1922 Encyclopædia Britannica/Kahn, Otto Hermann

KAHN, OTTO HERMANN (1867-      ), American financier, was born in Mannheim, Germany, Feb. 21 1867. His father had been among the refugees to America after the revolution of 1848 and had become an American citizen, but later returned to Germany. He was educated in a Gymnasium in Mannheim, and after a year's service in the German army entered a banking house. In 1888 he entered the London branch of the Deutsche Bank, remaining there five years and becoming a British citizen. In 1893 he went to the United States, and for two years held a position with the house of Speyer & Co. in New York City. Then after travel in Europe he joined the firm of Kuhn, Loeb & Co., in New York City. In March 1917 he became an American citizen. He was a patron of music and gave private assistance to promising talent. He was chairman of the New York committee of the Shakespeare Tercentenary (1916) and was vice-president of the Permanent Blind Relief War Fund. He was chairman of the board of directors of the Metropolitan Opera Co. of New York and of the French theatre of New York, and a founder and later treasurer of the New Theatre Co. He was a trustee of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and of Rutgers College. He was a director in numerous corporations, including the Equitable Trust Co. (N.Y.) and the Union Pacific railway. During the World War he took a leading part in showing to the Germans in the United States that Germany was in the wrong and must be opposed. He was the author of Right Above Race (1918); Our Economic Problems: A Financier's Point of View (1920) and Two Years of Faulty Taxation (1920).