W. Michael Blumenthal

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Portrait of W. Michael Blumenthal in the US Treasury Department

Werner Michael Blumenthal (born January 3, 1926 in Oranienburg ) is an American politician and manager of German origin. He was US Treasury Secretary of the Carter government from 1977 to 1979 and director of the Jewish Museum Berlin from 1997 to 2014 .

Life

Blumenthal's father, the textile merchant Ewald Blumenthal, was awarded the Iron Cross in the First World War . During the November pogroms of 1938 he was interned in the Buchenwald concentration camp for several months .

First Werner Michael Blumenthal attended the private Jewish forest school Kaliski in Berlin-Dahlem . His family fled with him in the spring of 1939 from Germany to Shanghai , where the family survived in the Shanghai ghetto , and then emigrated to the USA in 1947. He learned Chinese , English , French and Spanish . He became a US citizen in 1952 . He graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with a Bachelor of Science degree in International Economics in 1951 . He received his Master of Arts in Economics and a Master of Public Affairs from Princeton University in 1953 . In 1956 he received his Ph.D. in economics . From 1953 to 1956 he worked as a lecturer in economics . He then became vice president and eventually director of Crown Cork International Corporation . From 1961 to 1967 he was an employee of the US State Department and at the same time economic policy advisor to US Presidents Kennedy and Johnson . In 1967 he moved to the board of directors of the technology company Bendix Corporation , where he was chairman of the board. In 1973 Blumenthal was one of the founding members of the Trilateral Commission .

Signature of Blumenthal on US $ banknotes

From 1977 to 1979 he was Treasury Secretary in the cabinet of US President Jimmy Carter . In 1980 he became vice president and 1981 chairman of the board of Burroughs Corporation . In 1986 he merged the computer company with Sperry to form Unisys , of which he also became chairman. Afterwards he was a partner at the investment bank Lazard Frères & Co. LLC from 1990 to 1996 and began writing his biography. In 1997 he was appointed founding director of the Jewish Museum in Berlin . He managed to expand the museum into the largest Jewish museum in Europe. In June 2014, he announced that he would be stepping down on September 1, 2014 at his own request.

In 1998 he published the family chronicle The Invisible Wall. The three hundred year history of a German-Jewish family. His ancestors include the court jeweler Jost Liebmann (= Jehuda ben Elieser Lipmann), the writer Rahel Varnhagen von Ense , the composer Giacomo Meyerbeer and the literary scholar Arthur Eloesser .

Blumenthal is a member of the Advisory Board of the Investment Bank Evercore Partners , the American Jewish Committee in Berlin and the International Rescue Committee . He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe Foundation and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations , as well as the Princeton and Century Club.

In the USA and Germany he was awarded honorary doctorates, for example by the Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion, New York, and by the University of Jewish Studies , Heidelberg.

Awards

Publications

  • Code determination in the German Steel Industry. A report of experience. Industrial Relations Section, Department of Economics and Sociology, Princeton University, Princeton 1956
    • Codetermination in the German steel industry. An experience report. Gehlen, Bad Homburg / Berlin / Zurich 1960
  • (Ed.): Lieselotte Friedlaender. 1898-1973. Fate of a Berlin fashion graphic artist. Jewish Museum, Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-910029-22-1
  • The Invisible Wall. German and Jews. A personal exploration. Counterpoint, 1998, ISBN 1-887178-73-2
    • The invisible wall. The three hundred year history of a German-Jewish family. Hanser, Munich / Vienna 1999, ISBN 3-446-19642-0 ; Deutscher Taschenbuch-Verlag, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-423-30788-9
  • Foreword in Daniel Libeskind : The Jewish Museum in Berlin. Architect Daniel Libeskind. Philo & Philo Fine Arts, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-86572-498-1
  • Around the world in eighty years. My life. Propylaea, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-549-07374-2 ; List, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-548-61102-0

literature

Movie

  • Witnesses of the Century. Interview, production: ZDF , first broadcast: October 24, 2004
  • Successful exile. W. Michael Blumenthal. Documentation by Jochen Kölsch , Germany, 2001, 75 min.

Web links

Commons : W. Michael Blumenthal  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jochen Kölsch : Exile on Whangpu . In: Die Zeit No. 20, 2002
  2. ↑ Detlef Borchers & Jürgen Kuri: We went as we came - for Michael Blumenthal's 80th birthday . In: heise online . January 3, 2006
  3. ↑ Focus online museums from June 19, 2014: Peter Schäfer becomes director of the Jewish Museum Berlin , accessed on June 19, 2014
  4. ↑ Press release of the Jewish Museum Berlin from June 19, 2014: Change at the top of the Jewish Museum Berlin
  5. ↑ NDB .
  6. ^ W. Michael Blumenthal: Founding Director of the Jewish Museum Berlin. In: Jewish Museum Berlin. Retrieved May 25, 2020 .
  7. ↑ Roland Berger Foundation on the award ( Memento from July 14, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  8. ↑ "Estrongo Nachama Prize 2014" goes to Michael Blumenthal. In: meridian-stiftung.de. Meridian Foundation, January 24, 2014, accessed May 3, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Blumenthal, W. Michael
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Blumenthal, Werner Michael
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American manager, politician (Democratic Party), director of the Jewish Museum Berlin
DATE OF BIRTH January 3, 1926
PLACE OF BIRTH Oranienburg