Felix M. Warburg

Felix Moritz Warburg
Warburg circa 1920
Born	(1871-01-14)14 January 1871 Hamburg, Germany
Died	New York City, New York
Nationality	American
Occupation	Banker
Employer	M. M. Warburg

Warburg mansion in New York, today the Jewish Museum

Felix Moritz Warburg (14 January 1871 – 20 September 1937) was a German-born American banker. He was a member of the Warburg banking family of Hamburg, Germany.

Biography

He was a grandson of Moses Marcus Warburg, one of the founders of the bank, M. M. Warburg (in 1798). Felix Warburg was a partner in Kuhn, Loeb & Co.. He married Frieda Schiff (see Warburg Family page) (3 February 1876 – 14 September 1958), daughter of Jacob Henry Schiff and Therese Loeb Schiff, on 19 March 1895, in New York. They had four sons, Frederick Marcus, Gerald Felix, Paul Felix and Edward Mortimer Morris and one daughter, Carola. All were active in community service.

Warburg was an important leader of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, established to help the Jews in Europe in the period leading up to, and especially during, the Great Depression. Warburg actively raised funds in the United States on behalf of European Jews who faced hunger following World War I. As early as 1919, he was quoted in the New York Times discussing the dire situation of Jewish war sufferers.

Warburg and the Joint Distribution Committee were also instrumental in the 1930s after the global Great Depression following the crash of the New York stock exchange in 1929.

He died on 20 September 1937 in New York City. He was buried in Salem Fields Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York City.

Legacy

As a result of his philanthropic activities, a new Jewish village established in Mandate Palestine in 1939, Kfar Warburg, was named after him. He was a trustee of the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York.

The Felix M. Warburg House, in New York's Upper East side was donated by his widow and today houses the Jewish Museum.

Further reading

• Yehuda Bauer (1974) My Brother's Keeper. A History of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee 1929-1939 Jewish Publication Society of America, Philadelphia, ISBN 0-8276-0048-8

External links

Media related to at Wikimedia Commons

• M.M. Warburg & Co.
• Felix M. Warburg at Find a Grave