the world of private banking

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THE WORLD OF PRIVAtE BANKING
Beyond religion, geographic origin was of primary importance for intermarriage
and networking. This was typical among the bankers of German background.
Thus, the German-Jewish banking community in New York cultivated its national
characteristics, with the consequence that through their linguistic, social and cultural
affinities, they promoted investment banking between America and Germany,
whereas the New Englanders drew on the capital resources of Britain. Jacob Schiff
wrote in German to Sir Ernest Cassel and so did many other international bankers
at the time. Similarly, the discriminating behaviour of the German-Jewish New
York bankers versus Jews originating from other countries, especially Sephardic
Jews, played a significant part in the Lazards’ decision on settling in Paris and
London in the last quarter of the nineteenth century.
Paradoxically in Germany, where Jewish bankers felt the strongest sense of
national identity and acceded to the upper echelons of society before World War
I, they were never entirely accepted, and were condemned to disappear when the
Nazis came to power. Gerson Bleichröder’s story is the paradigm of the problem
of integration in Germany and Stern’s book is a brilliant demonstration of the
ambiguity of Jewish success. The fact that, despite their close collaboration during
thirty years, Bismarck did not even mention him in his memoirs, is perhaps one of
the most revealing feature of that precarious condition.
When comparing integration of Jewish private bankers in different European
countries, their position in the banking community and the social structure of
the country where they lived influenced their integration. The case of Germany
undoubtedly contrasts deeply with that of other West European societies. First,
contrary to other countries, the German private bankers, especially in Berlin, were
almost all Jews or of Jewish origin. Second, Germany’s economic growth at the
end of the nineteenth century was not immediately followed by modernization of
society and full integration of businessmen into the dominating elite. Until World
War I, although numerous Junker were in relationship with the private bankers,
money was still a taboo in the Ancien Régime aristocracy of the German Empire
and as such constituted an insurmountable barrier to integration. Thus, contrary to
other Western countries, wealth was far from being a condition of acceptability into
the higher circles. Bleichröder’s life is revelatory of the Jewish parvenu’s hunger
for respectability. Despite his ennoblement for having undertaken to salvage the
fortunes of Prussian junkers who had been caught in the collapse of Strousberg’s
railway projects in Romania, his growing visibility and luxurious way of life made
him a target for those who despised the rise of Jewish plutocrats. With him as a
symbol, the conjunction of anti-Judaism and anticapitalism stimulated the rise of
German anti-Semitism during the 1870s. Higher education in select schools and
universities was not a channel of social integration into the upper classes either;
this may perhaps explain why the German bankers had a lower level of education
than their colleagues in Britain or in France before 1914.
In England, successful bankers were generally integrated by the second
generation. While they adopted an aristocratic way of life, their attitude to
landownership, work and leisure was different from that of aristocrats. Thus,