Wilhelm Bonn
Wilhelm Bernhard Bonn (born March 16, 1843 in Frankfurt am Main ; † October 21, 1910 in Kronberg im Taunus ) was a Frankfurt banker and patron .
Career as a banker
Wilhelm Bonn was the sixth child of the Jewish banker Baruch Bonn (1810–1878) and his wife Betty nee Schuster. He attended the Philanthropin secondary school and trained as a banker at the Lazard Speyer-Ellissen bank . Due to his good knowledge of the English language, he was transferred to the sister company Speyer & Co in New York in 1863 . The main business there, the financing of railway projects, he handled so successfully that he became managing director of this bank in 1866 and remained until his return to Germany in 1885.
During this time he founded the Ruette & Bonn bank . His brother Leopold Bonn ran the bank's London branch. His father's bank, Baruch Bonn , was run by two other brothers and was merged with the Palatinate Bank in 1920 .
After his return to Germany, Wilhelm Bonn became a partner in the Lazard Speyer-Ellissen banking house . The bank, which had its headquarters on the corner of Taunusanlage and Mainzer Landstrasse, was one of the largest in Frankfurt. The bank came in the wake of the Great Depression in trouble and was after the seizure of power of the Nazis liquidated the 1934th
family
Wilhelm Bonn's first wife died in New York. The son Max Bonn emerged from this marriage and joined the Ruette & Bonn bank in London . He earned a high reputation and was knighted as a Knight Bachelor . In addition to Max, Wilhelm Bonn had two other children (Richard and Emma). Emma Bonn became a writer and lived in Feldafing before she was brought to the Theresienstadt concentration camp by the National Socialists in 1942 and murdered there.
In his second marriage he was with Amelie Schuster, geb. Ettlinger, married. The grave of the Bonn couple is in the old Jewish cemetery on Rat-Beil-Strasse in Frankfurt.
The economist Moritz Julius Bonn was his nephew.
Patronage
Wilhelm Bonn was one of the 300 millionaires in Frankfurt because of his profits from America. He considered more than two dozen institutions as patrons. He was an "eternal member" of the Senckenberg Society for Natural Research and the Physical Society , of which he was also a member.
The Free German Hochstift , the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University Frankfurt am Main , the Goldschmidtsche Scholarship Foundation and Dr. Christ's Children's Hospital received significant donations.
The city of Kronberg made him an honorary citizen .
buildings
Wilhelm Bonn's representative house in Frankfurt, the Villa Bonn , is now a listed building and is used by the Frankfurt Society for Trade, Industry and Science. The summer residence of the Bonn family in Kronberg is now the town hall.
literature
- Jürgen Jeske: Devout Jew and generous patron in: FAZ of October 21, 2010, page 35.
- Wolfgang Klötzer (Hrsg.): Frankfurter Biographie . Personal history lexicon . First volume. A – L (= publications of the Frankfurt Historical Commission . Volume XIX , no. 1 ). Waldemar Kramer, Frankfurt am Main 1994, ISBN 3-7829-0444-3 , p. 91 .
- Harro Trenkler: The Bonns: (1520-1920); on the far-reaching work of an influential Jewish Frankfurt family , Verlag Waldemar Kramer, Frankfurt am Main 1998, ISBN 378290477X .
Web links
- Bonn, Wilhelm Bernhard. Hessian biography. (As of June 22, 2020). In: Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen (LAGIS).
Individual evidence
- ^ Based on the Frankfurt biography on October 22nd
- ^ Theodor Petersen : Annual report of the Physikalischer Verein zu Frankfurt am Main for the financial year 1898–1899 . Ed .: Physikalischer Verein . C. Naumann's printing works, Frankfurt am Main 1900, p. 11 ( online in the internet archive archive.org ).
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Bonn, Wilhelm |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Bonn, Wilhelm Bernhard (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German banker |
| DATE OF BIRTH | March 16, 1843 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Frankfurt am Main |
| DATE OF DEATH | October 21, 1910 |
| Place of death | Kronberg im Taunus |