the world of private banking

JEwISH PRIVAtE BANKS 229
monarchies in continental Europe, the Rothschilds appear to have adapted
themselves to the successive regimes in France after the fall of the monarchy.
Similarly, through its broad international interests the family might be involved
with both sides in conflicts between a conservative regime and its opponents. Thus,
during the wars for Italian unification, the London house underwrote an Austrian
loan while at the same time the Rothschilds of Paris were negotiating with the
Piedmontese government.
As information obtained through personal contacts with business, political
and diplomatic circles lay at the core of the private bankers’ business, it is not
surprising that government tried to use them as intermediaries and entrusted them
with discreet missions. Thus, on several occasions Bleichröder was an intermediary
between Bismarck and the liberal opposition in Prussia. We cannot tell his numerous
diplomatic missions, but it is worth stressing that after the 1870s his position in
Berlin so impressed the Russian Ministers of Finance that they corresponded
secretly with him about not only financial but also political matters.
Despite appearances, the political influence of Jewish private bankers should
not be overestimated. Its efficiency was correlative with the convergence of their
interests and the aims of the government they served. Bleichröder’s decline after
the fall of Bismarck is a revealing case. The Romanian question is a yet more
revealing one. During the 1870s Western Jews decided to use their power and
influence in order to organize collective European pressure on East European
governments to improve the lot of Jewish minorities. Bleichröder devoted himself
to the case of the Romanian Jews. So long as German railway interests in Romania
were threatened, Bismarck supported the campaign for emancipating the Romanian
Jews. When in 1878 the Powers imposed their liberal principles on Romania at the
Berlin Congress, Bleichröder celebrated his triumph sumptuously. It did not last
very long. Once the railway question was solved with the Romanian government
two years later, Bismarck cynically gave up his support to the Romanian Jews and
their emancipation was forgotten.
Without debating the financing of the Zionist movement by certain prominent
Jewish financiers, let us recall that the deteriorating situation of Russian Jewry also
influenced their international business. Indeed, outraged by the pogroms against
Russian Jews, Jacob Schiff decided to finance and support Japan during the war
of 1904–5, and Japanese bonds were sold on the German market by the Warburg
bank with the agreement of the Wilhelmstrasse.
On the whole, peace seems to have been the main concern of the international
Jewish haute banque. The dread of war inspired Sir Ernest Cassel’s and Max
Warburg’s efforts to unite Britain and Germany on the eve of World War I.
Siegmund Warburg’s action in favour of European Union after World War II was
also motivated by his conviction that prosperity and close Western ties were the
best way to prevent Nazi revival. Anyhow, the private bankers’ political influence
remains largely an unknown. By the end of the twentieth century, the private
Jewish bank had lost its specific place in the banking system. A few houses have
survived thanks to their strength and their ability to keep family control and adapt