the world of private banking

PRIVAtE BANKERS AND PHILANtHROpy 255
amid, according to the Jewish Chronicle, ‘demonstrations of sympathy from all
classes of society, from the Head of State and the bearers of the proudest names in
the old French aristocracy, down to the meanest Christian ouvrier and the poorest
Polish Jewish immigrant’. He left a million francs for various charities. 25
His wife, Clara, was his main heir and she carried on the philanthropic and
colonizing work on which they had previously worked jointly, until her death
in 1899. The importance of her work in the Jewish community is suggested by
the fact that her death gave rise to almost as many column inches in the Jewish
Chronicle as that of her husband. Her obituary credited her with inspiring her
husband’s devotion to philanthropy and with close involvement in his business
affairs: ‘For a long time she was also his secretary and to such an extent that she
wrote and copied the most important letters he wrote. Often when at home and
always when abroad, he had no other assistance’. 26 But for long before his death
her main activity had been philanthropy, conducted in meticulous, business-like
fashion, expending vast sums from an office in Paris. She read, investigated and
filed letters of appeal. The scale and range of her and her husband’s philanthropy
is suggested by her bequests, which included: 4 million francs to the Teachers’
Training School of the Alliance Israélite Universelle, Paris; 3 million for a pension
fund for the same school; 3 million for clothing and feeding children in the
Alliance Israélite schools; 6 million to the Baron de Hirsh fund, New York; 3
million to the loan fund of the London Board of Guardians; 3 million to the Home
for Jewish Working Girls founded by the Baroness; 5 million to the Comité de
Bienfaisance Israélite, Paris; 1 million for housing and maternal care in Paris;
200,000 to the City of Vienna for philanthropic purposes; between 100,000 and
300,000 each to the Progressive Jewish Communities of Vienna, Budapest, Paris,
Brussels, Frankfurt, Mainz, Munich and to the Jewish Community of Britain;
100,000 francs to the Bischoffsheim Foundation, Paris; 25,000 to each of the 20
Bureaux de Bienfaisance in Paris; 10 million to the Jewish Colonization Society;
3 and a half million to the fund she had founded for the support of Boys and Girls
in Austria; 2 million to the Baron Hirsch Foundation for Elementary Education in
Galicia. The total in charitable bequests was 46,750,000 francs, equivalent at the
time to £1,870,000. Added to the millions she and her husband had donated during
their lifetimes, this was a charitable endeavour few in Britain, or anywhere, could
match.
25
Hirsch is elusive to the historian. The main sources on which this account is based
are Adler-Rudel, ‘Moritz Baron Hirsch’; and obituaries in Jewish Chronicle, 24 Apr. 1896
and The Times, 22 Apr. 1896.
26
Obituary of Baroness Clara de Hirsch, Jewish Chronicle, 7 Apr. 1899.