Gerson von Bleichröder
German banker (1822–1893)
Gerson von Bleichröder (22 December 1822 – 18 February 1893) was a Jewish German banker and close confidant of Otto von Bismarck. He served as Bismarck's financial agent, especially when the Prussian king required financial independence from the United Prussian Diet during the critical period of German unification. He became the second non-converted Jew in Prussia to be granted a hereditary title of nobility.
Family background and early life
Gerson's family name probably originated from Bleicherode, a town in the Prussian Harz region in the historical province of Saxony, east of present-day Göttingen, Germany. We know that Gerson's grandfather, Gerson Jacob, was born in the 1740s and as a young man went to Berlin, having received the right of residency there, since the Jewish community needed a gravedigger (the position also carried with it certain religious obligations). In Berlin, he married Suze Aaron, the daughter of a protected Jew (Schutzjude), which provided additional employment opportunities and was a significant achievement for upwardly mobile Gerson Jacob.
Gerson Jacob had four sons. His eldest son, Samuel Bleichröder, opened a currency exchange office (Wechselstube) in 1803 in a remote corner of Berlin, which would later grow into the banking firm of S. Bleichröder. In those early years, Berlin was an entrepôt between East and West and there was a demand for exchange services of the many principalities of the Holy Roman Empire. Business improved when the French occupied Berlin in 1806.
“Gerson von Bleichröder” enters the record as german banker (1822–1893). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Gerson, Bleichröder and German can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Gerson von Bleichröder” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.