Warburg, Felix Moritz b. January 14, 1871; Hamburg d. October 20, 1937; New York City
Jewish American leader, financier, and philanthropist. Warburg, whose grandfather founded the M. M. Warburg banking house, belonged to one of the most prominent and influential Jewish families in Germany.
In 1895 he married Frieda Schiff, the daughter of the American investment banker Jacob H. Schiff, and subsequently settled in New York City. He soon became a partner in his father-in-law’s firm, Kuhn, Loeb and Company. Both Schiff and Warburg carried their families’ legacy of German Jewish leadership and invested much of their time and resources in public affairs. Indeed, Warburg was known for having said that he devoted 75 percent of his day to charity and 25 percent to banking (Chernow 1993, 163). The scope of his philanthropic contribution—both Jewish and general—and his engagement in welfare, educational, and cultural organizations, was overwhelming. His philanthropic activities ranged from the Juilliard School of Music to the New York City Board of Education; from the American Foundation for the Blind to the Training School for Jewish Social Work.His most important public activity was his role in creating the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), the overseas arm of the American Jewish community in serving the needs of Jews throughout the world. He and his father-inlaw, Jacob H. Schiff, were instrumental in the establishment of the JDC in 1914, and Warburg was its first chairman (1914—1932). Following this, he was its honorary president for the rest of his life. The JDC—which played a major role in Jewish history throughout the twentieth century as it still does into the twenty- first—was originally conceived as a shortterm project. It originated as a war-relief committee aiming to assist its overseas brethren during the Great War. In the interwar period, following the Russian Revolution, Warburg and the JDC assisted Soviet Jewry by creating the American Jewish Joint Agricultural Corporation (the “Agro-Joint”).
Following the Nazi rise to power, Jews from Germany and later Nazi-occupied Europe, received the JDC’s assistance in emigration and absorption elsewhere. The JDC helped persecuted Jews during World War II and assisted displaced persons and Holocaust survivors in its aftermath. The JDC became a unifying force in American Jewish life and symbolized American Jewry’s leading role in the modern Jewish world.As the chairman of the JDC, Warburg became a Jewish leader of international scale. He was a non-Zionist Jewish leader and it was in this capacity that he participated in many Zionist projects. He acted as a mediator between opposing sides in Jewish politics, supporting some projects in Palestine whenever he found them beneficial to the broader Jewish cause, and opposing others whenever he found them misguided. Befriended by Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann, he joined him on several visits to Palestine, and liberally supported the establishment of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, though he had long disputes with Weizmann over the character it should embody. In 1929 he worked with Louis Marshall for the formation of the enlarged Jewish Agency including non-Zionists, and became the chairman of its administrative committee. Warburg remained critical of Zionism on many issues, primarily regarding its attitude toward the Arab population of Palestine, and this criticism grew increasingly harsh in his last years.
If ever there was a “Jewish aristocracy,” it was comprised of people like Felix Warburg and his three older brothers. In the interwar years, when Felix was already a Jewish American leader and a notable American financier, his oldest brother, Aby (1866—1929), was an eminent art historian; his second brother, Max (1867— 1946), managed the family banking house in Hamburg and was a very important Jewish leader in Nazi Germany until the eve of World War II; and his third brother, Paul (1868—1932), played a major role in American banking history and was one of the architects of the Federal Reserve system. Coming from a family that was revered as Jewish royalty, Warburg (just like his brother Max in Germany) was guided by a deep responsibility for the Jewish cause at home and abroad.
Adi Gordon
See also German Jewish Migration to the United States; New York City; Schiff, Jacob Henry
References and Further Reading
Chernow, Ron. The Warburgs: The TwentiethCentury Odyssey of a Remarkable Jewish Family. New York: Random House, 1993.
Farrer, David. The Warburgs: The Story of a Family. New York: Stein and Day, 1974.