The Business of Emancipation

Two brothers, Moses Marcus Warburg and Gerson Warburg, founded the M.M. Warburg & Co. banking company in 1798. The banking tradition was cultivated in the next generations. Moses’ grandsons thrived on two continents. Max Mortiz Warburg ran the Warburg Bank, located in Hamburg. He was actively involved in the Hamburg Jewish community and engaged in a variety of philanthropic ventures. Like Simon and the Rathenaus, Max was an advisor to the Kaiser, but later concluded there was no place for a Jewish banker in German politics. His brother, Fritz M. Warburg, who lived during the WWII in Sweden during WWII, organized Kinderstransport in 1938 and 1939. Abraham H. Warburg became a famous art historian and founder of the Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg (Library for Cultural Studies), a private library, later named the Warburg Institute, London. His brothers, Felix M. and Paul M. Warburg spent their careers predominantly in the United States. Felix became was a banker at Kuhn, Loeb & Co. Paul was appointed a member of the Federal Reserve Board in New York City in 1914. He became a driving force behind the establishment of an American centralized American bank, which proved essential to economic stability in the volatile interwar economy and in lowering capital costs for companies.