Felix M. Warburg - Biography

Felix Moritz Warburg (1871 – 20 September 1937) was a member of the Warburg banking family of Hamburg, Germany.

Biography

He was a grandson of Moses Marcus Warburg, one of the founders of the bank, M. M. Warburg (in 1798). Felix Warburg was a partner in Kuhn, Loeb & Co.. He is known as a leading advocate of a Federal Reserve System for the United States. He married Frieda Schiff (1876 – 1958), daughter of Jacob H. Schiff and Therese Loeb Schiff, in 1895. They had four sons, Frederick Marcus, Gerald Felix, Paul Felix and Edward Mortimer Morris and one daughter, Carola. All were active in community service.

Warburg was an important leader in the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee to help the Jews in Europe in the period leading up to, and especially during, the Great Depression. Warburg actively raised funds in the United States on behalf of European Jews who faced hunger following World War I. As early as 1919, he was quoted in the New York Times discussing the dire situation of Jewish war sufferers.

Warburg and the Joint Distribution Committee were also instrumental in the 1930s after the global Great Depression following the crash of the New York stock exchange 1929.

As a result of his philanthropic activities, a new Jewish village established in Mandate Palestine in 1939, Kfar Warburg, was named after him.

His former house, the Felix M. Warburg House, in New York's Upper East side was donated by his widow and today houses the Jewish Museum.