Otto Joel

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Otto J. Joel (born May 13, 1856 in Danzig ; † April 25, 1916 in Milan ) was an Italian banker of German origin. As the founder and long-time chairman of the Banca Commerciale Italiana in Milan (today merged into Intesa Sanpaolo ), he ushered in a new era in Italian economic history and made his bank the most important financial institution of its time in Italy.

Life

Joel, the son of an East Prussian lottery operator, was sent to Italy to recuperate when he was 14 because of a lung disease. He stayed there after his recovery and trained in banking. At first he worked as a banker in Genoa and Rome. From 1887 until its liquidation in 1894, he worked for the Banca Generale . Together with Friedrich Weil (1854-1919) and the help of a number of German banks, he founded the Banca Commerciale Italiana (BCI) in Milan on October 8, 1894, with a share capital of 20 million lire. Shortly after it was founded, Joel brought in another partner, Josef (Giuseppe) Toeplitz (1866–1938). The bank took its seat in the Piazza della Scala, initially in the Palazzo Brambilla , in 1911 it moved to a new building directly opposite (architect Luca Beltrami ).

Otto Joel married Bettina Zendrini, born in the late 1880s. According to the latest research, Kitt, a widow with a small child named Paolo Enrico Zendrini, later provided the model for the character Lodovico Settembrini in Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain . Thomas Mann allegedly met Zendrini in 1909 during a stay at the Bircher-Benner sanatorium in Zurich.

In 1908 Joel was promoted to general director of the BCI, a little later he became chairman of the board. The London branch of the bank was headed by Siegfried Bieber from 1911 to 1914 . Under Otto Joel, the Banca Commerciale was involved as a co-financier for several years in favor of the drainage of the Pontine Marshes (which promised health improvements and lucrative land reclamation) within the Pontine Syndicate GmbH (to which Emil Rathenau also belonged) before the project in 1908 was completely discontinued (later completed by Mussolini ). The Prussian officer Donat developed the plans for this.

Although he had acquired Italian citizenship several years before the outbreak of World War I , Joel was forced by the Italian authorities to suspend his banking activities in 1915 after Italy entered the war on the Entente side because of his German ancestry. A year later, he - at this point still Vice President of the bank - had to leave the board of directors completely.

Otto Joel's son Alessandro (1891–1955), joined the Banca Commerciale Italiana in 1920, in 1924 he took over the management of the London branch, in 1932 he left the banking business.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Presentation of the bank's history ( Memento of the original from May 19, 2009 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. (Italian) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.noicomit.altervista.org
  2. ↑ Vitae of the most important BCI managers ( Memento of the original from October 27, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.noicomit.altervista.org
  3. ↑ See Daniel Jütte: Placet Experiri . In: Thomas Mann Yearbook 20/2007, pp. 209–216 and on the story in: NZZ , January 7, 2006
  4. ↑ Overview of the archive materials on banking history in the Intesa archive
personal data
SURNAME Joel, Otto
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Joel, Otto J.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian banker of German origin
DATE OF BIRTH May 13, 1856
PLACE OF BIRTH Danzig
DATE OF DEATH April 25, 1916
Place of death Milan