Otto Hermann Kahn

Open full sized image

Otto Hermann Kahn, c. 1909.

Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (Digital File Number: cph 3b22306)

Otto Hermann Kahnwas a banker and patron of the arts who played an important role in reorganizing the U.S. railroad systems.

In 1888 Kahn was sent to the London branch of Berlin’s Deutsche Bank and became a British citizen. The banking house of Speyer & Co. offered him a position in New York City in 1893. In 1897 he became a partner in Kuhn, Loeb & Co. and stayed with the company for 37 years. Edward Harriman relied on Kahn’s financial acumen in reorganizing the properties of six railroad systems, including the Union Pacific and the Baltimore and Ohio. Kahn gave up his British citizenship in 1917 and generously supported the Allied war effort during World War I. For his contributions, he was decorated by France, Italy, Spain, Belgium, and Japan.

In 1903 he became a stockholder in the foundering Metropolitan Opera Company of New York City. For several years he made good its losses, and in 1908 he brought in director Giulio Gatti-Casazza and conductor Arturo Toscanini from La Scala in Milan. He was president from 1918 to 1931, owning 84 percent of the company’s stock at his death.

Kahn was a collector of paintings, tapestries, and bronzes. His arts patronage included establishing prizes for New York’s black artists, donating cash and paintings to various civic museums, financing an American tour of the Moscow Arts Theatre, helping build the New Theatre in New York, and supporting restoration of the Parthenon in Athens.

Kahn wrote many books on art, history, politics, and business, including Art and the People (1916), The Myth of American Imperialism (1925?), and Of Many Things (1926), a collection of his speeches and writings on finance and politics.