the world of private banking

JEwISH PRIVAtE BANKS 215
France. The father of five sons, he went into partnership with the two eldest,
Amschel and Salomon, and in 1798 he sent his third and most gifted son, Nathan,
to England. Starting in Manchester, Nathan accumulated a fortune as a textile
merchant before settling in London by 1804. He managed to make his way into
the circle of merchant bankers who were issuing British government loans, and
created a network of agents covering the whole of Europe. Nathan’s youngest
brother Jacob, better known as James, arrived in Paris in 1811 and founded his
bank there in 1814.
Having become the bankers of Europe’s conservative monarchies, the
Rothschilds settled in Vienna, where Salomon founded a bank, and in Naples,
where the fourth brother, Charles, established himself. Links with other centres
developed, with privileged correspondents like Samuel Bleichröder and his son
Gerson in Berlin, or August Belmont in New York. In other places the Rothschilds
had direct representatives like Louis Richtenberger, who looked after the Parisian
branch’s interests in Brussels, and his stepson Samuel Lambert in Antwerp. Through
their extended network of financial relations, the Rothschilds played a prominent
role in international gold and silver flows. They achieved a very efficient system of
couriers which offered a level of security and rapidity in business communications
never surpassed until the appearance of the telegraph. For years, the Rothschilds
were better informed about international events than governments were. Ministers
and diplomats often relied on their information.
The case of the Rothschilds is far from being a unique example of the scattering
of German private bankers throughout Europe. The Oppenheims, linked with
the house of Fould in Paris, were present in Brussels during the Napoleonic era,
and Adolphe Oppenheim became the first treasurer of the Banque de Belgique.
They patronized two prominent bankers at Brussels, Jacques Errera, the son of a
Venetian Jewish banker who married Oppenheim’s daughter, and Franz Philippson,
who became the wonderboy of the Brussels market. Likewise, the Bischoffsheim
brothers, from Mainz, set up banks in Amsterdam, Antwerp and Brussels.
Contrary to the Rothschilds, who had their representative in Belgium until
the end of the century, Jonathan Bischoffsheim set up his business in Brussels
and developed his network throughout Europe with numerous German Jewish
bankers’ families, among them Goldschmidt, Bamberger, Cassel and Stern, whose
youngsters were trained in his bank and settled in Belgium. Similarly, one of their
relatives, Germain Cassel, founded a bank in Brussels in 1839 and allied through
marriage with the Frankfurt bankers Stern, who also expanded their operations to
London and Paris. In the same way Bischoffsheim’s son-in-law, the famous baron
Maurice de Hirsch, founded his own bank in Brussels in 1862 as a partnership
with his brother-in-law Fernand Bischoffsheim.
The development of the German Jewish private bankers’ New York community
followed in a way the pattern observed in Europe, although it occurred later in
the century. Having emigrated to the United States between the late 1830s and
the 1850s, they started business trading in commodities, whether retail, wholesale
or international trade. Like the Revolution and Napoleonic Wars in Europe, the