Max Warburg

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Max M. Warburg (1867-1946)

Max Moritz Warburg (born June 5, 1867 in Hamburg ; died December 26, 1946 in New York ) was a German banker and politician and offspring of the wealthy German-Jewish banking family Warburg . As the head and partner of the private bank MMWarburg & CO , Warburg was one of the most important bankers, political advisors and networkers of his time.

His brothers Paul Moritz Warburg , Felix Moritz Warburg and Fritz Moritz Warburg also worked as internationally renowned bankers and political advisers. Warburg's brother Aby Moritz Warburg was an art historian and founder of the renowned Warburg Library for Cultural Studies (KBW) , which was in Hamburg until 1933 and then moved to London.

biography

family

Warburg was the second eldest son of Moritz M. Warburg (1838–1910), partner in the family's private bank MMWarburg & CO , and Charlotte Esther Warburg (née Oppenheim; 1842–1921). He came from the Mittelweg-Warburg family , a wealthy, conservative Jewish banking family. The family lived at Grindelhof 1a in the Grindel district known as " Little Jerusalem " in the Rotherbaum district of Hamburg . In 1871 the family, including the nanny, cook and servants, moved into a town villa at Mittelweg 17 / corner of Johnsallee near the Outer Alster in a slightly finer part of the Rotherbaum.

His sisters were Mary Anna (1865), Olga Charlotte Kohn-Speyer (1873–1904) and Louisa Martha Derenberg (1879–1973). His brothers Paul M. Warburg (1868–1932), Felix M. Warburg (1871–1937) and Fritz M. Warburg (1879–1962) became, like himself, internationally important bankers. His eldest brother Aby M. Warburg (1866–1929) became an art historian and became known as the founder of the Warburg Library of Cultural Studies in Hamburg, which was newly founded in London in 1934 as the Warburg Institute .

Warburg married Alice Magnus (1873–1960) from Altona in 1899. Initially, the couple, known as “Malice” because of their affectionate connection, lived in an old house on the large family-owned property Kösterberg in the Elbe suburb of Hamburg-Blankenese . In 1907 the family moved into a villa on the banks of the Alster near today's Hamburg Dammtor train station . They lived in the English style. They dined in tails and evening dress, servants served with white gloves and silver buttons. Warburg was a sailor on his 21-meter sailing yacht, baptized in the name of his wife ALICE, and took part in numerous Elbe regattas.

Son Eric M. Warburg (1900–1990) became an internationally respected banker, political advisor and award-winning officer in the US Army who founded the German-American lobby organization Atlantik-Brücke and the American Council on Germany after the Second World War .

The daughter Lola Nina Hahn-Warburg (1901–1989) was the lover of Chaim Weizmann , the then President of the World Zionist Organization and the first President of the newly founded State of Israel . In addition, Lola Nina Hahn-Warburg was an active member of the board of the Reich Representation of Jews in Germany from 1933 and, with her sister Anita Wolf-Warburg (1908–2008), was particularly involved in looking after German-Jewish refugees in Great Britain, and especially with the so-called Kindertransporten engaged in 1938/39. Negotiations by a delegation in 1938 led by Chaim Weizmann and Lola Hahn-Warburg's involvement with the British Home Office succeeded in getting the British government and the British House of Commons to emigrate to Britain an unlimited number of children . Over 10,000 Jewish children were saved in this way. The third daughter, Gisela Warburg Wyzanski (1912–1991), headed the office of the child and youth Aliyah in Berlin at the time of National Socialism , emigrated to the USA in 1939 and was involved there as a board member of Hadassah for Zionism .

schooldays

Warburg was considered a lively and fun-loving child. He initially received private tuition, followed by three years of preschool in the Johanneum School of Academics , and then attended the Johanneum High School. In addition, he received private piano and riding lessons and learned Hebrew at the Talmud Torah School . In 1886 Warburg passed his Abitur.

When Max Warburg was twelve years old, his older brother Aby M. Warburg offered him the firstborn's right to later become a partner in MMWarburg & CO . Max accepted the suggestion and in return had to promise the culture-conscious Aby that he would buy all the books he needed at any time. The Warburg Cultural Studies Library emerged from the promise and has been part of the University of London since 1933 .

With increasing age, Warburg, in contrast to his strictly Jewish-Orthodox grandmother Sara Warburg (1804-1884) and his parents, neglected Jewish customs and “does not believe in many things that a devout Jew should believe”.

education and profession

After graduating from high school in 1886, Warburg completed a two-year apprenticeship at J. Dreyfus & Co. in Frankfurt am Main. This was followed by an internship at Wertheim & Gompertz in Amsterdam. In October 1888 Warburg entered a voluntary military year with the III. Royal Bavarian Chevaulegers Regiment in Munich and became vice sergeant and aspiring officer in 1889. The planned career as a professional officer failed due to a presumably anti-Semitic veto by a superior.

As a result, Warburg concentrated again on a banking career. In 1890 he went to the Banque Impériale Ottomane in Paris and attended lectures at the Sorbonne . In 1891/92 Warburg was sent to NM Rothschild & Sons in London. In 1893 he returned to the Hamburg bank MMWarburg & CO with a knowledge of the European financial world and became a partner there. In 1895 Paul also became a partner. Felix, the younger brother, emigrated to the USA and joined the Kuhn, Loeb & Co. bank there .

In accordance with the importance of the banking house, Warburg was promoted to the central committee or general council of the Reichsbank and, from 1902, served as a board member of the Central Association of the German Banking and Banking Industry in Berlin.

While traveling for weeks through the USA, Russia, South Africa, Italy and Scandinavia, Warburg managed the external transactions of MMWarburg & CO and developed the bank into a financial institution with a worldwide reputation. During a sea voyage to Cape Town, he fell seriously ill with dysentery and lost twenty kilograms of body weight. He then traveled to Swaziland with an engineer and visited a tin mine there.

Under Warburg, the bank's total assets were quintupled and the number of employees doubled. He became close friends with the successful shipowner Albert Ballin , the general director of the Hamburg-American Packetfahrt-Actien-Gesellschaft (HAPAG). Ballin was also a member of the Warburg family. With the support of Warburg Bank, HAPAG rose to become one of the two largest shipping companies in Germany. From 1910 Warburg joined the supervisory board at HAPAG. On Ballin's initiative, Warburg also became a member of the board of directors at the Hamburg-based shipyard Blohm & Voss and became a key player in the German shipping industry. In addition, he and Ballin founded the Cuxhavener Hochseefischerei AG in 1908 , which in just a few years became Germany's largest fish supplier. From 1910 he headed the bank MMWarburg & CO as a director and was very successful despite major problems in the First World War and in the subsequent economic crises.

politics

During the Empire, Warburg played an important role in Hamburg, German and international politics. In 1897 he was elected to the Chamber of Commerce by the Senate for five years and in 1902. In 1903 Warburg was appointed to the board of directors of the stock exchange and to the board of directors of the Central Association of the German Banking and Banking Industry. From February 1903 to 1919 he was a member of the Hamburg parliament . Also from 1903 Warburg became financial advisor to Kaiser Wilhelm II. In 1908 he became a member of the stock exchange committee in Berlin, after he had played a decisive role in changing the stock exchange law.

Warburg had a friendly acquaintance with Walther Rathenau , who later became Reich Foreign Minister of the same age . In 1910 Warburg became a board member of the German Colonial Society in Hamburg. Warburg was seen as a “big linker”, one of the greats in the intertwined personal network of business and politics. He made connections with foreign governments. In June 1914 Warburg founded the Anglo-German Bank with the German-British politician and later initiator of the Balfour Declaration Lord Milner for investments in Morocco - with the consent of the German and British governments.

At the beginning of the First World War, Warburg turned down the offer to go to Washington as German ambassador . The food shortage prompted the government to import food from abroad. In 1915 he was elected to the advisory board of the War Food Office. In cooperation with the shipping company Ballin, he was one of the initiators of the central purchasing company and, through MMWarburg & CO, organized the imports, provided foreign exchange and made advance payments. For their relief efforts, the Bank, Warburg and Ballin received severe hostility from American Zionists such as Louis Brandeis , who had no understanding of the continued German patriotism of Jewish businessmen.

After the First World War

After the First World War , Warburg was appointed on March 12, 1919 by Reich Minister Graf Rantzau as one of the six main delegates for the negotiations on the Peace Treaty of Versailles . He refused and instead took part in the negotiations as an expert. On Warburg's recommendation, Carl Melchior , a partner in MMWarburg & CO since 1917, became one of the main delegates of the peace negotiations as a representative of economic and financial policy. He and Melchior, however, left their delegations because they considered the reparations obligations to the Entente to be unacceptable. Like the other delegation participants, they recommended that the Reich government not sign the Versailles Treaty. His activity later earned him violent attacks from the anti-Semitic side. Because of this experience, he turned down all offers to join a Reich Cabinet as a minister .

In the 1920s, Melchior was repeatedly commissioned by the state to represent German interests at international conferences with the aim of relieving Germany of the reparations payments of the Versailles Treaty. As an advisor to the German delegation, he took part in the Reparations Conferences in Brussels (1920), Paris (1921), London (1921) and Genoa (1922).

To promote foreign trade after World War II, was initiated by Warburg and Paul von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy from Berlin Bankhaus Mendelssohn & Co 1920, the German Warentreuhand AG . Warburg appointed his friend Merchant Banker and Senator ret. D. August Lattmann to the management board of the goods trust. As the name suggests, the Warentreuhand originally had the goal of arranging loans on the basis of the legal principle of the Treuhand . The principle of the transfer of ownership of goods or inventory as security to secure loans should help German companies in particular to get urgently needed international loans. In order to account for goods, the company has also been involved in auditing since its inception and was recognized as an auditing company in 1932. In 1922 Warburg suggested the establishment of the Übersee-Club in Hamburg, which was also supposed to improve Germany's international economic relations.

Warburg had been a member of the Reichsbankrat since 1924 . After the seizure of power of the Nazis he had this due to his Jewish leaving origin of the 1,933th The "most representative German banking company" MMWarburg & CO was considered in 1928 in the Hamburger Fremdblatt as "the happiest and most successful embodiment of the best Hanseatic merchant spirit ". He was a member of the first board of directors of IG Farben, which was founded in 1925, and was represented on 20 supervisory boards in 1932; in 1933 he was still on 14 and in 1935 on 12 committees. From 1923 to 1937 he was on the supervisory board of the mortgage bank in Hamburg . Among other things, he was on the supervisory board of the shipping companies Norddeutscher Lloyd in Bremen and HAPAG. He had to resign from the HAPAG supervisory board as early as mid-1933. His speech on his dismissal, which he kept to himself when nobody on the board wanted to see him off with a speech, was remarkable: “The great and powerful German shipping is primarily the work of two Jews. One is the late Albert Ballin and the other is the man who has the honor of standing before you. ... If we, the new people here, are now forced to part with you, the tried and tested employee, we will be to blame. "

Warburg was granted honorary lifelong member status in 1921 because of his services to the Association for Hamburg History . Nevertheless, in 1938, with reference to the Nuremberg Race Laws, his association membership was revoked.

Charlotte Clausen

Charlotte Clausen (born August 20, 1903 in Flensburg - 1979 as the wife of Herbert Wehner ) was trained as a gardener "and was at that time the first girl in Schleswig-Holstein with a completed assistant examination". Charlotte Clausen later came to Hamburg and worked as a gardener for Max Warburg. During this time she got to know and love the ship's carpenter and communist resistance fighter Carl Burmester , and in 2006 her daughter Greta Wehner , née Burmester, reported on the consequences .

“My parents got to know each other in an SAJ group in Blankenese that met at the Jewish Social Democrat Berendsohn . They loved each other and absolutely wanted to have children, but for the time being they did not want to get married in order to put the Youth Welfare Act that came into force in 1924 to the test.
That was also the reason why we ended up in Harxbüttel , because an unmarried mother-to-be was a bad role model for the daughters of the Warburgs. "

Charlotte Clausen gave birth to her child in the rural commune of Harxbüttel . The young family did not stay there long, and Charlotte Clausen and Carl Burmester got married, presumably in 1925.

Escape helpers

From 1933, Warburg's political importance for the Jews in Germany increased steadily: from 1935 to 1938 he acted as chairman of the Aid Association of German Jews founded in 1901 and as a member of the council of the Reich Representation of German Jews . With great personal commitment, he sought to improve the possibility of emigration for Jews - especially in financial terms - and also made contacts with personalities of the Nazi state. MMWarburg & CO was a partner in both Paltreu (Palestine Treuhand -stelle der Juden in Deutschland GmbH) and Alltreu (Allgemeine Treuhandstelle für die Jewish emigration GmbH), which granted Jews willing to emigrate favorable conditions for foreign currency transfers. After 1933, with the help of the association, his bank and his employees, over 75,000 Jewish fellow citizens were able to emigrate by 1938. The organization succeeded in obtaining at least part of their property for the fugitives through skillful asset transfers.

Emigration, miscellaneous

In May 1938, Warburg left his post as director due to the persecution of people of Jewish origin by the National Socialists. The banker, who saw himself as a German patriot throughout his life, gave a disappointed farewell speech in front of the 200 remaining employees in the casino hall, which ended with the words: "We wish your work success, for the blessing of the Hanseatic city of Hamburg and the blessing of Germany."

In August 1938 Warburg traveled to the USA and did not return to Germany after emigrating. The silent participation that the Warburg family still held in the bank was confiscated when the war broke out in 1939. On October 27, 1941, the bank had to change its name to Brinckmann, Wirtz & Co. by order of the government of the German Reich . The deposits of the silent partners from the Warburg family were confiscated.

After the end of the Second World War , the shareholders of MMWarburg & CO received their frozen assets back. Max M. Warburg's grandson of the same name Max M. Warburg Jr. (born in 1948 in New York) has been the sixth generation partner of MMWarburg & CO since 1982 and was Deputy Chairman of the Supervisory Board of MMWarburg & CO from 2014 to the end of 2019.

Fonts

  • "Viod" (Association of Jewish Organizations in Germany) . In: New Jewish monthly books. Vol. 2, issue 14, April 25, 1918, pp. 315-318.

literature

Web links

Commons : Max Warburg  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

References and comments

  1. ^ Gabriele Hoffmann : Max M. Warburg. Ellert & Richter Verlag, Hamburg 2009, p. 14
  2. ^ Gabriele Hoffmann: Max M. Warburg. Ellert & Richter Verlag, Hamburg 2009, p. 54
  3. ^ Volker Reinhardt , Thomas Lau : German families. Historical portraits from Bismarck to Weizsäcker. Verlag CHBeck, Munich 2005, p. 280 ( limited preview in Google book search)
  4. Gisela Warburg Wyzanski, Zionist leader, 79. In: The New York Times . July 7, 1991
  5. ^ Gabriele Hoffmann: Max M. Warburg. Ellert & Richter Verlag, Hamburg 2009, p. 20
  6. ^ Gabriele Hoffmann: Max M. Warburg. Ellert & Richter Verlag, Hamburg 2009, pp. 20–24
  7. ^ Gabriele Hoffmann: Max M. Warburg. Ellert & Richter Verlag, Hamburg 2009, p. 26
  8. ^ Eduard Rosenbaum , Ari J. Sherman: The banking house MMWarburg & CO. 1798-1938. Hans Christians Verlag, Hamburg 1976, pp. 66, 67
  9. Boris Barth : Neither the bourgeoisie nor the nobility - between the nation state and cosmopolitan business. On the social history of German-Jewish high finance before the First World War. In: History and Society. Issue 25, 1999, p. 100 (PDF; 2.35 MB)
  10. ^ Eckart Kleßmann : MM Warburg & CO. 1798-1998. The story of a banking house. Hamburg 1998, p. 35
  11. ^ A b c Frank Bajohr : Warburg, Max M. In: Das Jüdische Hamburg. Institute for the History of German Jews , Hamburg
  12. ^ Gabriele Hoffmann: Max M. Warburg. Ellert & Richter Verlag, Hamburg 2009, p. 40
  13. ^ Gabriele Hoffmann: Max M. Warburg. Ellert & Richter Verlag, Hamburg 2009, p. 50
  14. ^ Gabriele Hoffmann: Max M. Warburg. Ellert & Richter Verlag, Hamburg 2009, p. 51
  15. ^ Gabriele Hoffmann: Max M. Warburg. Ellert & Richter Verlag, Hamburg 2009, p. 64
  16. ^ Gabriele Hoffmann: Max M. Warburg. Ellert & Richter Verlag, Hamburg 2009, p. 70
  17. Ron Chernow : The Warburgs - A family odyssey. Siedler-Verlag, Munich 1994, p. 205
  18. ^ Ina Lorenz: Melchior, Carl. In: The Jewish Hamburg. Institute for the History of German Jews, Hamburg
  19. ^ Franklin Kopitzsch , Dirk Brietzke : Melchior, Carl. In: Hamburg biography. Lexicon of persons. Volume 2. Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2003, p. 278 ( limited preview in the Google book search)
  20. The history of BDO Deutsche Warentreuhand AG from its beginnings in 1920 to 2006 ( Memento from February 1, 2009 in the Internet Archive ). BDO Warentreuhand AG website, accessed June 5, 2008
  21. ^ Banker and benefactor . In: The time . No. 2/1947
  22. 1871-1996. Mortgage bank in Hamburg. Edited by Hypothekenbank in Hamburg, Hamburg 1996, ISBN 3-0000-0660-5 , p. 158
  23. ^ Gabriele Hoffmann: Max M. Warburg. Hamburg 2009, p. 147
  24. Joist Grolle , Matthias Schmoock (Ed.): Spätes Gedenken. A history society remembers its excluded Jewish members (= Hamburgische Lebensbilder. Volume 21). Bremen 2009, ISBN 3-8378-2000-9 , p. 198
  25. a b Letter from Grete Wehner of June 11, 2006 to Günter Wiemann, in: Günter Wiemann: Hans Löhr and Hans Koch - political walks , Vitamine-Verlag, Braunschweig, 2011, ISBN 978-3-00-033763-5 , p 10-11
  26. ^ Günter Wiemann, Hans Löhr and Hans Koch - political walks , p. 13
  27. A banker as an escape helper . In: Weser courier . December 15, 2009, based on research by Gabriele Hoffmann
  28. ^ Eckart Kleßmann: MM Warburg & CO. 1798-1998. The story of a banking house. Hamburg 1998, p. 101.
  29. Aryanization: “Nobody has something to celebrate here.” In: Der Spiegel . Issue 52/1987, December 21, 1987
  30. www.mmwarburg.de: Press release from November 22, 2019