Mauricio Hochschild

Dr. Moritz (Don Mauricio) Hochschild (1881 in Biblis, Germany – 1965 in Paris) was one of the most famous men in the mining industry in the first half of the twentieth century and was, along with Simón Iturri Patiño and Carlos Victor Aramayo, one of the three so-called Bolivian tin barons.

Hochschild was an agnostic Jew whose family had already been active in the mining industry for over a generation. After Hochschild graduated from school, he studied mining and engineering at the Freiberg University of Mining and Technology. In 1905, he began his career in the field at the large industrial conglomerate Metallgesellschaft. Later he went to Spain and Australia and then finally moved to South America to work independently. After several years in Chile, he returned to Germany and stayed there until the end of the first World War. In 1919, Hochschild returned once again to South America with his wife, Käthe Rosenbaum, whom he had married the previous year. His son, Gerardo Hochschild Rosenbaum, was born in 1920, and his wife died four years later.

During the following two decades, Hochschild built up an economic empire in Bolivia around the mining and trade of tin ore. His empire stretched from Peru in the north to Chile in the south. During this period of growth, more of his family followed him to South America to work for him, including his cousin Philipp Hochschild and Philipp's wife Germaine. Moritz (or Don Mauricio, as he was known in South America) and Germaine had an affair, and they married after Germaine divorced Philipp.

The 1930s saw the peak of the Moritz Hochschild Group's economical and political influence. In 1938, using his influence with German Busch, Bolivia's military president from 1937 to 1939, Hochschild pushed Bolivia to open its doors to Jewish refugees from Hitler's Germany. An estimated 9,000 were admitted. Hochschild also funded the transport of the refugees and their housing once they arrived in the South American country. Newspapers have called him "Bolivia's Schindler."

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