to the development of the Berlin underground, including Max Steinthal.
With the commissioning of the E subway line and the completion of the Alexanderplatz subway station as far as possible in December 1930, two memorial plaques were also installed on the mezzanine floor of this subway station. With Paul Wittig and Max Steinthal, they honored the two men "who, as co-founders and directors of the elevated railway company, initiated the construction of electric high-speed railways in Berlin and promoted them for many years." In 1932, a third plaque was added to these two memorial plaques for Gustav Kemmann . As early as 1933 with the takeover of the Nazis but was dismantled Steinthal's board because of his Jewish faith. The other two panels were melted down during World War II . Only on December 21, 2002, replicas were assembled at the same location .
literature
- Max Fuchs: Max Steinthal on his eightieth birthday on December 24, 1930 (Festschrift). Berlin 1930.
- Paul Wittig : Max Steinthal - His work for the Berlin elevated and underground railways . In: Die Fahrt - magazine of the Berliner Verkehrs-Aktiengesellschaft , 3rd volume, no. 3, Berlin 1931, pp. 45–48.
- Erich Achterberg: Berlin high finance - emperors, princes, millionaires around 1900 . Fritz Knapp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1965. Biography Steinthal pp. 28–33.
- Max Steinthal: a banker and his pictures . Proprietas-Verlag, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-00-014487-0 .
Web links
- Max Steinthal - A banker and his pictures . Jewish Museum Berlin.
- Biography of the Historical Society of Deutsche Bank
- Literature by and about Max Steinthal in the catalog of the German National Library
- Newspaper article about Max Steinthal in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Fuchs, p. 6.
- ↑ Wittig, p. 48.
- ↑ Steinthal's biography ( Memento of the original from October 30, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at bankgeschichte.de.
- ^ Hans-Jürgen Mende : Lexicon of Berlin burial places . Pharus-Plan, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-86514-206-1 . P. 495.
- ↑ 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 978-3-525-35799-6 , p. 114
- ^ Press release from Sotheby's at artroots.com ( Memento from May 10, 2006 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Peter Schubert: Lost art discovered in Pillnitz Castle / heirs of Deutsche Bank founder Max Steinthal received paintings back today. Berliner Morgenpost, April 19, 2004.
- ↑ Claudia Herstatt: Suppressed by two dictatorships / To be seen again for the first time: The Max Steinthal collection in the Jewish Museum Berlin . Die Zeit, September 9, 2004.
- ↑ Die Welt am Monday of January 20, 1902 (supplement).
- ^ Jörg Kuhn: The memorial plaque in the Klosterstrasse underground station . In: Aris Fioretos (ed.): Berlin above and below the earth / Alfred Grenander, the subway and the culture of the metropolis . Nicolaische Verlagsbuchhandlung, Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-89479-344-9 .
- ↑ Johannes Bousset: Festschrift on the opening of the subway from Alexanderplatz through Frankfurter Allee to Friedrichsfelde (Line E) and the extension of Line C from Bergstraße station via the Ringbhf. Neukölln to Grenzallee station on December 21, 1930 . Edited by Berliner Verkehrs-Betriebe and Nordsüdbahn AG.
- ↑ List of memorial plaques for the Mitte district ( memento of the original dated December 13, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 37 kB).
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Steinthal, Max |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German banker |
| DATE OF BIRTH | December 24, 1850 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Berlin , Kingdom of Prussia |
| DATE OF DEATH | December 8, 1940 |
| Place of death | Berlin , German Empire |