Jakob Goldschmidt

Jakob Goldschmidt (born 31 December 1882 in Eldagsen; died 23 September 1955 in New York) was a German-Jewish banker.

Career Goldschmidt studied banking from H. Oppenheimer in Hanover. In 1907, he worked at the Nationalbank für Deutschland in Berlin. In 1909, Goldschmidt founded the private bank Schwarz. Goldschmidt held up to 123 supervisory board mandates, including in Ufa, founded in 1917, and IG Farben (1931–1932).

Art Collector Goldschmidt's extensive art collection, which was auctioned off by the Nazis in the 1940s, has been the subject of restitution claims. In 1963, a Dutch court ruled that an Honore Daumier bronze sculpture, Ratiapil, should be returned from a museum in Cologne. In 2002, the heirs of Jakob Goldschmidt sought the return of a painting Portrait of a Young Girl in a Bow Window, attributed to Nikolaus Alexander Mair von Landshut from the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.

Literature Michael Jurk: Jakob Goldschmidt. About the life and work of a Jewish banker 1882–1955. Master's thesis from the University of Mainz. Mainz 1984. Gerald D. Feldman : Jakob Goldschmidt, the history of banking crisis of 1931 and the problem of freedom of maneuver in the Weimar economy. In: Torn Interwar Period. Economic and historical contributions. Commemorative for Knut Borchardt. Baden-Baden 1994, p307. Gerald D. Feldman: Jewish bankers and the crisis of the Weimar Republic (Leo Baeck Memorial Lecture. Volume 39). New York 1995. John F. Oppenheimer (editor) u. a .: Lexicon of Judaism. 2nd Edition. Bertelsmann Lexikon Verlag, Gütersloh u. a. 1971, , column 249. Hans-Christian Rohde: We are Germans with a Jewish religion. History of the Jews in Eldagsen and Springe, Bennigsen, Gestorf, Völksen (Hallermunter writings. 2). Museum in the castle courtyard, Springe 1999. p. 40–41. ⁕ Jakob Goldschmidt: Seven years: Thoughts on the German economy 1924-1931 (Gedanken in sieben Jahren deutscher Wirtschaft) is a 2015 English & German translation available via the USHMM. It provides firsthand, critical insights from a prominent Jewish banker into the Weimar Republic's economic instability and the rise of the Nazi regime. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum About the Book: Published in 1931, this work acts as a primary source, detailing the economic challenges in Germany from 1924 to 1931. Significance: It reflects the perspective of a prominent Jewish banker (Jakob Goldschmidt) regarding the economic atmosphere that preceded the Holocaust. Availability: The translation, published by Marc Goldschmidt, is accessible through the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's online collection.also available at archive.org The book highlights the economic instability and the pre-Nazi economic climate, offering a vital perspective on the period leading up to the 1933 Nazi takeover.