The Warburgs: The Twentieth-Century Odyssey of a Remarkable Jewish Family

by Ron Chernow

Bankers, philanthropists, scholars, socialites, artists, and politicians, the Warburgs stood at the pinnacle of German (and, later, of German-American) Jewry. They forged economic dynasties, built mansions and estates, assembled libraries, endowed charities, and advised a German kaiser and two American presidents. But their very success made the Warburgs lightning rods for anti-Semitism, and their sense of patriotism became increasingly dangerous in a Germany that had declared Jews the enemy.

Ron Chernow's hugely fascinating history is a group portrait of a clan whose members were renowned for their brilliance, culture, and personal energy yet tragically vulnerable to the dark and irrational currents of the twentieth century.

Genres: History, Biography, Nonfiction, Business, Finance, Jewish, Biography Memoir

820 pages, Paperback

First published September 21, 1993

About the author

Ron Chernow was born in 1949 in Brooklyn, New York. After graduating with honors from Yale College and Cambridge University with degrees in English Literature, he began a prolific career as a freelance journalist. Between 1973 and 1982, Chernow published over sixty articles in national publications, including numerous cover stories. In the mid-80s Chernow went to work at the Twentieth Century Fund, a prestigious New York think tank, where he served as director of financial policy studies and received what he described as “a crash course in economics and financial history.”

Chernow’s journalistic talents combined with his experience studying financial policy culminated in the writing of his extraordinary first book, The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance (1990). Winner of the 1990 National Book Award for Nonfiction, The House of Morgan traces the amazing history of four generations of the J.P. Morgan empire. The New York Times Book Review wrote, “As a portrait of finance, politics and the world of avarice and ambition on Wall Street, the book has the movement and tension of an epic novel. It is, quite simply, a tour de force.” Chernow continued his exploration of famous financial dynasties with his second book, The Warburgs (1994), the story of a remarkable Jewish family. The book traces Hamburg’s most influential banking family of the 18th century from their successful beginnings to when Hitler’s Third Reich forced them to give up their business, and ultimately to their regained prosperity in America on Wall Street.

Described by Time as “one of the great American biographies,” Chernow’s Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. (1998) brilliantly reveals the complexities of America’s first billionaire. Rockefeller was known as a Robber Baron, whose Standard Oil Company monopolized an entire industry before it was broken up by the famous Supreme Court anti-trust decision in 1911. At the same time, Rockefeller was one of the century’s greatest philanthropists donating enormous sums to universities and medical institutions. Chernow is the Secretary of PEN American Center, the country’s most prominent writers’ organization, and is currently at work on a biography of Alexander Hamilton. He lives in Brooklyn Heights, New York.

In addition to writing biographies, Chernow is a book reviewer, essayist, and radio commentator. His book reviews and op-ed articles appear frequently in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. He comments regularly on business and finance for National Public Radio and for many shows on CNBC, CNN, and the Fox News Channel. In addition, he served as the principal expert on the A&E biography of J.P. Morgan and will be featured as the key Rockefeller expert on an upcoming CNBC documentary.

Reviews

[Trish · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thank fuck it's over!

I have never read such a bad biography/history book.

The Warburgs are a very influential Jewish family who have had their hands in all manner of businesses for hundreds of years. As such, I was very curious to read this seemingly detailed account of the family and their history.
Boy, was I disappointed!
You see, if you read the Wikipedia articles and a few additional pieces online, you know more than what this book tried to convey in 820 pages.

For those who don't know but are interested: the Warburgs are a Jewish family with roots in Venice who eventually emigrated to Germany. There, they became bankers (some say they were forced to by the powers that be) and endured the usual amount of anti-semitism that meant they weren't allowed to even only have last names or do any sort of business without buying a written permission first (it was considered a special tax for non-Christians, which is a tradition the Christians have copied from Islam as far as I know).
They were very good with their investments and at one point even saved Hamburg. Yep, the trade capital of Europe back then.
Many members of the family, as well as countless other Jews, also valiantly fought for Germany in WW1 - despite anti-semitism not allowing them to become officers and other nonsense.
It took the Warburgs a while to realize that Hitler really could go that far, that nobody would speak up to help Jewish people and they either fled to the US or England.
There, the family continued its success story, further shaping banking systems as we know them nowadays (for better or for worse).
One notable member of the Warburg family even shaped post-war Germany and some of them eventually moved back to Hamburg. Last year, the latest offshoot of that branch of the family was involved in the Cum-Ex scandal in Germany.
But banking wasn't their only contribution to recent history. Thus, they were not only moving in the same social circles as the Rockefellers, Morgans and other titans of the financial sector, they were also VERY involved in all walks of culture, too. From being friends with Heinrich Heine (who even got inspired by matriarch Sara with which this book kinda starts off) to them having libraries, museums, academies, city parks and other cultural landmarks built. Oh, and politics, of course. I mean, rich and far-spread ... of course they had ties to the political establishment.

One of the things this book taught me was that many family members were neurotic. To be exact, they were NEUROTIC. *lol* Children not being allowed to use the front door so they wouldn't leave fingerprints on doorknobs and that kind of stuff. Oh and talking about food is for poor/low-born people.

To me, personally, the most interesting tidbit is how loyal this family has always been to Germany and seemingly still is. Granted, they apparently didn't suffer any losses during the Holocaust (in and of itself a miracle) but still.

The most notable (in a positive way) persons, to me, were Siegfried (who emigrated to London and refused to hire people based on their family tree like other firms used to do but instead valued character, intelligence, and a sense of duty) and, most of all, Eric (who had quite the military career in the US military throughout WW2 and after). Though Sara needs to be mentioned as well since it was her who gave the Warburgs a positive name throughout Hamburg (she was the one saving the Hansestadt from financial ruin AS A WOMAN - quite the feat back then).

For all the interesting history, though, most of what I know and related to you here, I know from the internet research I started while having this book rattle on in the background.
No, this wasn't my first history book or biography or kitten-squisher or story with a lot of characters. I'm good with and used to all of that.
However, the writing style of this book was just BAD. Yes, in capital letters. We never stayed with one person or generation but kept jumping back and forth with no rhyme or reason; we got names and numbers slapped around our ears without getting any/much context or getting a chance to care (with the exceptions of Siegfried and Eric, perhaps). The only red thread in this book was the family name. Often, we didn't even stay in one decade throughout the same chapter!
It was as if the author was an old man rambling on. The impression I got was that he’s sitting in a chaotic study, constantly sitting down, getting up, sitting back down again etc., on the never-ending search for a specific page of paper in a room full of everything he could find on the Warburgs, nothing being organized whatsoever. In reality, he was 44 when he wrote this. I presume the editor fell into a coma while reading this so the book never got organized/structured/trimmed.

I have a few more books by this author on my TBR and I can only hope that those will be better. If not, the author might have chosen the wrong profession (I'm not kidding).

To know just how bad it was: I started skimming and skipping and mentally corrected/amended certain parts (after only a few hours of internet research).

So yes, this was quite the disappointment and I'm glad it's over despite being kinda happy that I now know more about this impressive family.

[Darwin8u · Rating 4 out of 5]

"It was the Warburg's good fortune that whenever we were about to get very rich something would happen and we became poor and had to start over again."
- Siegmund W. Warburg, quoted in Ron Chernow's 'The Warburgs'



Working in finance, the Warburg name wasn't unknown to me, but it never carried the same cachet as the Rothchilds, the Morgans, the Rockefellers, or the Medicis. Part of this is certainy geography. Being American, I've had more exposure to the myths and the institutions created by the Rockefellers and the Morgans (the Mellons and the Goldman-Sachs). But it was more than that. The Warburg family and banking stretched over multiple generations and dynasties. It also peaked right before the Nazis came into power, so the Warburgs faced a large amount of antisemetism (like almost all European Jews) during the late 19th and first half of the 20th century.

It is bold of Chernow to take on this family history. It is a big thesis. And it is a difficult task to write a compelling family history framed around banking and Germany and Nazis and not create a hot mess of a book. At times, I felt this book was falling into a hot mess. It spread out, banks fractured, families squabbled, and for a couple hundred pages the book was a chore. But, ultimately, Chernow almost pulled it off. I was fascinated by characters like Aby, Max, Paul, Felix and Fritz Warburg (the Mittleweg Warburgs). Sometimes, I felt as if each of the brothers carried a characteristic or passion I could relate to. Most of the attention of the book is spent on brothers who bank (the exception being Aby, the art Historian and rabid book collector), so the sisters while addressed, get a smaller role. Later, as the Warburg banking empire starts to rebuild, attention is spent on cousins Eric, Paul, and James (Mittleweg Warburgs), and Sir Siegmund Warburg (Alsterufer Warburgs). By this time, the Warburg families have spread mostly out of Germany to America, Switzerland, Sweden, the Netherlands, etc. But like with the previous generation of Warburg men, I found characteristics of these dynamic men that I could relate to. They were all different, often difficult and driven, but fascinating.

Chernow writes primarily about banking families and American biographies:

Chernow's Banking Dynasties:
1. Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. - ★★★★
2. The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance - ★★★★
3. The Warburgs: The Twentieth-Century Odyssey of a Remarkable Jewish Family - ★★★★

Chernow's American Political Biographies:
1. Alexander Hamilton - ★★★★★
2. Washington: A Life - ★★★★★
3. Grant - ★★★★★

Upon reviewing my reviews, I'm convinced Chernow does slightly better at writing histories of individuals rather than families; politics rather than finance. However, I should note, I've enjoyed ALL of his books and he's a master at his craft.

[Jan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This saga of a German-American family of jewish bankers was on my bucket list for quite some time. After starting the book right after Christmas 2016, I finished it in only ten days, much faster than I thought. Being written by one (if not the) of my favourite authors when it comes to biographies this was (once again) an easy read. As always, Ron Chernow with this book lives up to his reputation as a brillant resercher and storyteller. Mastering the task of bringing together the story of numerous outstanding persons such as Aby S., Eric and Sir Sigmund Warburg (to name only a few) was no doubt a hard one. Chernow mastered it quite well. He is able to very well carve out the different charakters of very different people. The book also does not stop at telling the history of the Warburg family or the different firms. It's also a very enlightning on the history of Jews in Germany.
Beside a story very well told, this book has one major downside for me: The lack of order. Overall, Chernow of course follows the timeline. But jumping between the different persons involved in the Warburg history, there are periods of time covered twice, three times or more, from different perspectives. Going through the genarations but at the same time coming back to times already talked about, made it quite hard to follow some times. More than once I had to consult the family tree which is contained at the begining of the book and it took me quite some time to get back on track.

[Kristen · Rating 3 out of 5]

The negatives: hard to keep track of all the characters.
The positives: a remarkeable story, the family lived through important and interesting parts of US/European/World history. The most interesting parts were about the German Jewish families perspective on the rise of Nazism.
Overall: worth reading but definitely an investment.

[Bradley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Two things.

There's a lot of good info in this biography of the Warburgs. Lots of interesting people. Aby and Eric and even Siegfried are the real standouts for me, from the establishment of philanthropy and libraries all the way to the skullduggery during the Third Reich and the dissolution of the banking empire.

It's literally rich with details and countless people. In a way, assuming that you like endless sprawling extended dynasties, this is a perfect book.


But the other thing:

It's a hot mess the way it's written.

It's almost as if it's a garbage soup of writing, with very few threads to keep the narrative cohesive. It succeeds in being pretty damn comprehensive, but when it comes to the sheer enjoyment of narrative, it's lacking. Big time. I found myself wandering in and out of caring about so many of the happenings, latching on to big events like WWI or the Great Depression or WWII and the times when some of the more interesting family members step up and do something. But the other times were... well... it's a huge doorstopper of a book and I kept checking the time and the remaining pages.

Even so, there were some excellent chapters. The atrocities of the Third Reich, for example.

[Gerry · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book on the Warburg family is simply a masterpiece and I enjoyed every page. Since beginning this book in January 2019, I was unfortunately very busy that created a situation where I was either exhausted or lacked concentration to continue reading. As a result, the benefit for me was that I had to review previous pages and at times whole chapters in order to keep with the flow that I knew this book held. Approximately ½ way through, I came to realize I was not reading a book at all; rather, I was watching an Opera or listening to a Symphony – to which in my own mind I could not find the specific Opera nor the musician who wrote the specific Symphony. To my elated surprise, an epiphany came to me on the very last page of the book and within the very last paragraph of the final page. For those who have not read the book I will keep the secret guarded.

Subtitled as “The 20th Century Odyssey of a Remarkable Jewish Family”, Chernow simply cannot and does not begin at that point – he begins a written anthology of short family stories; and, works toward a crescendo of history within the prelude and first two chapters. The tone is set and I sat back and listened to the words I was reading.

Comical scenes arrive when in 1906 M.M. Warburg & Co. provided a loan to the Japanese Government. The day the Japanese delegation was set to meet the Mayor of Hamburg, Max Warburg and his family were staying at the same hotel as the delegation; their townhouse was being remodeled. The Japanese wanted Max to accompany them, so on the day of the meeting Max put on a round hat, went down the steps only to find the delegation members were all wearing top hats. Max went back to the room and put on a top hat – when he reappeared the Japanese delegation were all in round hats. Courteously, Max informed the delegation to “stay put” and he went back to his room and retrieved his round hat, they then all proceeded to City Hall to meet the Mayor of Hamburg.

Betrayal can be seen in many forms within these pages. The Warburgs were a proud German-Jewish family. Paul Warburg had earned the Iron Cross during the First World War. After the war, the German hierarchy wanted to separate the Jewish efforts vs the Christian and non-Jewish sector of the efforts that were made during the war. This was only the beginning as one with hindsight would expect. The Jewish people in Germany had received emancipation in 1868 for the full purpose of integration into society. The Warburg banking establishment began in 1798 and under the Corporal Hitler by way of Göring the bank was forced to either be totally abandoned or accept aryanization in 1938. For 140 years of banking and family involvement in support of Germany to read this was reprehensible to me, but as we know this was the fact of life at the time. During the rise of Corporal Hitler, the propaganda that the Warburgs “sold out” during the Versailles Treaty of 1919 was wholly and completely inaccurate and blasphemous to the core. Max Warburg was the one representative of the German delegation at Versailles that informed his colleagues “not to accept” the terms being offered. A well-documented event that historians have confirmed many times since. This wouldn’t be the first nor last betrayal this family would experience during the Second World War. There were so many betrayals on so many fronts that I simply cannot place them all here in one review. Chernow does an excellent job of informing the reader with the backdrops and scenes that followed to all of their individual conclusions and results.

When the bank was forced to be aryanized in 1938, the Warburgs had made an arrangement with the help of Dr. Rudolph Brinkmann to change the name of the bank. Arrangements were initially “hopeful” that the Warburgs would one day return to their bank and retain their sole name. Dr. Brinkmann unfortunately took plenty advantage of this issue and in so doing blocked the name being rightfully being changed until 1 October 1991. All Warburgs fought for this from 1945/46 onward. Legal cases were many, struggles difficult and Eric Warburg was the last alive to hear of the official name change at the age of 90 in 1990 just months before his death. Eric was one of the family members I enjoyed reading the details about along with Siegmund, Paul, Max, Aby, as well as the Warburg women and the strength they all seemed to have in the darkest hours. This strength of character and will of the mind, enhanced with an intelligent approach to many issues goes back before the period of 1798 in this family. It really wasn’t until a post WWII time frame that we read of deep arguments and issues within the family. By this point in time, the cousins all have the same goal in mind; but each has a different way of arriving to the Opera conclusion. As with any family, some are liked and disliked more than others.

Eric Warburg was a very interesting read for me. For example, take his efforts to gain a commission in the U.S. Army Air Force (USAAF) during WWII. He became good friends while in Florida for the Officers Training Course with Warner Marshall; cousin to General George Marshall. In 1942 the U.S. Government had a desperate need for German linguists; Eric enters the Intelligence Service with the USAAF as result. The day of graduation each Officer Candidate was to meet with the General Staff prior to receiving their commissions. Warner informs Eric that when he enters the room and when he comes to attention he should “snap his heels.” When Eric enters the room and prior to standing at attention, in a rather flamboyant and overdone manner he snaps his heels. Shocked, the Commanding General at the table asked him where he had served; Eric replied in reinforced reference of “r’s” rolling that he had served in the “Prussian Guard, Field Artillery.” Eric was then forced to explain himself and he gave the long story of how he immigrated to the United States and how he wanted to help his new nation. He still had family in Hamburg and elsewhere in Germany at the time. He serves with distinction following his intelligence training in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and is quickly promoted up the ranks to Lieutenant Colonel (Lt.Col.) during the war. Flash forward to May 1945. Eric is ironically one of the first U.S. Officers to interrogate Hermann Göring. It was after all Göring’s economic bureaucracy to spearhead the Aryanization of Jewish companies in Germany to include M.M. Warburg & Co – revenge can be sweet when mixed in with a bit of irony.

Eric approaches Göring with a thespian skillset even before meeting. He takes on the role of Mister Vikstrom, an American Officer whose family knew Göring’s first wife – a Swedish woman. With great detail, Eric is able to inform Göring that they had met in the 1920’s in gatherings and parties and provides detail that Göring is able to recall, but not able to remember Eric. For 20 hours Eric interrogates the Fat Man, an Army Sergeant sits taking notes in a corner as it occurs. In order to gain Göring’s attention and to keep him focused, the questions are interspersed with the formal title Herr Reichsmarschall. There is a photo of Eric sending off Göring to Luxembourg from the Augsburg airport, his next destination enroute to Nuremburg eventually for the trial. Eric was not surprised that Göring avoided the hangmen’s noose. This chapter was entitled “Fat Man and Little Boy”; fat man being Göring and as Eric was small in stature, it was for him that Chernow called “Little Boy.”

In addition to the story line of the family, we learn how the German-Jewish family would approach and think of Zionism. In the early part of the 20th century there was compassion for this; however, even after the Second World War we see that more than ½ the family remain anti-Zionists. The contrasts for reasons were fundamentally based on a love of Germany, even after the war ended. There was also a distinct education on the viewpoints and thoughts of Russian-Jews, Polish-Jews, and Jews from the Caucuses. All of it an internal education I had not read of before. I came away with at least a better understanding of respectful reasons toward these thoughts. Some Americans for example, seem to compare the Jewish State of Israel as a direct comparison to the British influx in America and the push against Native Americans. For those that think in this manner are merely comparing apples and oranges and there is no direct or indirect correlation to either independent event.

A beautiful symphony was this work and I am a much more knowledgeable for having read this book. The book was originally published in 1993; the cover that displays in this review is the post Hamilton work that Chernow published later. Hamilton is the book that has been used for the extremely well received play on Broadway in NYC. I will skip that work altogether and have no desire to see the play – I am a Jeffersonian sort of American. John Adams opinion on Alexander Hamilton is enough reason for me to avoid both. President Kennedy, while eating dinner with Nobel Laureates in 1962 stated that “…there has never been so many great minds gathered together for dinner in the Whitehouse since President Thomas Jefferson ate here alone…”

Hope this review encourages some to read the entire book. Chernow did a fantastic job!

[Joseph Sciuto · Rating 5 out of 5]

I owe a great debt to Ron Chernow. His 2004 biography "Alexander Hamilton" sparked an interest in American history, especially the Revolutionary period, that has provided me with countless hours of enjoyment and a never ending appreciation and amazement for just how much our Founding Fathers achieved against formidable odds. In the meantime, Alexander Hamilton has become one of my heroes and beside my desk I have a large, framed photo of this amazing human being. And no, I have not seen the Broadway play.

Mr Chernow's, "The Warburgs," is an amazing portrait of a German Jewish family who rose to prominence in the world of banking as far back as the mid-nineteen century and continued against great obstacles... Hitler and his love and fun band of Nazis'... Until the dawn of the 21st century. It is a family whose banking expertise extended way beyond the financial world and also produced an astonishing number of philanthropists, scholars, artists, politicians, and military figures who played important roles in World War 2 fighting with the Americans and the allies and whose generosity and influence spread across Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and especially America.

The book spans nearly two hundred years, and Mr Chernow's inclusion and insights into many of the historical events... Such as World War 1 and 2, the Russian pogroms of the Jews, the founding of the state of Israel, the depression... During this time is quite an achievement.

Yet, it is the antisemitic theme that runs throughout this book that is most disturbing. Despite everything this family did to better the lives of all people throughout the world, especially the German and American people, the abuse and displacement of much of the family during World War 2 and beyond is almost beyond belief... If it wasn't so terrifyingly true.

In the half decade I have lived on this planet, I have had the privilege of knowing and befriending people of many different races, nationalities, and religions. It has made my life much richer, colorful, and more enjoyable than any possessions or amount of money could have given me, yet the one theme that has run throughout most of my relationships is the prejudice and bigotry against the Jewish religion and culture. It is appalling and reprehensible that a group of people who have contributed so much in the field of medicine, science, technology, humanity, and the arts, just to mention a few, can still be affronted to this very day by so much prejudice. To think that so many Christians could be so antisemitic is even more baffling, considering that Jesus was Jewish.

My best guess, is that anti-Semitism springs from a well of jealousy that far too many people drink from? A jealousy at the great success that the Jewish people have achieved, but what people seem to forget is that their success comes from hard work, education, and drive and thirst to make the world a better and safer place.

That being said, "The Warburgs,"is a reminder of the resiliency of an amazing family, and I highly, highly recommend.

[Bob · Rating 4 out of 5]

Summary: The story of a prosperous and sprawling Jewish banking family who eventually established banking and philanthropic efforts in Germany, England, and the U.S., experiencing both great success and influence, and stunning disillusionment with the rise of Nazi Germany.

The Warburgs. It sounds like the title of a serialized TV drama chronicling a wealthy, influential, family with its own inner struggles, eccentric and driven characters, triumphs, tragedies and affairs. This wouldn't be far off of the truth about this Jewish banking family whose rise began with the founding of M.M. Warburg & Co. in 1798.

I picked this up because I've thoroughly enjoyed Ron Chernow's Alexander Hamilton and Grant (review). This is a much earlier work, and in many ways far more complicated, in telling the story of several generations of a family from the turn of the nineteenth century into the 1990's. It was a family with two major and rival branches, the Alsterufer and Mittelweg Warburgs, and a family that became established on both sides of the Atlantic.

For much of the story, the Mittelweg side of the family was in the ascendent. The five sons of Moritz Warburg, exercised great influence on both sides of the Atlantic. Max Warburg stands out in the development of M.M. Warburg as a power house private bank in Hamburg before the rise of Nazi Germany. His elder brother Aby relinquished his place in banking for intellectual pursuits, amassing a unique library that reflected his synthesis of knowledge, bankrolled by his prosperous brothers, who stay by him during periods where his genius descended into insanity. Brothers Paul and Felix emigrated to the U.S. Paul was an economic genius who outlined the framework for our Federal Reserve System while Felix married into the Schiff banking family and became an influential partner in Kuhn, Loeb, in New York City and engaged in extensive Jewish philanthropy. Fritz fled Germany for Sweden.  Max remained and struggled to maintain his banking house's clients in an increasingly hostile atmosphere and held out the hope that some accommodation could be reached with the Nazis. In the end, he turned the bank over to the Aryan Brinckmann, supposedly a caretaker for the Warburg interest, but who fought to retain control after the war.

The later part of the book chronicles the post-war trajectory of Warburg interests and the rise of the Alsterufer branch in the person of Siegmund Warburg, who established S.G. Warburg in England in 1946 and built it into a major investment banking firm before his death. Chernow's portrayal of this financial genius was fascinating. We observe a leader who exercised perfectionist control over the firm while delivering excellence of customer service to both small and large investor, a man of both towering rages and refinement, one as much inclined to the philosopher's retreat as to the hurley-burley of the financial world. The tense alliance/rivalry between him and Eric, Max's son, over the re-establishment of the Warburg name in Germany accentuates the continued competition between the two branches of the family.

One of the themes is the tension the Warburgs struggled with over their German and Jewish identities, a tension many Jews in Germany faced. They, with other Germans, took great pride in the rise of Germany as a power, and saw their own efforts as part of this. Max even served as a pre-war director on the board of I.G. Farben, the chemical concern that manufactured Zyklon B, used to exterminate Jews in the concentration camps. We follow the gradual opening of the eyes of Max and other family members to the unfolding tragedy of Nazism and how a nation would willingly participate in the elimination of some of its greatest fellow citizens. Max both tried to encourage Jews to wait it out, and yet also helped bankroll and facilitate the flight of many others and was one of the last to leave while Jews could.

Another theme is the dissipation of Jewish identity through wealth and marriage outside the faith. Each generation was increasingly less observant, and the main thing that marked them out was philanthropic efforts. Some became secular, others married Christians, allowing children to be baptized and raised in Christian faith.

What is striking at the same time is a family marked by financial and intellectual genius, whether it was Moritz, the first of the Mittelwegs or Max, or his son Eric, who eventually succeeded in restoring the M.M. Warburg & Co. name in Hamburg. Jimmy, Paul's son advised Franklin Roosevelt for a time, and flip flops between progressive and conservative stances, alienating him from most of those in power until he came back in favor during the Kennedy administration. One could go on and discuss the varied careers of the Warburg women, including Max's four daughters.

One of the challenges was keeping all the names and family relationships straight! Chernow provides a family tree in the front matter and it's good to keep it marked. What is striking is that he spins a fascinating narrative of this sprawling family, its hopes, its genius, its outliers, it's impact and the cost of wealth over the generations. Even today, the Warburg name remains on Warburg, Pincus and M.M. Warburg & Co.  S.G. Warburg was bought out by Swiss Bank, became Warburg Dillon Read and later UBS Warburg before the Warburg name gave way to UBS Investment Bank. Chernow helps us understand the drive and the significant actors behind this enduring legacy of influence in the worlds of banking, philanthropy, and culture.

[Arminius · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Warburg’s were a banking giant out of Hamburg Germany. They started in the 19th Century in the banking industry because of European anti-Semitism. Laws did not allow Jewish families to own land so Jews were diverted to occupations other than farming. The Warburg’s saw the fellow Jewish family Rothschild’s amass a fortune. They followed suit.

They became exports in international finance. This helped them avoid Nazi persecution. The Nazi’s were very naïve when it came to world finance. Hitler enticed a retired finance genius, Hjalmar Schacht, out of retirement to head Germany’s Treasury. Schacht performed a miracle rescuing Germany from the depression with phenomenal German economic growth. Schacht needed the Jewish Germans vast international experience to complete this miracle. So as Hitler tried to rid Germany of Jewish influence he allowed the Jewish German banking giants to operate unmolested following Schacht’s advice.

Schacht became disillusioned with Hitler as the Fuhrer began to mingle in economic affairs. He was often heard arguing with Hitler. Boy, I wish I could have heard those arguments. Much bad can be said about Hitler but his mind was top notch intellectual. So Schacht fell out of good grace with Hitler. Consequentially the Warburg’s do as well.

The Warburg’s, being wealthy, had the option of leaving Germany. Therefore the family started businesses in England and America. Their great minds and energy made them successes in both places. Ron Chernow, the author, goes into excruciating details of the generations of Warburg’s that I found kind of long winded. I must say it lacked the powerful attractive details of his other books.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

The genre of biography would be an impoverished arena indeed, if prolific contemporary author Ron Chernow was absent from it. The Warburgs: The Twentieth-Century Odyssey of a Remarkable Jewish Family is just as immersive and gripping as several of Chernow’s other biographies, namely: The House of Morgan, Titan: The Life of John D. Rockerfeller, Alexander Hamilton, and Washington: A Life. And the adjective, remarkable, in Chernow’s subtitle will spawn innumerable synonyms in readers’ minds by the time they reach the end of this 800-page book—extraordinary, unique, singular, striking, marvelous, and memorable, to name but a few.

The multi-generational story of this large, sprawling family originates in the 16th century, but Chernow’s biography focuses mainly on the families of two brothers, Sigmund Warburg and Moritz M. Warburg, both born in the 1840s. Sigmund had five girls and two boys (the Alsterufer Warburgs), and Moritz balanced that by having five boys and two girls (the Mittelweg Warburgs). Many of these children had families of their own which survived through two World Wars, lived through the ending of one century and the beginning of another, and demonstrated astonishing resilience in the face of adversity.

When thinking about World War II in particular, my mind falls easily—and with a profound lack of logic!—into the trap of imagining two primary entities, namely, Germans and Jews. However, the Warburgs were one of tens of thousands of German Jews, who were as fiercely patriotic to their nationality as they were devoted to their religion and culture. But following the crushing reparations imposed upon Germany after World War I (against the advice of financial experts, including England’s noted economist, John Maynard Keynes), a rising Hitler looked around for someone to blame—the Jews were a ready-made target. Through no fault of their own, they had been channeled into money-lending and private banking businesses, and when the Nazis implemented their deadly “Aryanization Plan,” Jews and their banks immediately became an endangered species.

Chernow performs a phenomenal job of doing justice to the majority of all family members across five generations. His depth and breadth of detail affords him exhaustive coverage of vertical and horizontal dimensions of the convenient and practical family trees he provides at the beginning of the book—I referenced them frequently. Chernow’s writing style is readily digestible, his prose is polished, elegant, and perfectly paced.

Simply because of their multi-generational size, the Mittelweg Warburgs get the lion’s share of the story. Before and during World War II, the family became fragmented in Germany, the United States of America, and Sweden. But their enterprising spirit and robust work ethic resulted in significant success wherever they landed. Paul Warburg, for example, had an almost clairvoyant sense of how the US economy would behave in changing situations. I was stunned to learn that before anybody, he had drafted the structure of a central bank and promoted its necessity, leading to his serving on the first Federal Reserve Board of Governors. His son, Jimmy Warburg, had occasion to communicate directly with Franklin Delanor Roosevelt, when the latter sought his opinion on important matters.

In the third-generation line of the Alsterufer Warburgs, Seigmund George Warburg, only son of George and Lucie Warburg, fled persecution in Germany, arrived in London and proceeded to stun the banking world with his financial genius. Through a series of seemingly flawless and well-choreographed moves, he established the extraordinarily successful merchant bank S. G. Warburg. He was prescient enough to believe in, and lobby for, an integrated Europe, something essential for the European economy. To that end, he established the EuroBond market. In 1966, he was knighted for services to then Prime Minister Harold Wilson.

The characters highlighted above are simply the tip of the iceberg. The Warburgs is a fabulously absorbing book. Though all members of the same family, author Chernow takes pains to highlight their diversity and uniqueness. For the most part, all the Warburgs married well, and frequently married their own wealth to the wealth of spouses. They all seemed to work hard and live well, never embarrassed by their hard-earned riches. They were also massively generous philanthropists and never missed an opportunity to help Jews and Jewish causes.

I’m certain many members of this famous banking family will appreciate (and forgive) the analogy that, though this blockbuster of a book demands a considerable commitment of time, it is an investment that will repay readers handsomely!

[Carl · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is challenging writing a review of a book that covers so much information. I would recommend the book if you are interested in Jewish history and enjoy biographies. Ron Chernow goes into minute detail, analyzing the character of so many members of the Warburg family. They play a role in so many pivotal world historic events you’d think they are part of a global conspiracy. And they are part of a conspiracy to make their family as successful and influential as possible. Many families might have this ambition but few have been so consistent, outstanding, prosperous and driven.

Chernow assigns assimilation as the central conflict of their story. However this really isn’t the case. They or their ancestors could have quietly converted to christianity centuries before, whenever they wanted to. There was nothing at all barring them from doing this. The Warburgs and European jews did not want to assimilate. They had no interest in doing this. The christian culture they were surrounded by was alien and they considered it evil. The central conflict of the story is really whether or not their drive for supremacy was total, and how far they would go to secure domination.

Imagine lending someone money with the intention of exacting from them as much of their labor, energy, time - the primal fuel which powers life! That is how they made their living: by extracting from people as much money as possible. That is how you run a successful bank. Some people might say this is wrong, that lending money is evil. You are stealing someones life and time away! Maybe they are right. But being evil made them supremely rich and powerful. Being evil made them so powerful they: became the personal financiers of the Emperor of Germany, made millions on railroads in America, negotiated the fate of Germany in the treaty of Versailles, formed and founded the Federal Reserve, funded the creation of a new country - Israel. These are among a few of their contributions and accomplishments. So maybe being evil isn't such a bad thing sometimes, maybe being evil makes you the most important people in the world.

In a worshipful tone, Ron adores the family. According to him, there is not even one member of this family of hundreds of people who have ever done anything truly wrong or evil. Not a single one. At worst they are self-obsessed narcissists, and he apologizes for them and builds up these numerically disadvantaged characters as misunderstood geniuses. The way he lingers and celebrates these anti-social types would make you believe abusing and hurting others isn't so great a sin as being boring and not particularly brilliant.

Why were they so successful? Their Judaism gave them a sense of destiny and purpose that connected them to a past. It grounded them in the world and gave them a sense of meaning. The descendants of those who assimilated and married non-jews lost their sense of purpose. Many dithered and had no drive to build or hunger for more. The more assimilated they became the more content they were.

The undulation between character profiles, world history, socio-cultural details, etc. makes this a really interesting read. I would imagine its probably not for everyone, especially if you don’t find jewish history particularly compelling. I tried sharing this with someone and they scoffed! You really don’t find learning about someone else’s family interesting? And the way their personalities play out and impact their lives and those around them, you can learn so much about people!

[Christopher · Rating 2 out of 5]

A bio of a banking family proves that banking is f'n boring. Unfocused and dull.

Chernow's 1993 "The Warburgs" is a detailed, unfocused, and utterly dull history of a powerful banking family. Chernow is a gifted writer with a masterful talent at presenting reams of information. This skill works in biographies of singular characters (Hamilton, Washington, Grant), where the focus is on the subject and others serve as supporting "characters" in the biography.

When writing about an entire family over generations, however, Chernow's approach loses momentum and the result is a confused mishmash of dozens upon dozens of family members that fails to engage the reader.

The most interesting elements of this banking family history are the non-banking parts. Reading about Aby Warburg's mercurial and quixotic devotion to books and art history makes him, by far, the most interesting member of the family. As family members come and go, those elements/interests/pursuits that do NOT involve international finance are the most entertaining to the reader. But with so many family members, these periods are few and far between. Moreover, as part of the clan moves to America, the narrative repeatedly ping pongs back and forth between the German Warburgs and the American Warburgs, disrupting whatever narrative energy might be building (it never builds much).

This lack of focus is highlighted by the dilemma/struggle of the German Warburgs in maintaining their dedication to Germany in the face of German militarism followed by Nazi anti-Semitism. With such a large family across spread across two continents and so many disparate views (some were more culturally Jewish than religiously Jewish, some were more "patriotic" than others, some more specifically Zionist that others) there's never a sense of continuity or consistency in the family's position -- nor should there be. But as there's also not a real patriarch or matriarch of the family, the reader never gets the sense that this is "the family's" position.

Overall, the skills that made Chernow's later biographies such rewarding experiences are here, but the subject matter becomes too diffuse to be rewarding.

[Lorri · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ron Chernow captures the history of the Warburgs (their rise and fall, accomplishments and failures) with his detailed research and excellent storytelling skills.

[Jeffrey · Rating 3 out of 5]

If Ron Chernow’s book The Warburgs were a bank, it would certainly fail. His high-interest bearing account, that of a Jewish banking dynasty that stretches back six generations to pre-industrial Europe, is bloated and inefficient. Chernow exhibits no economy of words nor judicious standards for what to include versus what to cut. And there are enough adjectives deposited in the book’s 700+ pages to make administrators of even the stingiest of deposit insurance schemes wince. Thankfully for the reader, though, it’s a book, not a bank. And an engrossing one at that.

The early history of the Warburg family is obscured by the shadows of time. Chernow traces the first “certifiable” ancestor to 16th century Westphalia, near to the geographic center of the modern German state. He dismisses as fanciful any suggestions that the family is of Sephardic stock or that its roots can be traced back to late Medieval Venice. A number of more contemporaneous sources present the Warburg-Venice connection as factual, though it’s unclear if this reflects a more up-to-date genealogical scholarship or the internet’s unique ability to perpetuate and magnify a myth.

If indeed Chernow’s first ‘Warburg’, Simon von Cassel (d. 1566), had migrated from Venice around that time, it was likely to escape the harsh conditions placed on the Venetian republic’s Jewish residents at the time. It also could be the case that the early family had Ashkenzi roots in German speaking lands and found it commercially useful to be associated with the prominent Venetian del Banco banking family, which itself may have been the product of exiled Jews fleeing central Europe. Whether owing to foreign connections or more local success, Simon von Cassel had obviously achieved some measure of prominence when he was designated a protected Jew in the town of Warburg, a status which allowed him to do both money changing and pawn broking business.

A little over a century later the successful descendants of Simon von Cassel outgrew the provincial town whose namesake they had adopted and moved north to the neighboring German-speaking port cities of Altona and Hamburg. The former was then ruled by the Danish crown and Jewish residents enjoyed a number of privileges that would have made business conditions more favorable than those that Jews in other jurisdictions faced. Hamburg, meanwhile, was a leading Hanseatic city ruled by a relatively enlightened and democratic merchant class. Its maritime connections to Scandinavia, the British Isles, and the rest of Europe, by the 18th century, lended an international air to the bustling city and it is there in which story of the modern Warburgs really begins.

In 1798 two Warburg brothers converted the small money changing business that their father had bequeathed to them into the M.M. Warburg & Co. bank. The Napoleonic Wars soon followed, a turn of events that would prove fortuitous for both the Jews of Hamburg and for the Warburg bank as well. For, along with the occupation of Napoleon’s troops in 1806, came the ideals of the French Revolution, especially the principle of equality under the law. Hamburg’s Jews suddenly enjoyed rights they had never before known, especially with regard to property dealings.

When the French left Hamburg in 1814 they took with them the massive stores of silver the city had accumulated through its vibrant international trade. The Warburg bank using its own international connections coordinated with the Rothschild banking family in Vienna to replenish silver to the Hamburg markets and in the process gained the goodwill of the city’s traders. Over the next half century the city grew at a rapid pace, especially as transatlantic passenger lines opened up. The Jewish community also grew quickly, numbering 16,000 by the century’s midpoint. The Warburgs assumed a prominent role in both a city in which “business was its secular religion”, that according to Chernow, and in a Jewish community whose prospects were on the rise, especially following the creation of the German state in 1871.

Chernow tells this early history of the family in its completeness in the first 20 pages of the book. After that, though, things slow down and the chronological narrative turns to the lives of the leading Warburg figures, including the brothers Siegmund (1835-1889) and Moritz (1838-1910) who together would lead the bank from the founding of Germany until nearly the outbreak of the first world war. Siegmund married eastward to the daughter of an aristocratic Russian Jew in Kiev. Moritz, on the other hand, married the stolid daughter of Frankfurt jewelers. From there two branches of the family would emerge from history, the Alsterufers and the Mittelwegs, so-called because of the respective streets which they built their houses on in Hamburg.

The Mittelweg Warburgs enjoyed an early measure of genealogical good fortune. Four of their five boys enjoyed immense success in a number of different fields. The eldest son, Aby, was an avid bibliophile and family legend has it that while still in grammar school, he made a deal with second son Max that Max could inherit the bank if he promised to supply Aby with books in perpetuity. Aby went on to become one of the leading art historians of the early 20th century while Max, with a very large book bill, took over the bank and became one of the leading commercial bankers of Weimar Germany. Younger brothers Felix and Paul both married into a prominent Wall Street family and migrated to America. Felix would become one of the leading Jewish philanthropists of the 20th century and today the neo-gothic mansion which he had built for his own family on 5th Avenue is home to New York’s Jewish Museum. Brother Paul was instrumental in the founding of the Federal Reserve and guided that institution through World War I.

The Alsterufer Warburgs faded from the scene after the death of their patriarch Siegmund, and in fact lost much of their interest in the M.M. Warburg bank by the 1920s. When Siegmund’s grandson, Siegmund George, arrived in Hamburg from rural southern Germany to do an internship at the M.M. Warburg bank in 1923, he was considered the country cousin who it was easy to look down upon. Quickly, though, he would establish himself as the smartest and most competent Warburg businessman of his generation. Chernow spends the last quarter of the book charting his rise in very minute detail. Of all the characters in the book, it’s Siegmund the Younger alone who embodied the best of the entire family and ultimately his material success would overshadow that of his Mittelweg uncles and cousins. It’s fitting, then, that Chernow does such a good job in his rendering of the man who would play such an influential role in turning London back into one of the world’s leading financial centers through his own S.G. Warburg Bank.

The family profiles are interesting, sometimes humorous, and do a good job of showing just how diverse one family can be, but the real value in reading this book is found in some of the larger themes that span the entire narrative. For me, there were three. First, Chernow thoroughly documents the nearly unseverable tie between German Jews and Germany, even despite recurrent anti-Semitism and the tragedy of the Shoah. The Warburgs profoundly loved German culture and thought it far superior to Anglo cultures. Several Warburgs served in the German military before and during World War I. Eric Warburg, served in both world wars, the first on the side of Germany, the second for the United States. After his service for the Americans he returned to Germany and eventually regained control of the M.M. Warburg Bank which was ‘aryanized’ in 1938. Chernow writes, “The Warburgs never believed that the human spark entirely died among the German people, and this gave them hope of a renewal someday.”

A second major theme which Chernow articulates is the way in which the material success of one generation distorts ambition in the subsequent generation. None of the six second generation Mittelweg Warburgs, four of whom met with so much success, would see the next generation rise to their lofty heights. While the dislocations owing to Hitler’s rise in Germany undoubtedly played a role, the phenomena of under-achievement held true even for that next generation of American-born Warburgs. While that generation still enjoyed privileged access to leading political and culture figures such as Franklin Roosevelt, George Gershwin, Adlai Stevenson, Averell Harriman, Chaim Weizmann, Konrad Adenauer, and Helmut Schmidt, all of whom are mentioned in the book, the children of the Mittelweg boys never rose to the lofty heights in finance, philanthropy, public service, or scholarship that their fathers had.

Finally, it was interesting to read about the growing secularization of the family over time. The parents of Siegmund and Moritz, born in the early 1800s, were highly observant and refused to travel to places such as Scandinavia where they could not keep kosher. Just three generations later, the majority of the Warburg children would marry outside the faith and the family’s Judaism, by the 1950s, would seem almost incidental to their larger identities as heirs to a German banking family. Another related theme that Chernow gives its due was the family’s complicated relationship with Zionism. Very few in the family fully embraced Zionist political aims, though after the founding of Israel, most did support its goals. A few family members made their homes in Israel, but there was always a certain unease about the Israeli state, and especially, according to Chernow, its treatment of its Arab population.

Besides the larger themes that Chernow elucidates so thoroughly, there are unfortunately a number of quirks that detract from the overall presentation. First, Chernow loves to read psychological traits and temporary dispositions into old photographs. While some of his analyses are compelling, the more he engages in the habit, the less convincing the enterprise feels. Another strange thing that he uses, perhaps to link the large number of characters that inevitably come out of an extended family over multiple generations, is to combine the names of husband and wife pairs into a single word. Thus we get absurdities such as Friedaflix (Frieda and Felix), Malice (Max and Alice), and Paulina (Paul and Nina). Chernow does include a family tree, but it’s not complete, perhaps owing to some parts of the living family’s wish to remain anonymous when the book was published in 1992. But there were also distant cousins mentioned, especially from the Altona Warburgs and the Swedish Warburgs. I would have liked an expanded family tree.

Those are minor complaints, though. Overall this is a really interesting book. The time investment spent on it, which is considerable, is well worth it, especially if you have in interest in German history, banking and finance, the gilded age “Our Crowd”, or the human tragedy of Nazism. I have to admit, though, after turning the last page, I felt like I had closed the book on a small part of my own family that I had only recently come to know. Jeffrey L. Otto © May 3, 2015

[Aaron Million · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ron Chernow has gone on to have a prolific career as an author, most recently with a biography of Ulysses S. Grant. But this book is one of his earlier successes. Before Chernow switched to leading political figures, he enmeshed himself in financial and banking history, but from the personal side of things – focusing on the personalities that made and controlled large amounts of money, rather than the system itself. And so that is what the reader finds here in The Warburgs. Chernow chronicles the rise and fall and rebirth of the famous German Jewish banking family, alternating focus between different family members.

Unfortunately, there are so many family members involved here that it becomes difficult to keep track of them all. For a significant portion of the book, Chernow focuses on the brothers Aby, Paul, Felix, and Max. Another brother, Fritz, is not mentioned nearly as much despite also being a banker. When I was finally getting comfortable remembering which brother did what and lived where, the narrative changes to the offspring. And then there is cousin Siegfried, not to be confused with his grandfather of the same name. While Chernow keeps the story moving, it is dizzying at times to keep up with the adventures of all of the myriad Warburgs. Throw in their wives and daughters (many of them very strong personalities in their own spheres – indeed, Chernow begins the book with a chapter on Sara Warburg) and the changing locations (Germany, England, Israel, the United States, Sweden) and you almost need a written outline to help keep track of where you are. Chernow takes to referring to the married couples as a mixture of both first names (Malice for Max and Alice, for example), which I found somewhat annoying. Fortunately, Chernow does provide a family genealogy chart at the beginning of the book – I referred to this numerous times while reading it.

Despite the large cast of characters and places, Chernow is a gifted storyteller and provides cogent analysis of all of the family drama that transpires. In this case, that primarily centers around the family's Jewish heritage. Some members are hard-core and believe it is blasphemy to marry a non-Jewish person. Others go out of their way to distance themselves from their Judaism and to act like it is an ordeal to be endured, as indeed it sadly was for so many in Germany and other places. Chernow reviews how the succeeding generations of the family gradually came to view their religion differently from the ones that came before. This is most striking with the Warburgs born in the 1920s/1930s.

The last section of the book is, for me, the least interesting. It revolves mainly around Siegmund and Eric Warburg, and tilted much more towards Siegmund. More so than most of the others, Siegmund is, ultimately, a control freak and a tyrant – throwing telephones against the wall when he was angry, amongst numerous other spectacles. Chernow delves into Siegmund's numerous complicated business dealings, thus bogging down the narrative as the reader struggles to keep one merger straight from the next.

Chernow is at his best when describing the buildups to both World Wars, and how German society and attitudes affected the Warburgs. It is sickening to read about how the Jews were treated, especially when Hitler and the Third Reich came to power. But Chernow writes that the jealousy and antagonism against Jews, especially wealthy ones, had not occurred overnight in Germany. It was deep-rooted and, at times, deadly for those who had no choice in how or what they were born as. That the once-great bank is almost completely ruined is no surprise. That it somehow manages to hang on and then rebuild is a testament to the good stewardship and determination of a succession of Warburgs.

[Rachelle Urist · Rating 3 out of 5]

In many respects, this book deserves 5 stars. It's written with economy, erudition, skilled research, sophistication and passionate engagement with this family and their significance in world history. Why only 3 stars? Because the research becomes dry and even tiresome. I quickly lost track of who's who, as one often does while reading classic Russian novels. Maybe this book requires a character list at the outset, one the reader can consult when confused.

Still, it's clear that Ron Chernow knows each and every character well. Sometimes it even appears that he knew these people personally.

The Warburgs, like the Rothschilds, were a banking family in Germany. With the rise of Nazism, many of the family members left to continent to start anew. A number of these German expats left everything behind and literally started from scratch. Their training and business acumen served them well, and many thrived - in NY, London and Sweden. After the war, some actually returned to Germany. The current Jewish Museum in Manhattan is housed in the mansion that was bequeathed to the city by the Warburg branch that resettled in NYC. The mansion is palatial. The original owners, who built the place, raised six children in that house. Chernow, being Chernow, follows each member of the family, both before and after this branch, through the trials and tribulations heaped upon them by family rifts, political intrigue, and bankers' competition.

I bought this book for my Kindle. I return to it when the mood is upon me. Like most of Chernow's biographies, this one is 800 pages long. Having it all on a Kindle makes it easily transportable - on planes, buses, trains, etc. I still haven't finished the book. But I expect I will. I'm a great admirer of Ron Chernow who was (or still is) the President of PEN, the esteemed writers' group. He was recommended for the position by the outgoing president, none other than Salman Rushdie.

[Chrissie]

****************************

*Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. 5 stars
*Alexander Hamilton 4 stars
*Washington: A Life 4 stars
*Grant 4 stars
*The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance TBR
*The Warburgs: The Twentieth-Century Odyssey of a Remarkable Jewish Family TBR

[Rivka · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love this book! For 722 pages, I couldn’t put it down! Fascinating! Written empathetically. Prosperous and, to their minds, well-integrated into German society for centuries, the Warburgs faced assimilation, the economic breakdown following the First World War, and overshadowing everything, the Holocaust. Before and after the war, they spread all over the world. They were touched by almost every worldwide event of significance for a hundred years. Portrayed as individuals, but also as worldwide figures, they accomplished against enormous odds, yet were still incapacitated by very human obstacles.

[Sara · Rating 3 out of 5]

Chernow is a brilliant biographer, and The Warburgs definitely showcases his meticulous, easy narrative style.

The challenge with documenting an entire family is that the characters over 4 generations are increasingly difficult to keep track of. There is also so much information that, in this case, it would have been better to trim some and tighten up the narrative.

[Grahamshircore · Rating 4 out of 5]

A long slog but keeps you in the narrative pretty well. A fascinating story but if you want it in a concise, easy to read format this isn't for you-the story could be told in half the length without losing much.

[Lloyd Hughes · Rating 4 out of 5]

M. M. Warburg & Co. Hamburg, Germany 1798-1938 and 1991-, six generations. Predominant genes: intelligence, organization of new venture (primarily banking and charitable), need to be in control, emotional fragility and depression, pluck, determination, persistent tenacity, community spirit (with themself as arbiter), incredibly generous charitable giving, a roving eye, and strong appreciation for their Jewish heritage. The Warburgs were/are a very gifted family, highly educated at elite institutions with a passion for the arts. They rubbed elbows with the movers and shakers of their era. They exhibited incredible insight that resulted in spectacular successes and at they same time their stubbornness and deaf ear to reality created some shattering embarrassments and failure. In short they were fully human. As humans we are infused with insatiable appetites: rarely satisfied always wanting more, more, more regardless of the size of our largesse. The Warburgs are no exception; they have an extra portion—at least by half. When they were knocked down they bounced back with renewed vigor and determination and purpose.

As a internationally prominent Jewish family with deep German roots anti-semitism is a major theme. Mr Chernow walks this tightrope with deft agility. He draws clear dimensional lines showing Judaism as religion and community — two sides of the same coin. For the most part the Warburgs held strong obligatory feelings rooted in their heritage but not to the detriment of their Germanic nationalism, which on the surface sounds illogical or insensitive but closer scrutiny denies any incongruity of integrity or loyalty.

They are a big, big family marrying inside and outside of Judaism. Some were agnostic, some observant, some kosher but most primarily observed only the High Holy Days. Zionism and Israel two big issues beginning in the 1880s touched their family but left a small footprint.

I did not find their journey inspiring. I did not find myself wishing I were walking in the shoes of any one (or more) of them. Upon reflection I find success an over-arching theme. Success comes in many flavors, some transient some not. This tome spotlighted the Warburgs that had the most impact on the grand stage. There is lots of fulfillment there but lots of angst came too. Is it worth it? That the big question for each of us to decide.

Author Ron Chernow is a masterful biographer and his body of work is essential reading to any auto-didactic reader, warranting 5 stars. ‘The Warburgs is good interesting recommended reading but doesn’t because of subject matter doesn’t demand a fifth star.

[Kenneth · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very interesting look at the lives of the Warburgs a banking family down through the generations. Unlike Chernow's House of Morgan, the book is not so much a chronicle of finance as told through the life of a family, but really the story of the family. The personalities of the individual Warburgs are made to come alive in a really meaningful way and the book is studded, no pervaded is a better term, with anecdotes highlighting the personalities of the various Warburgs down through the centuries. Chernow does have another story to tell however, and that is the story, the tragic story, of the German Jews.

It's not well known but in the nineteenth century German Jews were the most integrated in the world, and German Jews viewed themselves as so German as to distance themselves from the "Ostjuden" from Eastern Europe who were fleeing persecution and who German Jews helped on to America lest they stay in Germany. This loyalty would of course be put to the test, initially by Zionism and then by Nazism and both stories are told in full through the eyes of the Warburgs.

It's a fascinating tale, but there is something a little off about using the Warburgs as the main characters because their wealth and American connections (a branch of the family married into the Shiff and Loeb families in the US, becoming extremely successful bankers in America) enabled them all to escape Nazi Germany. If the book has a central character it is Max Warburg who was the driving spirit of the Hamburg bank throughout the latter half of the 19th century, he built the firm to prominence along with Germany itself. His interests were severely damaged by the first world war and the hyperinflation of the early Weimar years and then more or less destroyed entirely in the 1929-1931 financial crisis.

He was also involved politically during the Weimar years and struggled both to aid Jews to leave and to convince them to stay and fight. Those who he helped to leave, survived. Those he encouraged to stay, did not. He did survive, and lived to see his lifes work stolen and then destroyed. The book continues almost to the present day, going through the creation and rise to power of SG Warburg, the London offshoot of a refugee Warburg cousin that came to overshadow both the American and German branches in the 1960s-1980s. It finished in the early 1990s when the reunification of Germany finds the Warbug bank in Hamburg back in Warburg hands. All in all, it's an incredible tale well told.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

Oh my god what a boring family.

I should clarify that I’ve read a number of Chernow’s biographies, and count Titan, his bio of John D Rockefeller as one of my absolute favorite biographies.

But the Warburgs are just not a fascinating subject. Mostly stodgy and most interesting outside the bank’s walls, I felt it was at least twice as long as it should’ve been.

I couldn’t wait for it to be over. I’ll never read anything about the Warburgs again, considering this is as about exhaustive (and exhausting) a tome as I think they deserve.

To be fair, the book is wonderfully researched, and Chernow accomplished what I’d consider to be an impossible feat - but it doesn’t make for riveting reading.

[Elijah Oyekunle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Throughout the book, I kept asking myself why I was reading 820 pages about people that frankly, I didn't care about.

However, I have an interest in economic and financial interest, and I already read about 4 of Ron Chernow's books which were really good, so I decided to read this.

It was a trying read, covering about a century in scope and people scattered across many countries. However, Chernow does an excellent job bringing the characters to life that even though I thought about giving up at times, I stayed the course and I'm glad I did.

[Debra · Rating 4 out of 5]

I decided to read this book by Ron Chernow because I read and loved both Grant and Alexander Hamilton. Chernow’s historical research and ability to draw you into the real lives of incredible persons from our nations past.
The Warbugs was once again so very historically detailed as it covers the Warburg family. For me is was a bit difficult to follow all the characters of brothers, wives, sons and daughters. However, it was incredible what this family accomplished in the world of banking and philanthropy. They faced so many successes as well as devastating hardships. Most importantly was to survive business and family, being Jewish in Hitlers Germany of World War 2
I look forward to reading another of Chernow’s novels

[Anders · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mastodont-verk av Ron Chernow om dynastin Warburgs; Otroligt välskrivet om personerna och släktens öden genom Hamburg, grundadet av Federal Reserve, WW1, WW2, judendomen i Tyskland, private banking, EU, London, New York...Minst lika imponerande som JP Morgan boken.

[Diane · Rating 4 out of 5]

I learned a great deal from reading much of this book, but put it aside because I got tired of it.

[Jerel Wilmore · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating history of a fascinating family.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an extraordinary book about the Warburg family, encompassing both their anti-Semitic trials and their incredible financial successes along the way.

I got it because I like Ron Chernow’s writing, and enjoyed his book Alexander Hamilton.

One encouragement, don’t give up reading it too early. I stopped after only a chapter or two last year thinking I can’t get into it! After picking it back up a year later, I’ve really enjoyed their stories, and reading the history in the background.

As with all families, the Warburg’s were blessed/challenged with differing personalities, and many thought their way was always right!

[Andrew Canfield · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Warburgs is a truly sprawling work with a breadth that is difficult to match. Historian Ron Chernow has laid out a wonderful generations-spanning tale that takes readers through more than a century of a rapidly changing world.

The book follows the Jewish Warburg family and the continent-spanning banking colossus they built in the midst of two world wars and in the face of frequent discrimination. It is a tale of history, family, and an odyssey of the Jewish Diaspora all rolled into one. The story of the Warburg banking empire begins even before Germany's 1871 unification, with the family divided into two lines-the Alsterufer and Mittelweg Warburgs.

The rivalry between the two familial sides persists through generations, but the overriding theme is the family's resilience and ability to repeatedly transcend present difficulties. While some members of the family remain observant of their faith and others become more lackadaisical toward it, their Jewishness does not go unnoticed by the broader community they happen to reside in.

Chernow must have spent the better part of a decade working on The Warburgs; the tapestry it weaves as one member after another of the family makes an entrance is truly impressive. The cast of characters is sprawling, but a look at how a few are portrayed will demonstrate how informative The Warburgs succeeds masterfully in tracing the currents of late nineteenth and early twentieth century American and European affairs.

The family first became established in the banking world in Germany before expanding to England and the United States. Much of the book's first portion boils down to the irony of all the lies that would be used to justify persecution of Jewry--the borderless nature of Jewish identity, the supposed control of events and people through financial shenanigans, the blame Jewish elites were assigned after Germany's defeat in the First World War-actually being things that the Warburgs took pain to steer clear of yet ended up being tarred with anyways.

Aby Warburg represented the diverse interests members of the family held beyond the pursuit of moneymaking. He built an outstanding library in Germany that ultimately became the Warburg Institute in London, a collection of thousands and thousands of books spanning numerous genres and topics. An interest in literature and emphasis on culture defined many members of the Warburg family across generations.

Paul, Felix, and James Warburg figure prominently on the American side of the Atlantic, where they became closely connected with Wall Street and Kuhn, Loeb, and Company through business and marital ties. Paul Warburg would go on to help found the U.S. Federal Reserve System in the early twentieth century (a role he was proud of but played into fears of undue Jewish influence among the American elite), while James would play a role in advising President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal policies.

Max Warburg helped to build the family's Germanic banking empire from his home base in Hamburg. From his posts at M.M. Warburg and the Reichsbank, Max felt his position was impregnable enough that the anti-Semitic currents swirling between the two world wars would not touch him or his family.

Max's misreading of the political environment was but one example of an intriguing portion of the book that deals with the naivete many of the Warburgs in Germany (and Jews in general) displayed toward the rise of the Nazi Party. Even Max and Felix Warburg, men with deep knowledge of German culture and the currents of opinions as well as close ties with the European financial community, were slow to understand that Hitlerism was more than a quickly passing fad.

Max ultimately held out too long, as he was forced to give up his control of the Reichsbank due to the Aryanization policies enforced by the German government around the time of Kristallnacht. Control of the firm was forcibly passed to the non-Jewish Rudolf Brinckmann, setting off a decades-long power struggle after World War Two over who exactly was responsible for M.M. Warburg's banking success in Germany.

Siegmund Warburg turned out to be one of the family's most impactful twentieth century members. Having been forced to flee to the United Kingdom in the 1930s, he spent the next five decades turning the British banking world upside down. His S.G. Warburg & Co. ended up becoming one of the most successful banking enterprises in Europe, causing him to be often be resented by Londoners who felt he was a foreigner meddling in their already established economic game.

The question of which part of his heritage to lean into--the Jewish aspect, the German one, the British one, the cosmopolitan cross-border one-underscored the identity crises numerous members of the Warburg family had to deal with. Depending on their own experiences, some would opt for different ones of these at various times.

The division over which part of their identity to embrace or how quickly to forgive (or to do so at all) Germany was one of several which inflicted the Warburg clan. Understandably, many members of the family remained reticent to return to their German roots after the Second World War wrapped up. Whereas members like Eric Warburg were quick to forgive and return, others like Jimmy did not lose their suspicion of the country in the postwar years.

Charitable work ran deep in the family's veins, and Frieda Warburg (wife of Felix) played a role in this department. Her philanthropy of charitable (oftentimes Jewish) causes made her well-respected in the community, while Lola and Gisi's work with Youth Aliyah worked to find homes for parentless Jewish refugees in post-World War Two Palestine. Max’s wife Alice rolled up her sleeves to rally support for German Jews in the 1930s, a time when many Depression-racked nations were reticent to open their doors to large numbers of hard-pressed refugees.

The family's views on Palestine and its ultimate incorporation as Israel were by no means homogenous. Given their deep pockets, the family was a natural stop on Palestine promoter Chaim Weizmann’s fundraising tours, and the Warburgs (like many Jews at the time) were divided into two camps: respect for the need for Israel as a spiritual home for the Diaspora on the one hand, while on the other there were members who wanted a recognized Jewish nation-state. Felix turned out to be a major early promoter of Palestine; family members whose connection to their Jewish roots were tenuous were less enthusiastic about openly supporting the Zionist cause. The division between Zionists and non-Zionists, a quandary which has plagued even the Jewish community for generations, did not skip over the Warburgs.

This might have been one of Ron Chernow's early books, but it is just as strong as any of his more recent offerings. The rich storyline is filled with moving anecdotes and colorful personalities that avoids getting bogged down with too many ancillary details. It never feels like Chernow takes his readers' intelligence or attention spans for granted, and in The Warburgs he simultaneously produced a book of incredible factual depth and human emotion. It feels like a journey undertaken with strong guidance from start to finish.

Five star books are not a dime and dozen, but this work of nonfiction merits mention as a top notch meditation on multiple historical topics compiled into one coherent story arc.

-Andrew Canfield Denver, Colorado