Chapter One: the Beginnings the Altschul Family Traced Its Origins to the Great Intermarried German-Jewish Clans of Central Euro
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Chapter One: The Beginnings The Altschul family traced its origins to the great intermarried German-Jewish clans of central Europe, a network whose ramifications centered upon Prussia and the Austro-Hungarian empire, and by the mid-nineteenth century stretched across western Europe, Britain, and the United States. The Altschuls took some pride in what seems to have been a heritage of learning and books. Family lore had it that the name Altschul, or “old school,” was derived from the Jewish synagogue in Prague, where one or more of their forebears taught. In later life Frank Altschul traced bearers of the name in Jewish genealogies, and as a printer who himself established a notable small press, discovered with some satisfaction “that at various times in the 17th century no less than ten Altschuls had been printers.” Most of them were based in or around Prague, but some Altschuls worked in the printing trade in Amsterdam, in Cracow in Poland, and in the German city of Frankfort-on-Oder. Altschul’s own researches established that “the name Altschul was first borne by descendants of Provençal refugees who settled in Prague about 1302.” He also tracked down listings in the Universal Jewish Encyclopedia for Moses ben Hanoch Altschul of Prague, a sixteenth-century writer on morality who “was one of the first to create a refined literary style in Judeo-German,” and Emil or Elias Altschul (1812-1865) of Prague, who taught homeopathic medicine at that city’s university from 1848 onward, and wrote a treatise on the subject.1 Frank Altschul’s grandfather, Sigmund Altschul, came from the area around Prague; his grandmother, Elise Heymann, born in 1825, was one of six children of Isaac Heymann of Berlin (b. 1792) and his wife Charlotte Lowenberg (b. 1800). Family photographs show them as members of the prosperous, well-educated Victorian bourgeoisie. In the early nineteenth century, Sigmund moved to the Saxon city of Dresden. For several generations back, the family demonstrated a strong liberal streak, which Altschul’s grandfather clearly shared. He sympathized with the 1848 German revolution and, after its suppression, left Germany for a decade or more, moving for a while to the United States and becoming an American citizen. In the mid-1850s he married Elise Heymann, who like himself acquired American citizenship, which the couple passed on to their children. Their first son, William, was born in December 1856; their second, Charles, just one year later, on December 31, 1857, in London, where the couple had moved. Soon afterwards, his parents returned to Dresden. Their family expanded rapidly; at almost annual intervals, they had three more sons, Richard (b. 1859), Julius (b. 1864), and Arthur (b. 1866), and four daughters, Emily (b. 1860), Clara (b. 1862), Louise (b. 1863), and Mary (b. 1869). None of the Altschul daughters ever married; if family lore can be believed, their father had very high standards in what he required of a potential son-in-law, and none of their suitors ever seemed acceptable to him. Richard and Arthur also remained lifelong 1 Frank Altschul to Yvonne Halphen, November 6, 1972, File Biographical Data, Frank Altschul Personal Correspondence, Overbrook Foundation Office, New York; see also Altschul, Foreword to Overbrook Press Bibliography, May 1963, and historical listings of bearers of the Altschul name, Folder 175, Cahoon, Herbert, Compiler, Overbrook Press Files, Lehman Suite, Columbia University, New York. 1 bachelors, not, it seems, due to paternal disapproval, but because they apparently found plenty of feminine companionship outside marriage. William, the eldest son, married Rosita Salomon and had two children. His brother Julius married late in life; he too, it seems, for many years had no wife but numerous ladyfriends, and Ernst, his own son, was born more than four decades after Frank Altschul, his first cousin. Charles Altschul, Sigmund’s second son, was in a much greater hurry to embark on a career that would enable him to support a wife in some style. He was born in London, educated mostly in Germany, and then spent three years working in Berlin. By 1877 he had returned to live and work in the British capital. While Charles remained a lifelong Anglophile, he found the opportunities offered by the United States yet more alluring. He later recalled that his father had “brought us up in admiration for the country of his choice,” the United States.2 Still not quite twenty, that same year Charles moved to the United States, bearing with him a letter of recommendation from the Viennese branch of the Rothschild banking firm. His bachelor brothers Richard and Arthur, who had also inherited their parents’ American citizenship, soon followed him. In the 1930s, after Adolf Hitler and the Nazis came to power in Germany, with assistance from his nephew Frank, Julius Altschul and his family made the same trip across the Atlantic, and they too settled permanently in the United States. Charles would later publicly describe his own antecedents as follows: “My name is German; I am of Austro-German descent; but I am not and never have been a German. I was born in London, England, about sixty years ago; my father was then, and remained to the end of his days, a naturalized American citizen, who had left his home in 1849 owing to conditions then prevailing in Austria. Though I went to school in Germany, I came to [the United States] at the age of nineteen, and have resided [t]here ever since.”3 “Go west, young man,” those seeking a better life in the nineteenth century United States were exhorted. California prospered after the American civil war, and San Francisco was a boom town, home to the big businessmen who financed the construction of the first transcontinental railroad across the United States, completed in 1869. Charles went to San Francisco, where he joined that city’s branch of the firm Lazard Frères—reorganized as a limited company in 1884, with capital of 500,000 sterling subscribed by several hundred investors, chartered in London, and rechristened the London, Paris, and American Bank—as its cashier and seventh employee. In 1895 he became manager of the London, Paris, and American Bank, heading its California branch. Originally established as a dry goods store in 1848 in New Orleans, Louisiana, by three French Jewish brothers, Alexander, Simon, and Lazare Lazard, Lazard Frères moved to San Francisco two years later, after fire swept through New Orleans. With the gold rush at its peak, Lazard Frères soon became not just the leading dry goods wholesaler on the west coast, but also 2 Charles Altschul to Paul Hammerschlag, April 22, 1920, File Paul Hammerschlag 1920-1922, Charles and Camilla Altschul Files, Frank Altschul Papers, Lehman Suite, Columbia University, New York [hereafter Altschul Papers]. 3 Charles Altschul to the Editor, Toronto Globe, July 14, 1918, File James T. Shotwell, Charles Altschul Files, Altschul Papers. 2 a major exporter of gold. By the mid-1850s, the firm was increasingly involved in providing financial services, first to its own customers, then to others. In 1858 it opened an office in Paris, Lazard Frères et Cie., and in 1870 a London branch, Lazard Brothers & Co., which enabled the firm to continue payments in gold throughout the 1870-1871 Franco-Prussian War. Both European outposts of the firm concentrated upon financial transactions, including the export and import of gold bullion. In 1876 the various partners, all of whom were still related to each other by blood and marriage, decided to end their dry goods business in San Francisco and specialize entirely in banking. In its early years, from 1876 to 1884, the venture made annual returns of around 10.5 percent on its capital of $2 million dollars. By the late nineteenth century the financial center of gravity in the United States was shifting eastward, and in 1880 the bank opened a New York office, which made it easier to deal with foreign investors. In 1888 Lazard Frères & Co. became a member of the New York Stock Exchange, listing seven partners, some of them non-family. By that time Lazard had become the single largest institution handling gold transactions between the United States and Europe; it also “traded in commercial bills and other exchange.” 4 Control of the firm always remained with the Lazard family and its relatives, but even those bank officials drawn from outside the founding family soon became decidedly wealthy men. Charles Altschul lived in considerable style in San Francisco, by 1860 the fourteenth largest city in the nation, an urban center whose cosmopolitan, international outlook and emphasis on pleasure and recreation, with a plethora of restaurants, hotels, theaters, churches, and even an opera house, meant it “often appeared but remotely related to frontier California.”5 The city also possessed one of the most substantial and respected Jewish communities in the United States, extremely active in business and commerce and increasingly involved in San Francisco politics.6 In an unassuming fashion, Charles soon made his mark there. He had, it seems, a talent for friendship and an attractive personality that drew widely disparate individuals to him. Professor James T. Shotwell of Columbia University, a later associate, recalled him as “a friend whose friendship I treasured.”7 After his death, one acquaintance recalled “his great charm, his directness, his 4 For the early history of Lazard Frères, see Guy de Rougemont, Lazard Frères: Banquiers des Deux Mondes (1840- 1939) (Paris: Fayard, 2010), chs. 1-9; William D. Cohan, The Last Tycoons: The Secret History of Lazard Frères & Co. (New York: Doubleday, 2007), 17-22; Laurent Chemineau, L’Incroyable Histoire de Lazard Frères: La Banque qui Règne sur le Monde des Affaires (Paris: Éditions Assouline, 1998), 19-29; Anne Sabouret, MM Lazard Frères et Cie.: Une Saga de la Fortune (Paris: Olivier Orban, 1987), 13-44; Martine Orange, Ces Messieurs de Lazard (Paris: Éditions Albin Michel, 2006), 50-71; Lazard Frères, Lazard Frères & Co.: The First One Hundred Fifty Years (New York: Lazard Frères, 1998), 12-18; Didier Lazard, Simon Lazard: Emigré à seize ans, Pionnier du Far-West, Fondateur de la Banque Lazard (Paris: Éditions Félin, 1988), chs.