Speyer (entrepreneurial family)

James Speyer (1861-1941)

Sir Edgar & Lady Leonora Speyer circa 1921

Speyer is the family name of a well-known Ashkenazi-Jewish banking family of German origin. In the course of the 19th century she founded the three closely related banks Lazard Speyer-Ellissen in Frankfurt am Main , Speyer & Co. in New York and Speyer Brothers in London . The last of the banks was liquidated in 1939. A descendant of the family, Jerry I. Speyer (born June 23, 1940 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin), 1978 was a co-founder of the New York real estate company Tishman Speyer .

history

The Speyer banking family can be traced back to Michael Isaac Speyer (died 1692), who settled in Frankfurt am Main on November 5, 1644 and became head of the Jewish community in 1691. He lived in the Goldener Hirsch house in Frankfurt's Judengasse . As the name suggests, the family was originally from the Palatinate town of Speyer . His son Joseph Michael Speyer was head of the Jewish community and sub-rabbi . The grandson Michael Joseph Speyer (died 1765) was the representative of the court Jew and was responsible for deliveries of ammunition.

Two sons emerged from the marriage between Joseph Michael Speyer and Güttle Oppenheim. Isaak Michael Speyer (1745–1807) came to great fortune in the late 18th century as a banker and imperial ammunition supplier. In 1787 he was appointed imperial court factor for his services . In 1792 the French general Adam-Philippe de Custine took him and two other prominent citizens hostage to Mainz in order to extort war taxes from the city of Frankfurt. By 1800 the Speyers had a fortune of 420,000 guilders . This made them the richest Jewish family in Frankfurt and for a long time even surpassed the Rothschilds . Isaac's three sons had been running his company since 1804. This branch of the company went out in 1841 with the death of Isaak Michaels second son, Joseph Isaak Speyer (1774–1841). The second son, Karl Speyer converted to Christianity and became known as a composer and broker.

The third son, Lazarus Hirsch Michael Speyer (died 1789) was married to his cousin Hanna Speyer. His son Joseph Lazard Speyer (1783-1846) married in 1800 into the banking family Ellissen. His wife Jette Ellissen, who came from the family that had lived in Frankfurt since at least 1550, had inherited the Gumperz Isaak Ellissen bank from her father, who died in 1818. Lazarus Speyer then renamed it JL Speyer-Elissen and continued to run it from January 14, 1818. In the course of his life he made a fortune of 118,000 guilders. Lazarus Joseph Speyer (1810–1876), the son of Lazarus Hirsch Speyer, founded the manufactory and shipping business Lazard Speyer-Ellissen in 1838 .

Lazard Joseph's brother, Philipp Speyer (1815–1876), emigrated to New York in 1837 and founded the bank “Philipp Speyer & Co.” there in 1845, which was renamed “Speyer & Co.” after Philip's death. Gumperz (Gustav) Speyer (1825–1883), the third son of Joseph Lazarus, also took part in the establishment of the New York Bank, but in 1861 founded the “Speyer Brothers” bank in London . After the family recognized the economic potential of North America early on , by 1870 they were already one of the five leading sellers of securities for US and Mexican railroad companies . Your closest competitors were Kuhn, Loeb & Co. and JP Morgan .

After Georg Speyer's death in 1902, the “Lazard Speyer-Ellissen” bank was continued by Eduard Beit (1860–1933), a brother-in-law of Gustav Speyer. In 1910, Beit was raised to hereditary nobility with the predicate “von Speyer” in order to ensure the continued existence of the family name “Speyer” in Frankfurt am Main. His fortune in 1908 was 76 million gold marks , which made him one of the richest citizens of the German Empire . Until the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, the three banks of the Speyer family were “Speyer & Co.” (New York), “Speyer Brothers” (London) and “Lazard Speyer-Ellissen” (Frankfurt am Main ) jointly run by Eduard Beit von Speyer and his two brothers-in-law James Speyer (New York) and Sir Edgar Speyer (London). After the end of the First World War , “Lazard Speyer-Ellissen” resumed the interrupted business relationship with the New York financial center and deepened it through the participation of Eduard Beit von Speyer and his son Herbert (* 1899) in “Speyer & Co.”

Repeated public accusations of not being loyal to Great Britain during World War I prompted Gustav's son, Edgar Speyer (1862–1932), to leave Great Britain in 1922 and to emigrate to the USA and liquidate the London bank "Speyer Brothers". As a result of the outbreak of the global economic crisis in 1929, "Lazard Speyer-Ellissen" suffered great losses with loans to industrial companies and had to be supported extensively by "Speyer & Co." in the early 1930s. After the death of Edgar Speyer in 1932 and Eduard Beit von Speyer a year later, “Speyer & Co.” finally forced to agree to the silent liquidation of his former Frankfurt parent company in 1934. This decision had no direct causal connection with the NSDAP's seizure of power in 1933 and its “Jewish policy”. The latter is likely to have indirectly reinforced James Speyer in his decision not to invest any more money in "Lazard Speyer-Ellissen".

Herbert Beit von Speyer, the last male representative of his family in Germany, was forced to emigrate with his family to Switzerland in 1934 . From there the escape went via France , Spain and Portugal to the USA . The Frankfurt residence of the Speyer family, the famous "Villa Speyer" (today " Villa Kennedy "), was expropriated by the National Socialists in 1938 . Also in 1938 James Speyer (1861–1941) retired and decided to close “Speyer & Co.” in New York rather than leave the bank to business partners under his name. Accordingly, the last of the three Speyer family banks was liquidated in 1939.

One of the family's descendants is Jerry Speyer (* 1940), who founded the New York real estate company Tishman Speyer Properties in 1978 with Robert Tishman . From 1985 to 1991 the company erected the Messeturm at the old family headquarters in Frankfurt , which was then the tallest building in Europe.

philanthropy

Georg and Franziska Speyer

Georg and his wife Franziska Speyer (née Gumbert, 1844–1909) were among the leading benefactors of the city of Frankfurt am Main, for example in housing construction as co-founders of the joint stock construction company for small apartments , and established important foundations for the benefit of science and scientific education. Among other things, Georg Speyer donated the then enormous sum of one million gold marks from his fortune in 1901 and thus laid the financial foundation for the Georg and Franziska Speyer'sche Studienstiftung for the "care of science and higher scientific teaching". Major parts of the University of Frankfurt later emerged from this foundation . After Georg Speyer's death, his widow Franziska donated another million gold marks in 1904 to establish the chemotherapeutic research institute Georg-Speyer-Haus , which after some delays was officially opened on September 3, 1906 and handed over to its first director, Paul Ehrlich .

Family tree of the Speyer family

London line

Michael Isaac Speyer 1644-1692

New York line

Joseph Michael Speyer

Michael Joseph Speyer died in 1765

Güttle Oppenheim

Isaak Michael Speyer 1745-1807

Georg Daniel Speyer

Joseph Isaak Speyer died in 1841

Hanna Speyer

Lazarus Hirsch Michael Speyer died in 1789

Gumperz Isaak Ellissen

Karl Wilhelm Wolfgang Speyer 1790–1878

Joseph Lazarus Speyer 1783–1846

Jeanette Ellissen 1780-1828

Gumperz (Gustavus) Speyer 1825–1883

Charlotte Stern

Philipp Speyer 1815-1896

Lazarus Joseph Speyer 1810–1876

Therese Ellissen born in 1808

Arthur von Gwinner 1856–1931

Anne Emilie Speyer 1861–1940

Helene Therese Speyer 1857–1898

Franziska Gumbert 1844–1909

Gustav (Georg) Speyer 1835–1902

Jaque Robert Speyer 1837–1876

Henriette Speyer born in 1833

Alfred Julius Speyer 1871–1927

Ellin Prince Speyer 1849–1921

James Speyer 1861-1941

Leonora von Stosch 1872–1956

Edgar Speyer 1862-1939

Hanna Lucie Speyer 1870–1918

Eduard Beit 1860-1933

Hedwig von Speyer 1896–1966

Erwin von Speyer 1893–1914

Ellin von Speyer 1903–1983

Herbert Beit von Speyer 1899–1961

Elisabeth de Neufville 1902–1989

literature

• Stephen Birmingham: Our Crowd: The Great Jewish Families of New York. Syracuse University Press, Syracuse (New York) 1996, ISBN 0815604114 .
• Ulrich Eisenbach:  Speyer (since 1792 also Speier). In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 24, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-428-11205-0 , pp. 674-676 ( digitized version ).
• Wolfgang Klötzer (Hrsg.): Frankfurter Biographie . Personal history lexicon . Second volume. M – Z (=  publications of the Frankfurt Historical Commission . Volume XIX , no. 2 ). Waldemar Kramer, Frankfurt am Main 1996, ISBN 3-7829-0459-1 , p. 403-406 .
• Hans-Otto Schembs : Georg and Franziska Speyer - founders and patrons for Frankfurt a. M. Kramer, Frankfurt am Main 2001, ISBN 3-7829-0526-1 .
• Michael Jurk: The other Rothschilds: Frankfurt private bankers in the 18th and 19th centuries. In: Georg Heuberger: The Rothschilds - Contributions to the history of a European family. Thorbecke, Frankfurt am Main 1995, ISBN 3-7995-1202-0 , p. 46ff.
• Paul H. Emden: Money Powers of Europe in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Appleton-Century, New York 1938, pp. 274-277.
• Morten Reitmayer: Bankers in the Empire - Social Profile and Habitus of German High Finance ( Critical Studies on History ), Volume 136. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1999, ISBN 3-525-35799-0 .

Web links

Commons : Speyer (entrepreneur family)  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Ulrich Eisenbach:  Speyer. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 24, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-428-11205-0 , pp. 674-676 ( digitized version ).
• Article about the Speyer family on the website of the Jewish Museum Frankfurt
• Marc Strassenburg: Federal Archives - Central Database of Legacies. In: nachlassdatenbank.de. Retrieved on August 29, 2016 (information about the estate of the Speyer family in the Frankfurt Institute for City History). 

References and comments

1. ↑ ^{a b c} family article on the website of the Museum Judengasse
2. ↑ Information on the Goldener Hirsch house
3. ^ Prominent Families of New York, The Historical company, New York, 1897
4. ↑ Michael Jurk: The other Rothschilds: Frankfurt private bankers in the 18th and 19th centuries. P. 46 ff., Published in: Georg Heuberger: The Rothschilds - Contributions to the History of a European Family. Jan Thorbecke Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1995.
5. ^ Prominent Families of New York, The Historical company, New York, 1897
6. ^ Ulrich Eisenbach:  Speyer (also Speier since 1792). In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 24, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-428-11205-0 , pp. 674-676 ( digitized version ).
7. ^ Mira Wilkins: "The History of Foreign Investment in the United States to 1914", Harvard University Press, London 1989, p. 99, ISBN 978-0674396661
8. ^ Leanne Langley: Banker, Baronet, Savior, 'Spy': Sir Edgar Speyer and the Queen's Hall Proms, 1902-14
9. ^ Ulrich Eisenbach:  Speyer (also Speier since 1792). In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 24, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-428-11205-0 , pp. 674-676 ( digitized version ).
10. ↑ 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 3-525-35799-0 , p. 113.
11. ^ Ingo Köhler: Economic Citizens and Entrepreneurs - On the Marriage Behavior of German Private Bankers in the Transition to the 20th Century , p. 133, in: Dieter Ziegler (Ed.): Großbürgertum und Unternehmer. The German business elite in the 20th century , bourgeoisie Volume 17, Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, Göttingen 2000, ISBN 3-525-35682-X
12. ^ Paul H. Emden: Money Powers of Europe in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries , D. Appleton-Century Company, New York 1938, p. 275
13. ^ The London Gazette , April 4, 1922, p. 2763
14. ^ Paul H. Emden: Money Powers of Europe in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries , D. Appleton-Century Company, New York 1938, pp. 276f.
15. ^ Ingo Köhler: The "Aryanization" of the private banks in the Third Reich , published in the series of publications for the journal for corporate history , Volume 14, Verlag CH Beck, Munich 2005, p. 400, ISBN 3-406-53200-4
16. ^ Paul H. Emden: Money Powers of Europe in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries , D. Appleton-Century Company, New York 1938, p. 277
17. ^ Claims Resolution Tribunal: Case No. CV96-4849
18. ^ History of the Villa Speyer in Frankfurt
19. ^ Susie J. Pak: Gentleman Bankers - The world of JP Morgan , Harvard Studies in Business History (Book 51) 2013, ISBN 978-0-674-07303-6 online