Abraham Kuhn (June 20, 1819 – May 30, 1892) was an American merchant and banker of German-Jewish origins, a founding partner of Kuhn, Loeb & Co. of

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

, one of the great US investment banking firms of the 19th and 20th centuries. Born the son of Simon and Therese Kuhn in Harxheim, a village near

Mainz Mainz () is the capital and largest city of Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. Mainz is on the left bank of the Rhine, opposite to the place that the Main (river), Main joins the Rhine. Downstream of the confluence, the Rhine flows to the north-we ...

, in the

Grand Duchy of Hesse The Grand Duchy of Hesse and by Rhine (german: link=no, Großherzogtum Hessen und bei Rhein) was a grand duchy in western Germany that existed from 1806 to 1918. The Grand Duchy originally formed from the Landgraviate of Hesse-Darmstadt in 1806 ...

, now part of the

Rhineland-Palatinate Rhineland-Palatinate ( , ; german: link=no, Rheinland-Pfalz ; lb, Rheinland-Pfalz ; pfl, Rhoilond-Palz) is a western state of Germany. It covers and has about 4.05 million residents. It is the ninth largest and sixth most populous of the ...

, Kuhn migrated to New York about 1840, with his brothers Solomon and Max. In 1849, he married Regina Loeb, a sister of his future partner,

Solomon Loeb Solomon Loeb (June 29, 1828 – December 12, 1903) was a German-born American banker and businessman. He was a merchant in textiles and later a banker with Kuhn, Loeb & Co. Biography His father, a devout Jew, had been a small corn- and wine-de ...

.Cilli Kasper-Holtkotte, ''Deutschland in Ägypten: Orientalistische Netzwerke, Judenverfolgung und das Leben der Frankfurter Jüdin Mimi Borchardt'' (2017), p. 17 In 1849 he was earning a living in the US as a peddler. In 1850, he formed a general partnership in a merchandising firm in

Lafayette, Indiana Lafayette ( , ) is a city in and the county seat of Tippecanoe County, Indiana, United States, located northwest of Indianapolis and southeast of Chicago. West Lafayette, on the other side of the Wabash River, is home to Purdue University, whi ...

, with his brother-in-law Solomon Loeb, and by 1860, they were manufacturers of men's clothing and had a successful dry-goods merchant business in

Cincinnati Cincinnati ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Hamilton County. Settled in 1788, the city is located at the northern side of the confluence of the Licking and Ohio rivers, the latter of which marks the state line wit ...

Ohio Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...

.Charles R. Haller, ''German-American Business Biographies: High Finance and Big Business'' (Money Tree Imprints, 2001), pp. 290–291 They made their fortune from making and supplying uniforms to the military. In 1865, Kuhn, Loeb, and another man, Samuel Wolff, turned away from the clothing industry to focus their business activities on banking, and in 1867 they established Kuhn, Loeb and Company in New York to take advantage of the economic expansion of the 1860s. By the time Kuhn and Loeb established their new partnership, they were able to capitalize it at $500,000. However, following the death of his wife, in 1869 Kuhn withdrew from active participation in the business and returned to Germany with his young daughters Ida (born 1854) and Emily, settling at number 14 Feuerbachstrasse,

Frankfurt Frankfurt, officially Frankfurt am Main (; Hessian: , "Frank ford on the Main"), is the most populous city in the German state of Hesse. Its 791,000 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located on its na ...

, in his native

Hesse Hesse (, , ) or Hessia (, ; german: Hessen ), officially the State of Hessen (german: links=no, Land Hessen), is a States of Germany, state in Germany. Its capital city is Wiesbaden, and the largest urban area is Frankfurt. Two other major histor ...

, a house with a large garden. He remained a partner in Kuhn, Loeb, until 1887. In Frankfurt Kuhn met

Jacob Schiff Jacob (; ; ar, يَعْقُوب, Yaʿqūb; gr, Ἰακώβ, Iakṓb), later given the name Israel, is regarded as a patriarch of the Israelites and is an important figure in Abrahamic religions, such as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Jac ...

(1847–1920) at the house of a fellow banker, Jacques Dreyfus, and sent Schiff to work for Kuhn, Loeb in New York. Schiff married Therese Loeb, the daughter of Solomon Loeb and of Kuhn's sister Fannie, and went on to grow the firm into the second most prestigious investment bank in the United States, outdone only by

Morgan's Henry Morgan & Company (colloquially Morgan's) was a Canadian department store chain founded by Henry Morgan in 1845. The first store was located in Montreal, and expanded to include 11 stores in Ontario and Quebec before being bought by Hudson's ...

J. P. Morgan & Co. Kuhn died in 1892 at Frankfurt. He had recently created a charitable foundation known as the '' Stipendienstiftung'' in

Bad Dürkheim Bad Dürkheim () is a spa town in the Rhine-Neckar urban agglomeration, and is the seat of the Bad Dürkheim district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. Geography Location Bad Dürkheim lies at the edge of Palatinate Forest on the German Wine ...

. Kuhn's daughter Ida married Eduard Cohen and was the mother of Emilie (Mimi), Sophie, Edwin, and Albert Cohen, but the two sons died in infancy. Emilie (Mimi) married a notable Egyptologist,

Ludwig Borchardt Ludwig may refer to: People and fictional characters * Ludwig (given name), including a list of people and fictional characters * Ludwig (surname), including a list of people * Ludwig Ahgren, or simply Ludwig, American YouTube live streamer and co ...

. In 1903, she received an inheritance from Kuhn of 150,000

Marks Marks may refer to: Business * Mark's, a Canadian retail chain * Marks & Spencer, a British retail chain * Collective trade marks, trademarks owned by an organisation for the benefit of its members * Marks & Co, the inspiration for the novel '' ...

and spent most of it on buying a villa in

Cairo Cairo ( ; ar, القاهرة, al-Qāhirah, ) is the capital of Egypt and its largest city, home to 10 million people. It is also part of the largest urban agglomeration in Africa, the Arab world and the Middle East: The Greater Cairo metro ...

.Kasper-Holtkotte (2017), p. 21, footnote 34 This was a substantial fortune, then exchangeable for 53.7 kilograms of gold.

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kuhn, Abraham 1819 births 1892 deaths Jewish American bankers American financiers American people of German-Jewish descent Hessian emigrants to the United States People from the Grand Duchy of Hesse 19th-century American businesspeople