The Jews in America Trilogy

by Birmingham, Stephen;

  But for all the good times, there were some members of the family who noticed some disturbing Seligman symptoms. Joseph’s grandson, George Hellman, was alarmed at what was happening to the Seligman birth rate. At the procreative rate of the original David and Fanny Seligman—who produced eight sons and three daughters—there should have been, Mr. Hellman computed, some 1,536 Seligman boys in New York in his own generation. Yet the opposite was the case. Early Seligmans had the knack of producing mostly boys; later generations produced female children or none at all. The Seligman name, in barely three generations’ time, was dying out.

  It was a genetic fact that other families of the crowd were having to face. It was almost as though, as the families grew rich and the need to produce sons grew less acute, fewer sons were born.

  Needless to say, the number of Seligman-named partners downtown at J. & W. Seligman & Company was diminishing at a similar rate. During the 1920’s the firm’s seat on the New York Stock Exchange was held in the name of Jefferson Seligman, the fruit-and-ginger and dresses-from-Klein’s-distributing partner. At the time of the stock market crash of 1929, Jeff Seligman was there, doing his bit. According to one partner, “In October, 1929, when the panic was a day or two old, Jeff appeared on the floor of the Exchange for the first time in years. He hadn’t done a stroke of work since anyone could remember. I don’t think he executed any orders—he simply appeared, wearing a flower in the buttonhole of his Prince Albert One of the afternoon papers commented on the calming effect induced by the appearance of ‘the well-known international banker.’”

  Calming effect or no, Jeff Seligman did nothing to improve the Seligman birth rate. He died in 1937 at the age of seventy-eight, leaving, according to Geoffrey T. Hellman, “a somewhat diminished estate, which consisted, in part, of a rather large remainder of ginger and Klein’s dresses,” and without issue.

  The Seligmans had become very family-conscious and family-proud and, at one point, hired a designer and a printer to prepare an elaborate Seligman Family Register. Bound and published in a limited edition of one hundred copies, it is printed on heavy vellum and contains the names of 255 people, plus portraits of the original eleven Seligman children from Baiersdorf. Through the Register, it is possible to trace the Seligman family’s weblike interconnection with other families of the crowd—the Beers, Walters, Goodharts, Guggenheims, Lewisohns, Wassermanns, Nathans, Lilienthals, Lehmans, Wolffs, and Loebs. The Seligmans become the true anchor family of the crowd. It is possible to see how the Seligmans can—and do, with a reasonable degree of accuracy—get themselves connected with the royal House of Windsor, and be able to speak of “our cousin, Princess Margaret.” (“Do you suppose,” suggests one member of the crowd slyly, “that Princess Margaret ever speaks of ‘My cousins, the Seligmans’?”) The connection works this way: Isaac Seligman, in London, married, in 1869, a Miss Lina Messel. A later member of the Messel family was Sir Oliver Messel, who is related to a young man named Antony Armstrong-Jones, now Lord Snowden. The Seligmans could also boast a British knight of their very own, Isaac’s son, who became Sir Charles Seligman.

  But, for all its luster and what George Hellman somewhat wistfully calls the “slight haze of social prestige” that still clings to the Seligman name, it is presently the responsibility of just two small boys, both great-great-grandsons of Joseph, to see to it that it is carried on.

  * In cooperation with Lee, Higginson and the Central Trust Company.

  * No kin to the single-“s” Strauses.

  45

  THE FALL, AND AFTER

  Felix Warburg’s brother Paul had had an unhappy childhood, picked on by his older brothers Aby and Max, who called him ugly and weak. Even his mother seemed not to understand him. By the time he had reached young manhood, he had developed a distinct inferiority complex, and was forever apologizing for himself. He had a habit of prefacing his remarks with “You won’t like what I’m going to say, but.…” Still, he was possibly the most brilliant and versatile of all the Warburgs and, for years, was a sort of itinerant Kuhn, Loeb partner, spending half of each year in New York and the other half with the Warburg bank in Germany, serving as a financial liaison between the two countries. He had always considered American banking primitive and haphazard. He had met secretly with Senator Nelson Aldrich at Sea Island, Georgia, and had worked out the Federal Reserve System, and yet when Aldrich tried to give Paul Warburg full credit, Paul, typically, refused to take any credit whatever. He was offered the post of Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board but, insisting that he was unworthy, refused any position higher than Vice Chairman. As anti-German feeling mounted during World War I, and as Kuhn, Loeb became the target of much of this, Paul felt it deeply. In 1918 he wrote to President Wilson saying, in his customary self-effacing way, that he felt a naturalized citizen ought not to have such a high post with the Board. Secretly he hoped Wilson would not accept his offer to resign, but, to his discouragement and dismay, Wilson did. Even sadder, Paul Warburg returned to New York from Washington, and became chairman of the board of the Bank of Manhattan. In his spare time, he wrote a monumental history of the Federal Reserve System, and a number of sad, introspective poems.

  He was, as it turned out, a Cassandra, and, since prophets of doom do not usually find a sympathetic audience, Paul Warburg was made even more unhappy. As the 1920’s progressed, he began saying that the prosperity was false and could not last, that the bubble would burst. For this sort of talk, he was soon the most unpopular man on Wall Street. “Here comes old Gloomy Gus!” someone shouted in 1928, when Paul Warburg entered the Century Country Club, and he was booed at a directors’ meeting. He went right on, though. Early in 1929 in an annual report of the International Acceptance Bank, Paul stated flatly that climbing prices of stocks were “in the majority of cases quite unrelated to respective increases in plant, property, or earning power,” and he also predicted that if “orgies of unrestrained speculation” were not curbed and controlled, “the ultimate collapse is certain not only to affect the speculators themselves but also to bring about a general depression involving the entire country.” There were more boos and hisses. This statement was issued in March. The “ultimate collapse” came barely six months later. How right Paul Warburg was need hardly be mentioned, but when he tried to say, “I told you so,” in 1930, he was even more enthusiastically disliked.

  Meanwhile, there were other problems—disturbing political developments in Germany. Paul and Felix Warburg both felt that the future boded ill for Jewish banks in Germany, and wanted to liquidate M. M. Warburg & Company. But brother Max, head of the Hamburg house, was stubborn. He could, he insisted, “make a deal” with this man Hitler.

  The great stock market crash of 1929 affected each banker differently, but those few who had taken Paul Warburg’s advice found themselves considerably better off. One of these was Paul’s brother-in-law, Morti Schiff. Poor Morti. For all his attempts to move with the International Set, most of his life had been spent squarely under his father’s thumb. Now he was to have only a little over ten years of freedom. He died, suddenly, in 1931, after having a pleasant dinner with his daughter, Dorothy. Paul Warburg had warned Morti to “get out of the market” in 1929 and to put his funds into cash. When Morti’s estate was appraised, he was found to have left $28,718,213 in securities, plus property in France worth around a million dollars, a book, binding, painting, and furniture collection worth £153,427, and—thanks to Paul Warburg—$7,683,527 in cash. Between the time of the estate’s appraisal and its distribution to his heirs, the value of Morti’s securities dropped 54 percent. If it hadn’t been for all that cash, things would have been difficult. As it was, Morti’s heirs were very proud of him. For all Jacob Schiff’s worries about Morti’s extravagance, Morti had managed to put aside a tidy sum.

  Goldman, Sachs was less fortunate in the crash. Under the influence of optimistic Waddill Catchings, the firm had, in 1928, somewhat belatedly decided to get into the investment-trust field—in which a
banking house formed a trust, made investments, sold shares to the public, and hopefully kept a fat share for itself. Catchings’ idea was to form the Goldman, Sachs Trading Corporation, capitalized at $100 million, and to sell go percent of its shares to the public, keeping 10 percent for itself. The firm then merged this interest with the Financial and Industrial Corporation, which in turn had stock control of the Manufacturers Trust Company. All this might have put Goldman, Sachs in an enviable position if it had been done in 1923 instead of 1928. As it was, the interfacings were so complicated that it took ten years of legal wrangling to straighten out who owed what and to whom after the crash. Catchings, meanwhile, had withdrawn from the firm and had gone to California to be a radio producer.

  The market collapse found others in embarrassing positions. Otto Kahn’s older daughter Maude had married Major General Sir John Marriott, and had moved to England, and, sometime before the crash, Kahn had sold Maude large blocks of five different securities. All five, by 1930, were nearly worthless when Maude gave them back to him, so that he could sell them at a convenient market loss of $117,000. Or so it seemed to the Pecora Investigating Committee in 1933, looking into “under-the-counter” dealings such as this one in an attempt to fix the blame for 1929. Otto Kahn, with his customary urbanity, denied that there had been anything “peculiar” about this intrafamily transaction. When it also turned out that Kahn had paid no income taxes for the years 1930, 1931, and 1932,* Kahn politely explained that, “apparently,” he had suffered such heavy losses that he had had no income to declare. When pressed, he admitted that he simply could not explain why he had paid no income taxes. He was, he said, “abysmally ignorant of income tax returns,” which were handled entirely by an accountant “in whom I have the deepest trust.” As usual in these investigations, no one on Wall Street was really hurt, but the Pecora Investigation did result in a tightening of banking and investment rules, in the creation of the Securities and Exchange Commission, and in the end of unrestrained finance.

  In those parlous early days of the Great Depression, even families who had come through the crash intact felt it not only wise but fitting to reduce their scale of living. Mrs. Henry Seligman, whose fortune had undergone only small damage, kept De Witt but, to trim expenses for appearances’ sake, dismissed her footman, John.

  Not so Adolph Lewisohn. While everyone else instituted small economies here and there, he went right on living like a potentate, spending as much as, if not more than, ever. He kept his four houses—at 881 Fifth Avenue, at Elberon, at Prospect Point on Upper Saranac Lake, and “Heatherdale Farm,” at Ardsley-on-Hudson in Westchester County. At the Ardsley place he had, in addition to magnificent hothouses that grew exotic plants of every order, a miniature railroad and his own private blacksmith shop. His wife had died at an early age, and from that point onward, to his family’s distress, Adolph kicked up his heels. He became incorrigible. Wringing his hands, his son Sam came to him and cried, “Father! You’re spending your capital!” “Who made it?” Adolph Lewisohn replied.

  He had always loved music, and had never been able to forget the days when he had been a choirboy in the Hamburg Synagogue. Now, in his seventies, he suddenly took up singing again. He hired a number of singing teachers, including the then well-known J. Bertram Fox. Whenever Adolph entertained—which was often—he required his guests to listen as, in a thin and quavery voice, he sang German Lieder, a repertory of songs by Schumann, Schubert, Mozart, and Brahms. To the family, it seemed undignified, but, as if the singing weren’t bad enough, at the age of eighty he took up tap dancing. Adolph argued that he enjoyed these pastimes. He said that tap dancing was good exercise, and that singing helped him in public speaking.

  He loved to take excursions, by motor or by train. Throughout the depression, he moved grandly about, back and forth to Europe and between his various residences. With him, in a long procession of chauffeur-driven automobiles (or private railroad cars, or roped-off sections of first class) went his retinue—his personal secretary (male), stenographer (female), valet, chef, singing teachers, dancing teachers, a French instructor, and his personal barber, Gustav Purmann. (Purmann’s salary was only $300 a month, but Lewisohn also tipped him regularly with $500 checks, Impressionist paintings, eggs and chickens from “Heatherdale Farm,” and, on at least two occasions, Buick automobiles.) Then there were his friends.

  The boy who had enjoyed reading the Fremdenliste now liked to surround himself with people of every variety. Perhaps because of his family’s hostile attitude toward his spending, Adolph Lewisohn’s personal mishpocheh was composed of guests and onhenger. In return for their board and keep and traveling expenses, he asked only that they keep him pleasant company.

  He preferred creative people (some jealous souls said that he also preferred gentiles)—writers, painters, singers, dancers, actors. He favored “unknowns,” whose talents he could discover and help promote. (Basil Rathbone was an early member of the Lewisohn entourage whose promise was fulfilled.) Also, since he was such a merry widower, he had no objection to young ladies who joined his parties and whose function was mostly decorative. Members of the mishpoche were always welcome at any and all of the Lewisohn houses, and at times the troupe of followers grew so large that if a friend didn’t keep careful track of his host’s next-day plans, it was easy to get left behind.

  As a host Adolph insisted on a few prerogatives. Though he was more a listener than a talker, he did, whenever he had anything to say, demand that everyone else in the room be silent. He enjoyed playing bridge, but had a highly individual approach to the game. The following is a typical Lewisohn bridge contract:

  Lewisohn (dealer): “One club.”

  West: “Two diamonds.”

  North: “Two spades.”

  East: “Five diamonds.”

  Lewisohn: “One club.”

  The hand was played at one club.

  In his gold-and-white ballroom at 881 Fifth Avenue he held, for years, his famous New Year’s Eve parties. As originally conceived, they were thrown for a specific list of guests, including all the German Jewish upper crust. But the parties became so popular, and gate-crashers became so numerous, that they became, in effect, great open houses for all New York. One New Yorker, who grew up in the 1930’s, recalls that he never knew there was any other way to pass New Year’s Eve than to dress up in white tie and tails and go to Adolph Lewisohn’s. It was understood that there was only one rule at these parties: No guest was to remove more than a single bottle of liquor, which could be concealed under a coat.

  Looking back, it seems a miracle that no more was ever stolen. But only occasionally did a Lewisohn party get out of hand. Mr. Lewisohn’s chief steward always stationed himself at the foot of the marble basement stairs, to keep an eye on the collection of precious stones and jewels that were displayed there in lighted glass cases—many of the stones uncovered during the Lewisohns’ mining adventures. And, at one party, an unidentified man in an oversize overcoat appeared, swaying, at the top of the stairs. He shouted once, “Down with the filthy capitalists!” Then he lurched and fell all the way down the stairs amid the exploding champagne bottles that had been concealed about his person.

  But under ordinary circumstances the highlight of the evening was when the round-faced little host—looking, indeed, like an elderly choirboy—got to his feet and began to sing.

  In New York and Europe he had begun to buy paintings of the Barbizon School—Dupré, Daubigny, Jacque, and Français—which was then “fashionable.” Few people had bought Impressionists in any quantity. But on the advice of a woman friend who had told him that it was more fashionable to be unfashionable, he sold his Barbizon pictures at the top of their market and bought, canvas for canvas, an equal collection of Impressionists at the bottom of their market, turning a tidy profit in the transaction. People thought he was crazy, and giggled about the “cheap paintings” silly Adolph was hanging on his walls—by such painters as Renoir, Cézanne, Monet, Degas, Gauguin, and a you
ngster named Picasso. One little Monet cost him only three hundred dollars in 1919. By the late twenties Adolph was saying proudly, “That little canvas is worth ten thousand dollars!” Today it might bring a hundred thousand.

  As he grew older and began to realize his dream of great wealth, he began to cherish another ambition—not only to be “a rich man,” as he put it, but to be loved as “a citizen.” He wanted to be identified was his city and with his country, and he rankled, as did so many others of the crowd, at being labeled “a leading Jew.” As the thirties progressed, and news from his native Germany grew more distressing, this became increasingly important to him.

  In his efforts to be a friend to mankind, he began a long program of giving away lordly sums to worthwhile causes and institutions. Many of his philanthropies are well known—the Lewisohn Stadium, the Pathological Laboratory Building at Mount Sinai Hospital, the School of Mining at Columbia, the Orphanage of the Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Society in Pleasantville, New York. But of other deeds less has been written, such as his work in the cause of prison reform. He once confided to a friend that as a child in Hamburg after his mother’s death and his father’s remarriage he had often felt like a prisoner in his father’s house. His youth, he said, had given him an unhappy taste of what men in confinement suffered. He labored and gave money to improve conditions in prisons, to establish agencies that would help former prisoners find jobs after their release, and dreamed of a day when prisons could be done away with altogether. He was much ahead of his time in this, and was also a regular “prison visitor”—a charitable activity that has never been popular in this country, though it is in England. He used to speak proudly of the time he had dinner with a convicted murderer.