Paul Kempner

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Paul H. Kempner (born December 30, 1889 in Berlin , † April 12, 1956 in New York City ) was a German banker and American entrepreneur.

Life

Kempner was the older son of the lawyer Maximilian Kempner and the Fanny (Franziska), born. Levy, a sister of the Cologne banker Louis Hagen . After passing the school leaving examination in 1908 at the Wilhelms-Gymnasium in Eberswalde , he studied law at the universities of Freiburg, Berlin and Heidelberg from 1908 to 1912 . He then completed his legal clerkship in Spandau, Berlin and Marburg from 1912 to 1919. During the First World War, from 1915 he was assistant and adjutant to the head of administration at the governor general in Belgium, and from 1917 at the head of administration for Flanders. Among other things, he was awarded the Iron Cross II. Class (1916) and the Cross of Merit for War Aid. In 1918 he married Margarete (Marga) von Mendelssohn, a daughter of the banker Franz von Mendelssohn . The marriage had four children.

In September 1919, Kempner successfully passed the major state examination and was appointed court assessor, but left the civil service the following month and joined his father-in-law's company, the Mendelssohn & Co. banking house . At the beginning of 1920 he went to Amsterdam for the bank, where he and Fritz Mannheimer built up the local subsidiary Mendelssohn & Co. Amsterdam. In 1922 he returned to Berlin and became a partner in the Mendelssohn Bank.

In December 1922 his doctorate he attended the Friedrichs University Halle-Wittenberg for Dr. jur. with a pamphlet on contributions to the rights of the mixed courts of arbitration on the basis of Part X of the Versailles Treaty . In 1924 he was appointed Austrian Honorary Consul General in Berlin. For this activity he later received the Great Silver Decoration of Honor of the Alpine Republic. In 1927 he joined the executive committee (the "permanent national committee") of the German Democratic Party (DDP) , succeeding his father, who died in the same year . At the beginning of 1931 he was elected as the successor to Carl Melchior to represent Germany in the Finance Committee of the League of Nations . He was also involved in the boards of the workplace for factual politics (chairman), the Federation for the Renewal of the Reich (treasurer), the Friedrich List Society (deputy chairman), the Society of Friends of the Archaeological Institute of the German Empire , the Kaiser Friedrich Museum Association , the Association for the Preservation of the Art History Institute in Florence (Treasurer) and the Central Office for Private Welfare. In the course of the “ Aryanization ” of the Mendelssohn & Co. bank at the end of 1938, he had to leave the company and leave Germany. In March of the following year, he also left the subsidiary in Amsterdam. He first emigrated to Great Britain and from there to the United States in 1939.

After his attempt to regain a foothold in the financial industry failed, he and other emigrants founded the Natvar Corporation, a company that produced insulation materials and was based in Rahway , New Jersey . In parallel, he studied accounting at the School of Business at Columbia University and graduated in 1946 with a Master of Science degree . From the United States, he maintained regular contact with Germany during and after the war and, among other things, worked as treasurer of the American Committee to Aid Survivors of the German Resistance of July 20 .

literature

  • Agstner, Rudolf: 130 years of the Austrian Embassy in Berlin. From Molktestrasse to Stauffenbergstrasse. Handbook of the representative authorities of Austria (-Hungary) in Germany since 1720 ; Berlin / Vienna: Philo 2003.
  • Georg Wenzel: German business leader . Life courses of German business personalities. A reference book on 13,000 business figures of our time. Hanseatic Publishing House , Hamburg / Berlin / Leipzig 1929, DNB 948663294 .
  • Hubert, Hans W .: The Art History Institute in Florence. From the foundation to the centenary (1897–1997) ; Firenze: Il Ventilabro 1997.
  • James, Harold: Association Policy in National Socialism. From advocacy to business group. The Central Association of the German Banking and Banking Industry 1932–1945; Munich et al: Piper 2001.
  • Kempner, Fritz: Looking Back; Private printing 2006.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kempner, Paul. In: Robert Volz: Reich manual of the German society . The handbook of personalities in words and pictures. Volume 1: A-K. Deutscher Wirtschaftsverlag, Berlin 1930, DNB 453960286 , p. 908.
  2. ↑ Kempner, Paul H. In: Werner Röder, Herbert A. Strauss : Biographisches Handbuch der Deutschensprachigen Emigration. Volume 1, Saur, Munich 1980, p. 360.
personal data
SURNAME Kempner, Paul
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kempner, Paul H.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German banker
DATE OF BIRTH December 30, 1889
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH April 12, 1956
Place of death New York City , United States