Mendelssohn & Co. was a private bank based in Berlin, Prussia. One of the leading banks in the 19th and early 20th centuries, it was Aryanized by the Nazis because the owners were Jewish. [1]
Mendelssohn & Co. was a private bank based in Berlin, Prussia. One of the leading banks in the 19th and early 20th centuries, it was Aryanized by the Nazis because the owners were Jewish. [1]
The bank was established in 1795 by Joseph Mendelssohn in Berlin. In 1804, his younger brother Abraham Mendelssohn Bartholdy joined the company. In 1815, they moved into their new headquarters at Jägerstraße 51, thereby laying the foundations of Berlin's financial district. Mendelssohn & Co. remained in that building until its divestiture in 1939.
Mendelssohn quickly rose to prominence among European banks. Starting in the 1850s, they acted as Royal bankers for the Russian Tsar and, from the 1870s, dominating the Central European financial market for Russian sovereign bonds and railway bonds. Only the outbreak of World War I in 1914 and the Lenin putsch in 1917 put an end to these close contacts. The Mendelssohn family, through the descendants of the founding brothers, continued to run the company.
Mendelssohn & Co. survived the financial meltdown of the 1930s comparatively well. Following the death of Franz von Mendelssohn and Paul von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy in 1935, Rudolf Löb was appointed as chairman of the bank, the first non-family member to be chairman.
Persecuted by the Nazis in 1938, Mendelssohn & Co was Aryanized, which was the word used to describe the Nazi policy of transferring assets owned by Jews to "Aryans". Mendelssohn & Co. were forced to hand over their assets to Deutsche Bank and shut down. [2] [3] [4] [5]
Possessions of members of the Mendelssohn family were plundered, and they were forced into exile, where several committed suicide. [6]
Walther Funk was a German economist and Nazi official who served as Reich Minister for Economic Affairs (1938–1945) and president of Reichsbank (1939–1945). During his incumbency, he oversaw the mobilization of the German economy for rearmament and arrangement of forced labor in concentration camps. After the war he was tried and convicted as a major war criminal by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. Sentenced to life in prison, he remained incarcerated until he was released on health grounds in 1957. He died three years later.
Fritz Mannheimer was a German-born and, from 1936, Dutch banker and art collector who was the director of the Amsterdam branch of the Berlin-based investment bank Mendelssohn & Co. that was for some time the main supporter of the Dutch capital market. Known as the "King of Flying Capital", he was one of the main organisers of credit for post-war Germany. His international financial work brought him recognition, such as being awarded Grand Officer of the Légion d'honneur. His collection was bought by Hitler in 1941, but it was returned to the Netherlands after the war.
Aryanization was the Nazi term for the seizure of property from Jews and its transfer to non-Jews, and the forced expulsion of Jews from economic life in Nazi Germany, Axis-aligned states, and their occupied territories. It entailed the transfer of Jewish property into "Aryan" or non-Jewish hands.
Abraham Ernst Mendelssohn Bartholdy was a German Jewish banker and philanthropist. He was the father of Fanny Mendelssohn, Felix Mendelssohn, Rebecka Mendelssohn, and Paul Mendelssohn.
The B. Metzler seel. Sohn & Co. AG is a private banking company in Frankfurt, Germany. Metzler traces its origins to a trading company established 1674 by Benjamin Metzler in Frankfurt and is Germany’s second oldest bank and the world's 5th oldest.
Anti-Jewish legislation in pre-war Nazi Germany comprised several laws that segregated the Jews from German society and restricted Jewish people's political, legal and civil rights. Major legislative initiatives included a series of restrictive laws passed in 1933, the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, and a final wave of legislation preceding Germany's entry into World War II.
Rudolf Löb was a German banker with Mendelssohn & Co. and consultant to the German and Russian governments.
Baron Cornelius von Berenberg-Gossler was a German banker, a member of the illustrious Berenberg-Gossler banking dynasty, and owner and head of Berenberg Bank from 1913. He withdrew from active management of the bank in 1932.
The Central Agency for Jewish Emigration in Vienna was a Sicherheitsdienst agency established in August 1938 to accelerate the forced emigration of the Austrian Jews and to organize and carry out their deportation. The resolution of emigration issues relating to Austrian citizenship, foreign citizens’ rights, foreign currencies and the taxation of assets were coordinated in order to accelerate this emigration process. The Central Agency for Jewish Emigration in Vienna was the only institution empowered with the issuance of exit permits for Jews in Austria from the time of the Anschluss in 1938 until the ban on Jewish emigration in 1941. The Vienna Agency became the prototype for similar SS agencies used to implement the deportation of Jews in Amsterdam, Prague and many other European cities.
Leopold Reichwein was a German conductor and composer.
The Judenvermögensabgabe was an arbitrary special tax imposed on German Jews under the Nazi dictatorship. The tax was only a part of a larger series of actions taken by the Nazis to systematically plunder Jewish assets.
Paul Robert Ernst von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy was a German Jewish banker and art collector. The persecution of his family under the Nazis has resulted in numerous lawsuits for restitution.
The Holocaust in Austria was the systematic persecution, plunder and extermination of Jews by German and Austrian Nazis from 1938 to 1945. Part of the wider-Holocaust, pervasive persecution of Jews was immediate after the German annexation of Austria, known as the Anschluss. An estimated 70,000 Jews were murdered and 125,000 forced to flee Austria as refugees.
Felix Busch was a German administrative lawyer whose family was persecuted by the Nazis because of their Jewish heritage.
Willy Dreyfus was a Swiss banker of German-Jewish origin.
L. Behrens & Söhne was a Hamburg private bank and trading company.
Bankhaus Adolph Meyer was a private bank, and the oldest in Hanover, Germany. It played a prominent role in the industrialization of Lower Saxony, particularly in the cotton and coal and steel industries, especially since the time of the Kingdom of Hanover. During the Nazi era, it was "Aryanized". It is now located on Schillerstraße at the corner of Rosenstraße in Hannover's Mitte district.
Georg Karg was a German businessman in the department store industry. After rising in the employ of the Hermann Tietz Department Stores, Karg took over the company when it was Aryanized, that is forcibly transferred to non-Jewish owners under the Nazis. After the Jewish owners were forced out, Karg was appointed managing director, running the stores under the name Hertie.
Edith Louise Ida Mendelssohn Bartholdy, née Speyer, was a German politician and social activist.
Lotte von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy was a German author and art collector.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)According to the decision, four of the six partners of Mendelssohn & Co. Berlin were considered to be Jewish under the Nuremberg laws, and consequently, the bank was considered to be a Jewish bank. The decision indicates that on 1 December 1938, ownership of Mendelssohn & Co. Berlin, which was organized as a general partnership (offene Handelsgesellschaft), was transferred to the Deutsche Bank; on 5 December 1938 Mendelssohn & Co. the aryanization was considered complete, as the four Jewish partners, Rudolf Loeb, Dr. Fritz Mannheimer, Dr. Paul Kempner, and Marie von Mendelssohn, were forced to relinquish their partnerships on that date and the decision was taken to dissolve the partnership by the end of the year. Therefore Mendelssohn & Co. was in liquidation as of 31 December 1938. The departure of the four Jewish partners was entered into the Company Register (Handelsregister) on 15 December 1938 and on 16 January 1939, Mendelssohn & Co. Berlin was eliminated from the register of companies.
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