German-American Banking Firms and American Development, 1860-1945: An Overview

This paper offers a synthesis of research on the history ofGerman-American banking firms, and particularly firms run by German-Jewish immigrants and their descendants, and their role in the financing of American investment from the Civil War through World War II. The history of American development in this period is in large part a history of the increasing importance of New York City’s financial community—Wall Street— in the process by which governments, transportation companies, and entrepreneurs obtained the high amounts of capital they needed for large-scale projects ranging from the funds to fight the Civil War to the money to build the transcontinental railroads to the financing needs of mass retailers and heavy industry. A handful of small banking firms headquartered in the Wall Street neighborhood, employing no more than a few dozen to two hundred workers, yet helping to facilitate the investment of tens of millions of dollars, were central to this history. This overview focuses on four of these firms: J. & W. Seligman & Co.; Kuhn, Loeb & Co.; Lehman Brothers; and Goldman Sachs.