Consul-General Eugen Landau, one of the leading men in Jewish social welfare work in Germany, attains his 80th. birthday this month.
Herr Landau’s father, Jacob Landau, was the owner of a Berlin bank which in the last decades of the 19th. century was one of the biggest banks in Germany. Herr Eugen Landau and his brother, Hugo, succeeded their father in the ownership of the bank, which floated the loans of the Berlin City Council, and helped to found a number of important business enterprises, such as the General Electricity Company of Germany, the National Bank of Germany, and some of the big German mining companies.
In 1875, the Spanish Government appointed Herr Landau Spanish Consul-General in Berlin. His firm provided Emil Rathenau, the father of Dr. Walter Rathenau, and his partner, the late Felix Deutsch, with the capital with which they founded the General Electricity Company of Germany.
Herr Eugen Landau has always played an important part in Jewish communal life in Germany. He is president of the Auerbach Jewish Orphanage, and of the Jewish Home for the Aged, and he is Vice-President of the Keren Hayesod for Germany.
Together with Dr. James Simon and the late Dr. Paul Nathan, he was one of the three founders of the Hilfsverein der deutschen Juden, and he was its first President, Dr. James Simon succeeding him as President when Herr Landau found that his growing business interests prevented him retaining the post. He accepted however, the position of first Vice-President, which office he still holds.
Madame Landau is a daughter of City Councillor Magnus, who was a member of the Board of the Berlin Jewish Community for 25 years. Herr Landau’s stepsons are the well-known Sobernheim brothers, who are very active workers in Jewish public affairs in Germany-Dr. Walter Sobernheim, Dr. Kurt Sobernheim, and Professor Dr. Moritz Sobernheim, the President of the Federation of Jewish Communities in Germany and President of the Federation for Promoting Jewish Knowledge.
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