Salomon Oppenheim, Jr. (19 June 1772 – 8 November 1828) was a

German Jewish The history of the Jews in Germany goes back at least to the year 321, and continued through the Early Middle Ages (5th to 10th centuries CE) and High Middle Ages (''circa'' 1000–1299 CE) when Jewish immigrants founded the Ashkenazi Jewish ...

banker, and the founder of the

Sal. Oppenheim Sal. Oppenheim was a German private bank founded in 1789 and headquartered in Cologne, Germany. It provided asset management solutions for wealthy individual clients and institutional investors. In 2009, the bank became a subsidiary of Deutsche Ba ...

private bank. He was born in

Bonn The federal city of Bonn ( lat, Bonna) is a city on the banks of the Rhine in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, with a population of over 300,000. About south-southeast of Cologne, Bonn is in the southernmost part of the Rhine-Ru ...

, the scion of an illustrious family of "

Court Jew In the early modern period, a court Jew, or court factor (german: Hofjude, Hoffaktor; yi, היף איד, Hoyf Id, קאַורט פאַקטאַר, ''Kourt Faktor''), was a Jewish banker who handled the finances of, or lent money to, European, mai ...

s" (german: Hofjuden) who had served as advisers and moneylenders to the Prince-Archbishops of Cologne in the

Rhineland The Rhineland (german: Rheinland; french: Rhénanie; nl, Rijnland; ksh, Rhingland; Latinised name: ''Rhenania'') is a loosely defined area of Western Germany along the Rhine, chiefly its middle section. Term Historically, the Rhineland ...

area for several generations. In 1789, at the age of 17, Oppenheim Jr. set up a small commissions and exchange house in Bonn, then the residence of Prince-Archbishop Maximilian Francis of Austria. Nine years later, after

French French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with France ...

troops had occupied the left banks of the

Rhine The Rhine ; french: Rhin ; nl, Rijn ; wa, Rén ; li, Rien; rm, label=Sursilvan, Rein, rm, label=Sutsilvan and Surmiran, Ragn, rm, label=Rumantsch Grischun, Vallader and Puter, Rain; it, Reno ; gsw, Rhi(n), including in Alsatian dialect, Al ...

, Oppenheim Jr. moved to the city of

Cologne Cologne ( ; german: Köln ; ksh, Kölle ) is the largest city of the German western state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and the fourth-most populous city of Germany with 1.1 million inhabitants in the city proper and 3.6 millio ...

. He was one of the first Jews who settled in Cologne since the expulsion of the Jewish community in 1424. Oppenheim became banker and tax collector by order of the French occupying power. After the establishment of the

Province of Jülich-Cleves-Berg The Province of Jülich-Cleves-Berg (german: Provinz Jülich-Kleve-Berg) was a province of Prussia from 1815 to 1822. Jülich-Cleves-Berg was established in 1815 from part restored and part newly annexed lands by the Kingdom of Prussia from Franc ...

in 1815, he took service with the

Prussian Prussia, , Old Prussian: ''Prūsa'' or ''Prūsija'' was a German state on the southeast coast of the Baltic Sea. It formed the German Empire under Prussian rule when it united the German states in 1871. It was ''de facto'' dissolved by an ...

state. Oppenheim Jr. and his wife Therese (Stein, born Deigen Levi) had 12 children. After Salomon's death, two of his sons, and

Abraham Abraham, ; ar, , , name=, group= (originally Abram) is the common Hebrews, Hebrew patriarch of the Abrahamic religions, including Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In Judaism, he is the founding father of the Covenant (biblical), special ...

, took over management of the bank. Another son, co-published the

Rheinische Zeitung The ''Rheinische Zeitung'' ("Rhenish Newspaper") was a 19th-century German newspaper, edited most famously by Karl Marx. The paper was launched in January 1842 and terminated by Prussian state censorship in March 1843. The paper was eventually su ...

and was a railway industrialist. Salomon Jr.'s and Therese's daughter Bertha "Betty" Hertz née Oppenheim married Heinrich David Hertz (born as Hertz Hertz)—their son

Gustav Ferdinand Hertz Gustav Ferdinand Hertz (born August 2, 1827, as David Gustav Hertz in Hamburg, died September 8, 1914) was a German lawyer and senator of the Free Imperial City of Hamburg. He was the father of the pioneering physicist Heinrich Hertz Heinric ...

(born as David Gustav Hertz) with his wife Anna Elisabeth née Pfefferkorn later became parents of

Heinrich Rudolf Hertz Heinrich Rudolf Hertz ( ; ; 22 February 1857 – 1 January 1894) was a German physicist who first conclusively proved the existence of the electromagnetic waves predicted by James Clerk Maxwell's equations of electromagnetism. The unit o ...

and Gustav Theodor Hertz, who in turn later became the father of

Gustav Ludwig Hertz Gustav Ludwig Hertz (; 22 July 1887 – 30 October 1975) was a German experimental physicist and Nobel Prize winner for his work on inelastic electron collisions in gases, and a nephew of Heinrich Rudolf Hertz. Biography Hertz was born in Hamb ...

. The main branches of the family converted to

Protestantism Protestantism is a Christian denomination, branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Reformation, Protestant Reformation, a movement that began seeking to reform the Catholic Church from within in the 16th century agai ...

(Betty Oppenheim and Heinrich David Hertz, and Simon Oppenheim's son

Eduard Eduard Model Accessories is a Czech manufacturer of plastic models and finescale model accessories. Formed in 1989 in the city of Most, Eduard began in a rented cellar as a manufacturer of photoetched brass model components. Following the s ...

) and

Catholicism The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

(Abraham's son ) in the late 19th century. The company he founded,

, is now a subsidiary of

Deutsche Bank Deutsche Bank AG (), sometimes referred to simply as Deutsche, is a German multinational investment bank and financial services company headquartered in Frankfurt, Germany, and dual-listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and the New York Sto ...

. Participation of the Oppenheim family effectively ended in 2005 with the death of

Alfred Freiherr von Oppenheim Alfred Paul Ernst Freiherr von Oppenheim (May 5, 1934 – January 5, 2005), known in America as Alfred Oppenheim, was a German billionaire and banker. Born in Cologne, Germany, Oppenheim was a descendant of Salomon Oppenheim, Jr., who founded the ...

. It moved its headquarters to

Luxembourg Luxembourg ( ; lb, Lëtzebuerg ; french: link=no, Luxembourg; german: link=no, Luxemburg), officially the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, ; french: link=no, Grand-Duché de Luxembourg ; german: link=no, Großherzogtum Luxemburg is a small land ...

in 2007 and was acquired by

in 2009/10.

Literature

See also