Alfred Baumgarten

Baron Alfred Moritz Friedrich Baumgarten (13 November 1842 – 3 October 1919) was the co-founder and president of the St. Lawrence Sugar Refinery at Montreal, and a life governor of the Montreal General Hospital and Master of Foxhounds for the Montreal Hunt. His house in Montreal's Golden Square Mile is today home to the McGill University Faculty Club.

Family and education Alfred Moritz Friedrich Baumgarten was born on 13 November 1842 in Dresden, the son of Dr Moritz Friedrich Oswald Baumgarten, court physician to John, king of Saxony, and Emmy Zocher, a lady-in-waiting to Queen Carola of Saxony.

Baumgarten attended Dresden High School and Dresden Polytechnic School (where he graduated as a chemist), before studying chemistry at the University of Berlin and the University of Göttingen, during which time he received two years' practical experience at the chemical plant at Schöningen. In 1864, he was awarded a doctor of philosophy degree.

Career Baumgarten began his career as the manager of a sugar beet house at Hamersleben, remaining there until 1866, when he emigrated to the United States.

New York Baumgarten came to New York with the intention of entering the North American chemical industry. He became an assistant in the laboratory of the chemist Charles F. Chandler of the New York School of Mines.

Whilst at the School of Mines, Baumgarten formed a business partnership with C.W. Walter, establishing with him the Laurel Hill Chemical Works, under the name of Walter & Baumgarten. The company later became the Nicholson Company, the largest acid manufacturing works in North America. Baumgarten then moved from the company, when he obtained a management post at the Long Island Sugar refinery.

Montreal In 1873, Baumgarten came to Montreal, though he remained the principal shareholder and was given the position of honorary president.

Forced resignation from the St. Lawrence Sugar Refining Company Prior to the First World War, anti-German sentiment spread through the British Empire, reaching a peak after the outbreak of war in 1914. The St. Lawrence Sugar Refinery was targeted in the local press for allegedly still being "in the hands of enemy Germans". By 1915, McConnell was forced to hold a shareholders' meeting to discuss "the serious menace to the welfare of our business caused by hostile publications in the press against certain persons connected with our company". The company decided that every officeholder with a German-sounding name had to resign his post, and most did. As well as being made to sell his shares, Baumgarten and his brother-in-law, the vice-president and managing director, Otto Wilhelm Donner, all resigned their positions.

These events, as well as the way several of his pre-war associates shunned him as soon as war was declared against Germany, distressed Baumgarten greatly. Some of his close friends stood by him, frustrated by how he had been treated.

During the war, Baumgarten contributed generously towards the Canadian Patriotic Fund, and he offered to let his Montreal town house become a convalescent home for disabled soldiers. However, aspersions were cast that he was a sympathiser and, stories were told that the house was used by the spy Joachim von Ribbentrop.

Family and private life

In 1885, Baumgarten married Martha Christina Donner, the daughter of John Donner of Altona, Hamburg. The marriage produced two daughters, Mimi Donner Baumgarten (b. 1888), and Elsa Baumgarten (b. 1900). In 1895, he purchased a large house at Sainte-Agathe-des-Monts, which eventually had stables and galleries and dominated the hillside overlooking the lake.

Baumgarten was a life governor of the Montreal General Hospital, the Montreal Western Hospital and the Alexandra Hospital. He enjoyed a prominent place in Montreal's social world. After he retired from public life he spent the greater part of his time at his country house. He died on 3 October 1919, having been in poor health during the last five years of his life. He was buried in the Mount Royal Cemetery in Montreal.

Baumgarten died a wealthy man. In his will, executed in 1919, he left donations to the three hospitals where he had been a governor, and a substantial annual sum for his family, which allowed them to retain the family country house, even after Martha Baumgarten's death in 1953.

Baumgarten House In 1880, Baumgarten purchased land on McTavish Street, now located within Montreal's Golden Square Mile for a new mansion, Baumgarten House, which was completed in 1887. In 1902 he made further extensions to his home. In the early 1900s his home was the favourite Montreal place for Governor-General the Earl of Minto.