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Salem Press

Great Lives from History: The Incredibly Wealthy

Otto Kahn

by Roy Liebman

American banker, investor, and art collector

Kahn, an influential investment banker and generous supporter of numerous arts organizations and performers, was the model of an enlightened capitalist and an effective spokesman for Wall Street interests after the 1929 stock market crash.

Sources of wealth: Banking; investments

Bequeathal of wealth: Children; relatives; artistic patronage

Early Life

Otto Hermann Kahn (kahn), the son of Bernhard and Emma (née Eberstadt) Kahn, was born to a Jewish family in Mannheim, Baden (now in Germany), in 1867. His father was a prominent banker and industrialist who had lived in the United States for a time after fleeing a death sentence for his role in the 1848 revolts that had swept Europe. Young Otto, one of nine children, was brought up in a very comfortable and cultured household, and as a teenager he was apprenticed to a bank in the city of Karlsruhe. By seventeen he was a clerk there and could begin to indulge his love of music, theater, and art, which would become a lifelong passion.

First Ventures

Otto Kahn plays a round of golf.

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A few years later, Kahn went to work in the Deutsche Bank in Berlin and was soon transferred to one of its London branches, becoming a naturalized British citizen. Five years later, in 1893, Kahn was offered a position in New York, and he immigrated to the United States, becoming an American citizen in 1917. When he was thirty he became a member of the private banking firm of Kuhn, Loeb and Company, considered second only to J. P. Morgan’s company in its influence. In 1896, shortly before he joined the firm, he had married the wealthy daughter of one of the company’s partners, Adelaide Wolff, and the couple ultimately had four children. Several of the partners in Kuhn, Loeb were of German-Jewish origin, and these socially prominent people referred to themselves as “Our Crowd.”

Mature Wealth

Kahn rose in the company and befriended railroad tycoon Edward H. Harriman, whose ventures were largely funded by Kahn’s firm. He helped Harriman finance the reorganization of several of his rail lines, and in return Kahn garnered much wealth for himself and his company. Kahn also participated in making loans to France for reconstruction of its cities after World War I. In addition, Kahn was a founding director of the American International Corporation, a worldwide trading, holding, and finance company.

Kahn was well on his way to becoming a great art collector and patron of the arts. In the early twentieth century, he became a majority stockholder in the Metropolitan Opera company, eventually serving as its president and chairman. He participated in reorganizing this company, which was doing poorly at the time, contributing some $350,000 of his own money to assist it. He also gave generously to other opera companies and was quoted as saying, “I must atone for my wealth.”

By the time of his death, Kahn was a trustee of several universities and numerous other civic, business, and arts organizations. He owned fabulous homes filled with art in Manhattan and on Long Island that were compared to Renaissance palaces.

During the early days of the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration, Congress held hearings about the causes of the financial crash of 1929. Kahn, with his benevolent public persona, became one of the most prominent faces of the banking industry in his testimony before Congress in 1933. The following year, already in ill health, he died of a heart attack at the offices of Kuhn, Loeb.

Legacy

Although prominent in the banking world, it is undoubtedly as a patron of the arts that Otto Kahn will be most remembered. Besides his long years of service to the Metropolitan Opera, he brought many famous artists to America, including the Ballets Russes and conductor Arturo Toscanini; arranged for Americans to perform abroad; and encouraged the work of young writers, among them the poet Hart Crane. He was considered to have been a most enlightened capitalist and, as such, was a very effective spokesman for Wall Street interests.

Further Reading

1 

Collins, Theresa M. Otto Kahn: Art, Money, and Modern Time. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002.

2 

Kobler, John. Otto the Magnificent: The Life of Otto Kahn. New York: Scribner, 1989.

3 

Phillips-Matz, Mary Jane. The Many Lives of Otto Kahn. New York: Macmillan, 1963.

Citation Types

Type
Format
MLA 9th
Liebman, Roy. "Otto Kahn." Great Lives from History: The Incredibly Wealthy, edited by Howard Bromberg, Salem Press, 2010. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=GLIW_1221369001221.
APA 7th
Liebman, R. (2010). Otto Kahn. In H. Bromberg (Ed.), Great Lives from History: The Incredibly Wealthy. Salem Press. online.salempress.com.
CMOS 17th
Liebman, Roy. "Otto Kahn." Edited by Howard Bromberg. Great Lives from History: The Incredibly Wealthy. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2010. Accessed October 22, 2025. online.salempress.com.