Otto Hermann Kahn

Otto Hermann Kahn
Born	February 21, 1867(1867-02-21) Mannheim, Germany
Died	March 29, 1934 (aged 67) New York City, U.S.
Occupation	Banker
Employer	Kuhn, Loeb & Co.

Otto Hermann Kahn (February 21, 1867 – March 29, 1934) was an investment banker, collector, philanthropist, and patron of the arts.

Life and career

Born and raised in the city of Mannheim, Germany, Kahn started working for Deutsche Bank and, in 1888, was sent to their London office. He became a naturalized British citizen, but in 1893 he accepted an offer from Speyer and Company of New York and went to the United States, where he spent the rest of his life. On January 8, 1896, Kahn married Adelaide "Addie" Wolff and following the couple's year-long tour of Europe, Kahn joined Kuhn, Loeb & Co. in New York City, where his father-in-law, Abraham Wolff, was a partner. In 1917 Kahn gave up his British citizenship and became an American citizen.^[1][2]

Besides his father-in-law, Kahn's other partners included Jacob Schiff, himself the son-in-law of Solomon Loeb, who co-founded the Firm, and Paul and Felix Warburg. Under Schiff's leadership, and later Kahn's, the firm and its partners were extremely successful financing railroads.^{[citation needed]}

Otto Hermann Kahn in Berlin 1929

In 1933, the smooth and affable Kahn successfully disarmed antagonism against members of the banking community during four days of testimony before the United States Senate's Pecora Commission hearings into the Wall Street Crash of 1929. The Senate's lead counsel Ferdinand Pecora wrote on page 293 in his 1939 memoir Wall Street Under Oath about Otto Kahn: "No suaver, more fluent, and more diplomatic advocate could be conceived. If anyone could succeed in presenting the customs and functions of the private bankers in a favorable and prepossessing light, it was he."^[3]

During the last years of Kahn's life he became increasingly frail and suffered from arteriosclerosis, high blood pressure and attacks of angina pectoria. On March 29, 1934, following lunch in the private dining room of Kuhn, Loeb, Kahn suffered a massive heart attack and died, aged 67. Funeral services were held in the music room of his Long Island estate, followed by a burial in nearby St. John's Memorial Cemetery.^[4]

Patron of the arts

An extremely wealthy financier, Kahn supported artists such as Hart Crane, George Gershwin and Arturo Toscanini. He was also smitten with Hollywood, to which Kuhn Loeb provided much commercial support and Kahn, personal support. In her first talking picture, My Man, Fanny Brice sang a song which mentioned Kahn: "Is something the matter with Otto Kahn, or is something wrong with me? I wrote a note and told him what a star I would make. He sent it back and marked it "Opened by mistake."

His own son Roger Wolfe Kahn was a popular jazz musician and band leader of the late 1920s and early 1930s. His daughter Margaret Kahn married John Barry Ryan II, and was a New York society doyenne and benefactor of the Metropolitan Opera, while his other daughter, Maud (a.k.a. "Momo"), married British Brigadier General Sir John Marriott. He was a member of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia music fraternity.

Builder

As was typical for men of his stature, Kahn maintained both a New York City residence and a home in the country. Kahn's original country home, a gift from his father-in-law, was in Morristown, New Jersey.^[5] Although a resident there for a number of years and a business associate of many of his neighbors, anti-semitism was still prevalent and Kahn was never accepted by Morristown society. Social rejection led him to move to Long Island and his New Jersey estate ultimately became home to Honeywell.^[6][7]

By 1919, Kahn had assembled a 443 acre (1.79 km²) estate on Long Island, and had Oheka Castle (from Otto Hermann Kahn) built as its centerpiece. At 109,000 square feet (10,100 m²), the 127 room^[8] was designed as the second largest private residence in the United States (after George Vanderbilt's 175,000-square-foot (16,300 m²) Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina) by Delano & Aldrich of New York City; its landscaping was designed by Olmstead Brothers, sons of Frederick Law Olmsted of Brookline, Massachusetts. The property featured a golf course, a working farm, a private airstrip and numerous outbuildings.

Following Kahn's death in 1934, the property was sold to the City of New York City for use as a retreat for sanitation workers and then a government training school for merchant marine radio operators. In the late 1940s, an upscale housing development was constructed and in 1948, the Eastern Military Academy (EMA) purchased the mansion and 23 acres (93,000 m²) around it. One of the former EMA cadets has written his memories going to school there.^[9] By the time the school went bankrupt 30 years later, the gardens had been bulldozed, rooms subdivided and paneled walls painted over. Following the departure of EMA, vandals repeatedly set fire to the building, however, because Kahn had insisted on fireproofing the building through a concrete, brick and steel structure, the building survived. In 1984 a local developer purchased the estate for $1.5 million and began the largest private renovation project in the United States.^[10] Today, Oheka is used as a catering facility, hotel and conference center.

In New York City, following his acquisition of the property at 1 East 91st Street from Andrew Carnegie in 1913, Kahn commissioned J. Armstrong Stenhouse and Charles P. H. Gilbert to design his Carnegie Hill mansion. The home, an 80-room Italian Renaissance-palazzo style mansion, was modeled after the Cancelleria in Rome. Completed in 1918, it served as Kahn's New York City residence until his death. Shortly thereafter, the house was sold to the Convent of the Sacred Heart, an independent Catholic girls school. In 1974 the house was designated a landmark by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Committee.^[11]

In Palm Beach, Kahn built a summer home on Sunset Avenue, naming it Oheka. When this house proved too small, he built another Oheka, at 691 North County Road. Following his death, the house was used by the Graham-Eckes School.^[12] In the 2000s, it was acquired by businessman, Robert Cohen and returned to private use.^[13]

Family

Parents

• Bernhard Kahn (b. May 23, 1827, Stebbach - d. March 8, 1905, Heidelberg)
  • A son of Michael Kahn and Franziska Baer, a German-Jewish industrialist and banker who participated in the 1848 Revolt, and was condemned to death. He escaped to the United States, was naturalized an American citizen, and then returned to Germany ten years later to court and on October 17, 1860 marry Emma Stephanie Eberstadt, whom he married on the condition that he not return to the United States.
• Emma Stephanie Eberstadt (b. October 29, 1840, Worms - d. June 26, 1906, Berlin) Emma Kahn
  • First daughter and third child of the Worms merchant and Burgermeister Ferdinand Eberstadt and his wife, Sara Zelie Seligmann.

The couple had nine children of whom Otto was the fifth child and third son. His siblings included:

• Franz Michael Kahn (b.? - d. 1904)
• Clara Maria (b. 1863 - d. 1916)
• Robert Kahn (b. July 21, 1865, Mannheim, Germany - d. May 29, 1951 , Biddenden), German composer
• Elizabeth Francisca (b. 1869 - d. 1940?)
• Paul Friedrich Kahn (b. 1870 - d. 1947)
• Felix P. Kahn (b. January 25, 1873, Mannheim, Germany, d. July 25, 1950, New York City), noted violin collector.
• Hedwig Kahn (b. 1876 - d. 1950)

Children

• Maud (Momo) Emily Wolff Kahn (b. July 23, 1897, Morristown, New Jersey - d. October 24, 1960, New York City);
  • Married June 15, 1920, Cold Spring Harbor, New York, John Charles Oakes Marriott (later Major-General Sir John Marriott), (b. 1895, Stowmarket, Great Britain - d. September 11, 1978, Great Britain), one child

• Margaret (Nin) Dorothy Wolff Kahn also known as Nin Ryan (b. July 4, 1901, Morristown, New Jersey - d. January 26, 1995, New York City;
  • Married February 9, 1928, New York City, John Barry Ryan Jr., (b. 1901,USA - d. January 21, 1966, Cold Spring Harbor, New York), two children, John Barry Ryan III and Virginia Fortune Ryan (Countess of Airlie)

• Gilbert Wolff Kahn, (b. July 18, 1903, Morristown, New Jersey - d. December 15, 1975, Old Brookville, Long Island);
  • Married November 19, 1924, New York City, Anne Elizabeth Whelan, one child, Claire Ann, divorced;
  • Married February 1, 1933, New York City, Sara Jane Heliker, a Broadway dancer, b. 1912, Milwaukee, Wisconsin - d. 1988, Largo, Pinellas County, Florida, one child, Gilbert W. Jr (b.? - d. 2008) ^[14] , divorced;
  • Married June 30, 1938, New York City, Polly Stover, a fashion model (died 2006)

• Roger Wolff Kahn, (b. October 19, 1907, Morristown, New Jersey - d. July 12, 1962, New York City);
  • Married January 26, 1931, Cold Spring Harbor, New York, Hannah Williams, a Broadway singer and dancer, divorced 1933;
  • Married April 7, 1933, Hempstead, LI, Edith May Nelson, a politician's daughter (b. October 13, 1910, Waterville, Maine -d. September 1994, Glen Cove, Nassau, New York), two children

Burial place

St. John's Memorial Cemetery, Laurel Hollow, Cold Spring Harbor, New York

Selected books and speeches by Kahn

• Of Many Things; Being Reflections and Impressions on International Affairs, Domestic Topics and the Arts (1926) (a compilation of speeches and writings)
• The Value of Art to the People (1924)
• The Myth of American Imperialism (1924)
• Reflections of a Financier - A Study of Economic and Other Problems (1921)
• Our Economic and Other Problems: A Financier's Point of View (1920)
• Let Us Reason Together(1919)
• Taxation: A Letter (1918)
• Right Above Race (1918)
• Poison Growth of Prussianism (1918)
• The Menace of Paternalism (1918)
• When the Tide Turned (1918)
• Frenzied Liberty (1918)
• The Common Cause: Britain's Part in the Great War (1918)
• Some Comments on War Taxation (1918)
• The War and Business (1917)
• Prussianized Germany. Americans of Foreign Descent and America's Cause (1917)
• Art and the People (1916)
• Suggestions Concerning the Railroad Problem

Quotes

"The deadliest foe of democracy is not autocracy but liberty frenzied. Liberty is not foolproof. For its beneficent working it demands self-restraint, a sane and clear recognition of the practical and attainable, and of the fact that there are laws of nature which are beyond our power to change." (from a speech given at the University of Wisconsin–Madison) ^[15]

On business "It has long been our policy and our effort to get our clients, not by chasing after them, not by praising our own wares, but by an attempt to establish a reputation. . . . We have no show window; our only attractiveness is our good name and our reputation for sound advice and integrity. . . . If we do not live up to what they [our clients] believe is our capacity, and to what they believe is the value of our sponsorship, of our trade-mark, they will quit us. And we have no means to prevent them."

See also

• List of people on the cover of Time Magazine: 1920s

References

Further reading

• Collins, Theresa M. Otto Kahn - Art, Money & Modern Time. The University of North Carolina Press, 2002
• Collins, Theresa M. Introducing Otto H. Kahn
• King, Robert B. Raising a Fallen Treasure: The Otto H. Kahn Home, Huntington, Long Island. The Mad Printers of Mattituck, 1985
• Kobler, John. Otto the Magnificent: The Life of Otto Kahn. Charles Scribner's Sons, 1988
• Matz, Mary Jane. The Many Lives of Otto Kahn. Macmillan Publishing Company, 1963

External links

Otto Kahn

• Otto Kahn: Art, Money, and Modern Time, Introduction Discusses Kahn in the context of the arts, financial history, anti-semitism, Citizen Kane and locates him among the lives of Sergei Eisenstein, Groucho Marx, Enrico Caruso and Anna Pavlova, Paul Robeson, James Joyce, Eugene O'Neill, etc.
• "Death At No. 52". Time Magazine. 1934-04-09. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,929740,00.html. Retrieved 2008-08-09. 
• On the Cover of Time Mag (Nov. 2, 1925), and "Mr. Kahn & Mr. Gatti" in same issue
• Otto H. Kahn Papers at Princeton University includes a short biography and a photograph of the financier.
• St. John's Memorial Cemetery, Laurel Hollow, Cold Spring Harbor, New York
• Books by Kahn at Project Gutenberg.

Kahn's ancestry and family

• Otto Kahn's maternal genealogy Information on his relatives, and some of his descendants.
• Otto Kahn's parents This page is in German, but provides an alternate date and place of birth for his father.

Long Island estate

• Oheka Castle - Official Website
• Oheka
• Oheka
• Oheka
• Oheka - Aerial View
• Memories of Oheka Castle

New York City home

• Otto and Addie Kahn Home - New York City
• Otto and Addie Kahn Home - New York City
• Convent of the Sacred Heart's website