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—- H - S .° ut HERN I s r a e l I t e
5
A Prince Among Jews
Baron de Hirsch, The Greatest Jewish Philanthropist
On the Occasion of His Hundredth Birthday
By STANLEY BERO
There was much ado in the home of the
Court Banker Joseph de Hirsch a hundred
vears ago, on December 9th. The Baroness had
given birth to her first son. The de Hirsch
palace was in a festive mood. The best doctors
if Bavaria—this happened in Munich—were in
attendance. In the sumptuous dining hall the table was set for
several scores of relatives of the new-born heir to the rapidly
increasing fortune of the de Hirsch family. Maurice—so the boy
was named—was born with a golden spoon in his mouth. He
would not have to start as a petty merchant, as had his grand
father Jacob, who by his indomitable energy and resourcefulness
founded the financial eminence of the family. It would not be
necessary for him to obey every whim and caprice of King Louis
the Second as his father had done in order to be rewarded with
a hereditary baronage. He was born a baron, the heir to a large
fortune so soundly invested that it would not require special
talent to administer it. It is true he was a Jew, but the Bavarian
dynasty had come to respect the Jewish financial genius and was
well aware that it could not do without it. These were probably
the thoughts of the happy father as he looked at his new-born
heir. Little did Joseph de Hirsch dream that one Adolf Hitler
would, in the same Munich—a hundred years later proclaim that
no Jew could possibly be a good German. Nor did he know that
his son Maurice would devote his life to meeting such a Hitler
menace.
Maurice de Hirsch even as a very young man impressed his
entourage with his independence of outlook and his will to shape
his own life. Leisure never held any attraction for him. He
attended elementary school in Brussels, Belgium. At the age of
seventeen he decided that he had studied enough. At an age when
the heirs to great wealth in his circle spent their time searching
for new ways how to enjoy life, he entered business. Seven years
later—only 24 years old—he became a partner in the interna
tional banking house Bischoffsheim & Goldschmidt. It did not
take long till Baron Maurice de Hirsch became the mastermind
of the firm which did not bear his name. He amassed a fortune
which he eventually pyramided to gigantic heights by purchasing
and working a railway concessions in Austria, Turkey and the
Balkans. While he w r as a domiciled subject in Vienna, his financial
forests spread tnroughout Europe and the Near East. He was
great international financier whose genius knew no geograph-
! boundaries and whose daring did not recognize physical dis-
lce. He was always on the move; Paris, Constantinople, London,
Budapest and St. Petersburg knew him and respected him as
ich as Vienna.
Ml roads of international finance led to his palatial homes
ich he maintained in Vienna, Paris and London. His luck and
'iness acumen became proverbial. It
extended to his hobbies and sports.
racing stables in Paris counted
a ' 'ng the most brilliant and successful
Europe. Baron Maurice de Hirsch
the grand seigneur whose life was
' acterized by one dominant feature:
a ! ’eat elan toward big financial un-
akings and a liking for glamorous,
dilating social life. Yet despite his
oleonic career in finance, it is
»ttul whether the hundredth anni-
ar y of his birth would be cele-
e d today throughout the Jewish
d were it not for the tremendous
ficance which the philanthropic
e °f his life has for the Jews.
le late Oscar S. Straus in his ap-
ation of Baron Maurice de Hirsch,
:en thirty-seven years ago, analyses
December 9 th, 1931, u. 'as the one hundredth
anniversary of the birth of Baron Maurice de
Hirsch. We have asked Stanley Bero, whose
knowledge of Jewish affairs is encyclopaedi
cal, to write for that occasion the story of
Baron de Hirsch.
WATCHING THE NEW DAWN
as follows the Baron’s reasons for devoting
himself to the Jewish problem: “The great
philanthropist in his affinities, friendships and
associations was neither Christian nor Jew—
but cosmopolitan. Creed lines had no signifi
cance for him. He was already well known for
his generous contributions in many directions and for many
causes. The misery, and not the race nor the religion of the
Russian Jews, attached Baron de Hirsch to their cause and
summoned him, as by a voice from God, to assume the colossal
task of devising plans and pouring out his treasures with endless
munificence in colonizing them in other lands.
“VVith the accession of the Czar (Alexander III) there came
a policy of reaction, devised with the finesse of the nineteenth
century, but outstripping in its diabolical purpose the barbarity
of the Middle Ages. This was in 1881 and 1882 and the enforce
ment of this policy against Russia’s five million Jews was accom
panied by pillage, burning and death. Baron de Hirsch was then
fifty years of age, engrossed in his many affairs. He stopped,
to the surprise of every one, in his mid-career, marshalled his
resources, and turned his active brain and tireless energy to the
problem of reclaiming his suffering co-religionists from humilia
tion worse than slavery, from starvation and destruction.’’
His first move was to offer the Russian Government ten
million dollars for the endowment of a system of secular educa
tion in the Jewish pale of settlement. This sum was to be applied
without distinction of creed or race, consequently without dis
crimination against the large Jewish population in those districts.
The Russian Government, while willing to accept the magnificent
offer, declined to “allow any foreigner to be concerned in its
administration.’’ In other words, the Russian Government was
ready to accept a ten million dollar gift from a Jew provided it
could continue its barbaric policy of discrimination against the
Jews, utilizing Jewish money for the purpose. But Baron de
Hirsch knew Russian officials too well. He had done business
with them. He withdrew his offer.
It was then that he embarked on the scheme of colonizing
Russian Jews outside of Russia. With the ten million dollars he
founded the Jewish Colonization Association. Baron de Hirsch real
ized that the transplanting of great masses of Jews from Russia was
an almost impossible task. He was too practical a thinking economist
and sociologist not too envisage the difficulties of so ambitious
a program. But he went about the carrying out of these plans
with undaunted courage. In 1892 he donated, in addition to the
first ten million dollars thirty-five million dollars to the ICA
(Jewish Colonization Association). On the death of his wife, who
survived him by three years, the capital of the ICA was in all
more than fifty-five million dollars. The record of the ICA is too
well known to be elaborated on in an
article that is devoted to the person
ality of its founder. Suffice it to say
that it built large Jewish colonies in
South America, Canada and Asia Mi
nor and that according to its consti
tution it was authorized to deal with
the whole problem of Jewish persecu
tion, including emigration. The ICA
then established technical trade schools,
co-operative factories, savings and loan
banks and model dwellings in Russia,
Poland, Canada, the Argentine, and the
United States.
It would be childish to claim that
Baron de Hirsch’s generous gifts
solved the Jewish problem. It is prob
lematic whether the Jewish situation
throughout the world is any more hope
ful today (Please turn to page 16)