The Many Lives of Otto Kahn

The Many Lives of Otto Kahn PDF Author: Mary Jane Phillips-Matz
Publisher: Pendragon Press
ISBN: 9780918728364
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
Here was a man who was both equipped and disposed to be the most considerable Maecenas in the history of our theater, wrote Alexander Woollcott. It is the man behind that legend whom Mary Jane Matz brings. to life in this spirited biography. Otto Kahn, The King of New York in the twenties, had virtually created the city's new Metropolitan Opera with his enormous energy and financial backing. He was responsible for introducing Stanislavski, Nijinski, the Abbey Players, the Moscow Art Theater, and practically every other important personage and event in the most vigorous era of American theatrical history. He subsidized, sponsored, and had close relationships with Toscanini, Caruso, Chaliapin, Pavlova, Pirandello, Eugene O'Neill, Paul Robeson, Grace Moore, and hundreds of other artists whose names are now part of that history. This was the Otto Kahn whose fame lives on today-the man who was an activating force in American opera and theater for more than two decades. But there was another Otto Kahn, now less well known, who was more than a theatrical patron. The other Otto Kahn had amassed a banking fortune through his perspicuity and integrity in the era of unbridled Big Business, and had gone on to win the respect of the nation with his political, economic, and humanitarian activities in the First World War and its boom-and-bust aftermath. That Otto Kahn, a partner in the banking firm of Kuhn, Loeb, was often accused of being a socialist.

The Many Lives of Otto Kahn

The Many Lives of Otto Kahn PDF Author: Mary Jane Phillips-Matz
Publisher: Pendragon Press
ISBN: 9780918728364
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 328

Get Book Here

Book Description
Here was a man who was both equipped and disposed to be the most considerable Maecenas in the history of our theater, wrote Alexander Woollcott. It is the man behind that legend whom Mary Jane Matz brings. to life in this spirited biography. Otto Kahn, The King of New York in the twenties, had virtually created the city's new Metropolitan Opera with his enormous energy and financial backing. He was responsible for introducing Stanislavski, Nijinski, the Abbey Players, the Moscow Art Theater, and practically every other important personage and event in the most vigorous era of American theatrical history. He subsidized, sponsored, and had close relationships with Toscanini, Caruso, Chaliapin, Pavlova, Pirandello, Eugene O'Neill, Paul Robeson, Grace Moore, and hundreds of other artists whose names are now part of that history. This was the Otto Kahn whose fame lives on today-the man who was an activating force in American opera and theater for more than two decades. But there was another Otto Kahn, now less well known, who was more than a theatrical patron. The other Otto Kahn had amassed a banking fortune through his perspicuity and integrity in the era of unbridled Big Business, and had gone on to win the respect of the nation with his political, economic, and humanitarian activities in the First World War and its boom-and-bust aftermath. That Otto Kahn, a partner in the banking firm of Kuhn, Loeb, was often accused of being a socialist.

Otto Kahn

Otto Kahn PDF Author: Theresa M. Collins
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469620219
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 398

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Book Description
In the early decades of the twentieth century, almost everyone in modern theater, literature, or film knew of Otto Kahn (1867-1934), and those who read the financial press or followed the news from Wall Street could scarcely have missed his name. A partner at one of America's premier private banks, he played a leading role in reorganizing the U.S. railroad system and supporting the Allied war effort in World War I. The German-Jewish Kahn was also perhaps the most influential patron of the arts the nation has ever seen: he helped finance the Metropolitan Opera, brought the Ballets Russes to America, and bankrolled such promising young talent as poet Hart Crane, the Provincetown Players, and the editors of the Little Review. This book is the full-scale biography Kahn has long deserved. Theresa Collins chronicles Kahn's life and times and reveals his singular place at the intersection of capitalism and modernity. Drawing on research in private correspondence, congressional testimony, and other sources, she paints a fascinating portrait of the figure whose seemingly incongruous identities as benefactor and banker inspired the New York Times to dub him the "Man of Velvet and Steel."

Jacques Copeau's Friends and Disciples

Jacques Copeau's Friends and Disciples PDF Author: Thomas John Donahue
Publisher: Peter Lang
ISBN: 9781433101663
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 188

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Book Description
In a remarkable adventure, Jacques Copeau brought the troupe of the Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier to the Garrick Theatre in New York City in the fall of 1917. During the next two theater seasons, he staged more than forty different plays in repertory in French. He experimented with the use of both the tréteau nu, a bare raised platform, for some of Molière's farces and the loggia or unit set for all his plays. Copeau's experiments with scenography mark this period as a critical moment in the evolution of stage décor both in the United States and in Europe. Moreover, his development of a full repertory - sometimes three new plays in a week - demonstrated to the United States' fledgling art theater movement how important a full repertory is for the actor's continued training. Jacques Copeau's Friends and Disciples brings to light the support Copeau received from a diverse group of personalities without whom his undertaking would not have been possible: Otto H. Kahn, financier and supporter of the arts; Mrs. Phillip Lydig, a grande dame of New York high society; Antonin Raymond, the Czech architect who renovated the Garrick Theatre; Daisy Andrews, Copeau's tireless factotum; Louis Jouvet, stage manager, actor, and scenographer; Charles Dullin, actor, director and teacher; Suzanne Bing, a member of the troupe who embodied Copeau's ideals; and lastly Agnès Thomsen Copeau, Copeau's loyal wife and companion. This study places the achievement of Copeau in the context of the developments of both European and American theater at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Russian Culture and Theatrical Performance in America, 1891-1933

Russian Culture and Theatrical Performance in America, 1891-1933 PDF Author: V. Hohman
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230119905
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 214

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Book Description
Examining the work of impresarios, financiers, and the press as well as the artists themselves, Hohman demonstrates how a variety of Russian theatrical styles were introduced and incorporated into American theatre and dance during the beginning of the twentieth century.

Gentlemen Bankers

Gentlemen Bankers PDF Author: Susie J. Pak
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674075579
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 367

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Book Description
Gentlemen Bankers investigates the social and economic circles of one of America’s most renowned and influential financiers to uncover how the Morgan family’s power and prestige stemmed from its unique position within a network of local and international relationships. At the turn of the twentieth century, private banking was a personal enterprise in which business relationships were a statement of identity and reputation. In an era when ethnic and religious differences were pronounced and anti-Semitism was prevalent, Anglo-American and German-Jewish elite bankers lived in their respective cordoned communities, seldom interacting with one another outside the business realm. Ironically, the tacit agreement to maintain separate social spheres made it easier to cooperate in purely financial matters on Wall Street. But as Susie Pak demonstrates, the Morgans’ exceptional relationship with the German-Jewish investment bank Kuhn, Loeb & Co., their strongest competitor and also an important collaborator, was entangled in ways that went far beyond the pursuit of mutual profitability. Delving into the archives of many Morgan partners and legacies, Gentlemen Bankers draws on never-before published letters and testimony to tell a closely focused story of how economic and political interests intersected with personal rivalries and friendships among the Wall Street aristocracy during the first half of the twentieth century.

Dear Mark Twain

Dear Mark Twain PDF Author: Mark Twain
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520261348
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 314

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Book Description
Collects two hundred letters from readers of Mark Twain to the author himself, offering a glimpse into the lives and sensibilites of nineteenth-century children, preachers, con artists, inmates, and other fans of the author's work.

The Money Kings

The Money Kings PDF Author: Daniel Schulman
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN: 0451493540
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 609

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Book Description
The New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice • The incredible saga of the German-Jewish immigrants—with now familiar names like Goldman and Sachs, Kuhn and Loeb, Warburg and Schiff, Lehman and Seligman—who profoundly influenced the rise of modern finance (and so much more), from the New York Times best-selling author of Sons of Wichita Joseph Seligman arrived in the United States in 1837, with the equivalent of $100 sewn into the lining of his pants. Then came the Lehman brothers, who would open a general store in Montgomery, Alabama. Not far behind were Solomon Loeb and Marcus Goldman, among the “Forty-Eighters” fleeing a Germany that had relegated Jews to an underclass. These industrious immigrants would soon go from peddling trinkets and buying up shopkeepers’ IOUs to forming what would become some of the largest investment banks in the world—Goldman Sachs, Kuhn Loeb, Lehman Brothers, J. & W. Seligman & Co. They would clash and collaborate with J. P. Morgan, E. H. Harriman, Jay Gould, and other famed tycoons of the era. And their firms would help to transform the United States from a debtor nation into a financial superpower, capitalizing American industry and underwriting some of the twentieth century’s quintessential companies, like General Motors, Macy’s, and Sears. Along the way, they would shape the destiny not just of American finance but of the millions of Eastern European Jews who spilled off steamships in New York Harbor in the early 1900s, including Daniel Schulman’s paternal grandparents. In The Money Kings, Schulman unspools a sweeping narrative that traces the interconnected origin stories of these financial dynasties. He chronicles their paths to Wall Street dominance, as they navigated the deeply antisemitic upper class of the Gilded Age, and the complexities of the Civil War, World War I, and the Zionist movement that tested both their burgeoning empires and their identities as Americans, Germans, and Jews.

An Empire of Their Own

An Empire of Their Own PDF Author: Neal Gabler
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0385265573
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 537

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Book Description
A provocative, original, and richly entertaining group biography of the Jewish immigrants who were the moving forces behind the creation of America's motion picture industry. The names Harry Cohn, William Fox, Carl Laemmle, Louis B. Mayer, Jack and Harry Warner, and Adolph Zucker are giants in the history of contemporary Hollywood, outsiders who dared to invent their own vision of the American Dream. Even to this day, the American values defined largely by the movies of these émigrés endure in American cinema and culture. Who these men were, how they came to dominate Hollywood, and what they gained and lost in the process is the exhilarating story of An Empire of Their Own.

"Our Crowd"

Author: Stephen Birmingham
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1504026284
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 396

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Book Description
The #1 New York Times bestseller that traces the rise of the Guggenheims, the Goldmans, and other families from immigrant poverty to social prominence. They immigrated to America from Germany in the nineteenth century with names like Loeb, Sachs, Seligman, Lehman, Guggenheim, and Goldman. From tenements on the Lower East Side to Park Avenue mansions, this handful of Jewish families turned small businesses into imposing enterprises and amassed spectacular fortunes. But despite possessing breathtaking wealth that rivaled the Astors and Rockefellers, they were barred by the gentile establishment from the lofty realm of “the 400,” a register of New York’s most elite, because of their religion and humble backgrounds. In response, they created their own elite “100,” a privileged society as opulent and exclusive as the one that had refused them entry. “Our Crowd” is the fascinating story of this rarefied society. Based on letters, documents, diary entries, and intimate personal remembrances of family lore by members of these most illustrious clans, it is an engrossing portrait of upper-class Jewish life over two centuries; a riveting story of the bankers, brokers, financiers, philanthropists, and business tycoons who started with nothing and turned their family names into American institutions.

A History of the Jews in America

A History of the Jews in America PDF Author: Howard M. Sachar
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0679745300
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1073

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Book Description
Spanning 350 years of Jewish experience in this country, A History of the Jews in America is an essential chronicle by the author of The Course of Modern Jewish History. With impressive scholarship and a riveting sense of detail, Howard M. Sachar tells the stories of Spanish marranos and Russian refugees, of aristocrats and threadbare social revolutionaries, of philanthropists and Hollywood moguls. At the same time, he elucidates the grand themes of the Jewish encounter with America, from the bigotry of a Christian majority to the tensions among Jews of different origins and beliefs, and from the struggle for acceptance to the ambivalence of assimilation.