Paul M. Warburg (1868–1932)

Paul Moritz Warburg was born in Germany to a devoutly religious Jewish family of well-to-do bankers. His older brother Abraham "Aby" Warburg grew up to become an art historian and founder of the Warburg Institute. After graduating from the Realgymnasium in Hamburg in 1886, Paul went to work for Simon Hauer, an importer-exporter, to learn the fundamentals of business. He also worked for Samuel Montague & Company in London and the Banque Russe pour le Commerce Etranger in Paris. In 1891, Warburg entered the family bank of M.M. Warburg & Co., which had been founded by his great-grandfather in 1798. He interrupted his work there to go on a world tour during the winter of 1891–1892, but was admitted to a partnership in the firm in 1895. That same year, he married Nina J. Loeb, daughter of Solomon Loeb, founder of the New York investment firm of Kuhn, Loeb & Co.; the couple had two children. The family settled in New York City in 1902 and Warburg became a partner in Kuhn, Loeb and a naturalized citizen of the USA. In 1914, he was appointed to the Federal Reserve Board, and became a persuasive advocate of America's central bank and currency reform. The New York Times published Warburg’s article, "Defects and Needs of our Banking System." He subsequently published more articles and appeared at conferences hosted by Columbia University, the American Economic Society, and the Academy of Political Science. He became a director of the Council on Foreign Relations at its founding in 1921, remaining on the board until his death. He also was a trustee of the Institute of Economics, founded in 1922; when it was merged into the Brookings Institution in 1927, he became a trustee of the latter. Warburg warned in 1929 about the dangers of wild stock speculation rampant in the USA, in advance of the stock market crash that occurred in October of that year. The Paul M. Warburg chair in Economics at Harvard University was named in his honor.