Ludwig Bamberger

Ludwig Bamberger
Ludwig Bamberger.
Born	(1823-07-22)22 July 1823 Mainz, Grand Duchy of Hesse
Died	14 March 1899(1899-03-14) (aged 75)
Nationality	German

Ludwig Bamberger (22 July 1823 – 14 March 1899) was a German economist, politician and writer.

Bamberger was born into the wealthy Jewish Bamberger family in Mainz. After studying at Gießen, Heidelberg and Göttingen, he entered law.

When the revolution of 1848 broke out he took an active part as one of the leaders of the republican party in his native city, both as popular orator and as editor of the Mainzer Zeitung. In 1849 he took part in the republican rising in the Palatinate and Baden; on the restoration of order he was condemned to death, but he had escaped with other leading revolutionaries like Germain Metternich, Louis Blenker, and Franz Zitz to Switzerland. The next years he spent in exile, at first in London, then in the Netherlands; in 1852 he went to Paris, where, by means of private connections to the Bischoffsheim family, he received an appointment in the bank of Bischoffsheim, Goldschmidt & Cie, of which he became managing director, a post which he held till 1866. During these years he saved a competence and gained a thorough acquaintance with the theory and practice of finance. This he put to account when the amnesty of 1866 enabled him to return to Germany.

He was elected a member of the Reichstag, where he joined the National Liberal Party, for, like many other exiles, he was willing to accept the results of Otto von Bismarck’s work. Bamberger represented the electoral district of Bingen-Alzey and married Anna Belmont, a relative of the famous banker August Belmont, who had emigrated to the United States. In 1868 he published a short life of Bismarck in French, with the object of producing a better understanding of German affairs, and in 1870, owing to their intimate acquaintance with France and with finance, he and Gerson Bleichröder were summoned by Bismarck to Versailles to help in the discussion of terms of peace.