Ferdinand Eberstadt

Ferdinand Falk Eberstadt (14 January 1808 – 9 February 1888) was a businessman and liberal politician in Worms in the Grand Duchy of Hesse, who became the first Jewish mayor in Germany.

In the 1830s and 1840s, Eberstadt became a successful textile merchant and a leader of the Jewish community of Worms. He was a supporter of Reform Judaism and a political liberal. In the 1848 Revolution became one of the leaders of the democratic faction in Worms and subsequently served as mayor of Worms from 1849 to 1852. He died on 9 February 1888 in Mannheim, where he and his wife are buried in the Jewish cemetery. They were acquitted of this charge on 10 October 1850, but further charges were laid against him for: electoral fraud in the Landstände elections of 1849; irregularities in his published disclosure of assets to the Ministry of the Interior in May 1849; issuing a falsely dated certificate of residence and morality to a young man of Worms. These charges were also treated as high treason.

From April 1850, Eberstadt was suspended from his role as mayor. After he was cleared of these charges, he was restored to office. As mayor, he advocated the construction of a Darmstadt-Worms railway line and over the Rhine at Worms. Both of these projects were carried out only after Eberstadt's term of office. In May 1852, Eberstadt was briefly elected to the Worms district council. However, on 25 September 1852, he was removed from the council by a ministerial decree.

Move to Mannheim

On 28 November 1857, Eberstadt submitted a request for permission to emigrate for himself, his wife, and his ten children, which was granted on 1 December. On 5 December, the family relocated to Mannheim in the Grand Duchy of Baden. There, he established the "Ferd. Eberstadt und Cie." company on 1 May 1858, which was later managed by his son August Eberstadt. This company dealt in "manufactured goods, wool products, wool yarn in bulk." In 1862, Eberstadt dissolved "A. L. Eberstadt", the family firm in Worms. The Mannheim firm became "Ferd Eberstadt und Cie, Nachfahren" in 1897 and continued to trade, with subsidiary offices in Apolda and Chemnitz, until 1933.

In Mannheim, art and music were an important part of the Eberstadts' family life. During the 1880s, the students of Johannes Brahms gathered at the Robert Sohler music store on Paradeplatz, Ecke Kunststraße, under the patronage of the Eberstadt family, (married to Helene Hecht, cousin of Eberstadt's wife) Emil Hirsch (married to Eberstadt's daughter Bertha), and (married to Eberstadt's daughter Emma Stephanie).

Eberstadt also participated in politics in Mannheim as part of the committee of the German Progress Party. Along with the lawyer Heinrich von Feder and the bookseller Siegmund Bensheimer, he formed a consortium to purchase the Johann Schneider publishing press, including the , a newspaper whose circulation extended far beyond Mannheim. They established Mannheim Publishing Plc (Mannheimer Verlagsdruckerei Aktiengesellschaft), as a holding company for the publishing house and the newspaper. This corporation survived until 1876, when the newspaper passed into the possession of Bensheimer. It ceased publication on 28 February 1934.

Family

In 1837 Eberstadt married Sara Zelie Seligmann from Kreuznach. They had ten children, (1850–1913), a noted patron of the arts. (1856–1922), professor of architecture in Berlin Emma Stephanie Eberstadt, who married Bernard Kahn. Their son Otto Hermann Kahn spent most of his adult life in the United States, where he became an investment banker, collector, philanthropist, and patron of the arts. Maximilian (Max) Eberstadt, twin brother of Elizabeth, died as a young man and is buried in Willesden Jewish Cemetery, London, in a grave designed by Elizabeth's friend, Edward Burne-Jones.

Ferdinand and Sara Eberstadt are buried in the in Mannheim, in the grave 11 on Linker Mauerweg.