In 1869 Maurice de Hirsch obtained a concession from the Ottoman government to build railways in Turkey. He raised the finance by selling bonds and in 1889 the lines he built were connected to those passing through Serbia and Bulgaria to Austria. The junction allowed the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits to run a service between Vienna and Istanbul; they called it the Orient Express. Maurice de Hirsch is estimated to have made around 150 million francs from the enterprise. It helped turn him into one of the wealthiest men in Europe.
His story though is not one of rags to riches. Maurice de Hirsch was born into a prosperous and successful banking family in Germany, in 1831. His grandfather Jakob had been ennobled by the ruler of Bavaria and the title of Baron von Hirsch was passed down to Maurice through his father. Despite being Jewish, Baron Maurice de Hirsch moved in the upper crust of 19th century Victorian society, in the same social circles as the Prince of Wales and the Austrian archduke Rudolph. But he is not remembered for his social status, nor particularly for his railway enterprise or wealth. When he is remembered at all, which is not as often as he should be and certainly less than his contemporaries in the Rothschild family, Baron Hirsch is remembered primarily for his philanthropy.
It was probably his wife Clara who sparked his interest in philanthropy. She too was a member of a wealthy banking family and in 1873, while he was working on the Turkish railway project, she drew his attention to the plight of the impoverished Jews in Turkey and the Balkans. She encouraged him to donate a substantial sum to the French humanitarian institution, Alliance Israélite, to set up and run skills training programmes in Turkey and to endow the organisation with an ongoing income. It has been estimated that by the time he died in 1896 the Baron had provided the Alliance Israélite alone with upwards of 12 million francs, a considerable sum for that time. And that was just one of many organisations which he supported. His charitable donations throughout his life are estimated at around $3 billion, in today’s money.
In 1881 the condition of Jews in Russia was worsening considerably. Czar Alexander III had just ascended to the throne and, in a replay of the activities of his predecessor but one, he made oppression of the Jews in Russia one of his main policies. After his coronation a wave of pogroms broke out and the ‘May Laws’ were passed, depriving many Jews of their livelihoods. The head of the Russian orthodox church declared that hopefully, 'one-third of the Jews will die, one-third will convert, and one-third will flee the country'.
Maurice de Hirsch was one of several philanthropists who stepped in to try to alleviate the plight of the Russian Jews. He donated one million francs to an Emergency Fund and sent two representatives to Brody, a town on the Austrian border to which Jewish refugees were fleeing. His representatives distributed a further five million francs; a lot of money but a drop in the ocean compared to the extent of the need.
Since it was not possible to help all 5 million Jews flee from Russia, he began to work with the Alliance Israélite to try to alleviate the suffering of those within the country itself. They came up with a plan to give 50 million francs to the Russian government which would be used to set up schools for Jewish children, on condition that Jews would then be treated as equal citizens. To minimise controversy they bought off the head of the Russian orthodox church with a one million franc bribe. The head of the church gladly took the money but the plan to set up schools came to nothing; the Czar insisted that he would only accept the 50 million if he had full control over how it was spent. Hirsch had no intention of letting him get away with that.
Some time after the collapse of the negotiations with the Russian government the Baron received a letter from an American philanthropist, Michael Heilprin. He was seeking financial support to encourage Russian Jews to come to the USA and take up farming. The two men agreed to set up a $2.4 million trust, to be named the Baron Hirsch Fund. The trust would pay for Russian Jews to travel to the USA, provide them with loans to get started as farmers, give them tools and training and pay for education for their children.
In 1890 a Romanian doctor, Wilhelm Lowenthal, contacted the Baron. He had just returned from Argentina where he had been carrying out a survey on behalf of the government. He told Hirsch that he had come across 129 Jewish families from Podolia in Ukraine who had arrived in Buenos Aires believing that a European philanthropist had given them the title deeds to land that he owned up-country. When they arrived it turned out that the deeds they had been given were invalid and that the land in question was already occupied by other colonists. Whether this was a mistake or a scam has never been resolved but the upshot was that around 800 people were homeless and starving.
Lowenthal told the Baron that apart from the immediate distress the Podolians were suffering there was a far bigger question. Argentina was a huge and largely unpopulated country, ripe for settlement, with a government which actively encouraged immigration. It was ideal for Jews who could no longer tolerate life in Russia. The issue was how to help masses of Russian Jews leave their homes and travel the vast distance to take up productive, agricultural lives in Argentina. Lowenthal suggested that the 50 million francs which the Baron had intended to spend alleviating the lives of Jews in Russia would be better spent in setting up an endowment to help them emigrate to Argentina. The interest on 50 million francs, he calculated, would enable 500 families to emigrate from Russia to Argentina each year.
The Baron was taken with Lowenthal’s idea. He believed in philanthropy that helped people move into more productive lives and he could see that there was little possibility of improving the lot of the Jews who remained in Russia. He decided “to stake my wealth and intellectual powers . . . to give a portion of my companions in faith the possibility of finding a new existence, primarily as farmers and also as handicraftsmen, in those lands where the laws and religious tolerance permit them to carry on the struggle for existence”. He set up the Jewish Colonial Association, as a memorial to his only son Lucien who had died four years earlier at the age of 31. He donated 2 million pounds and bequeathed a further 7 million on his death. Clara also donated a significant part of her personal fortune. By 1906 there were 7,000 farmers in Argentina who were supported by the Association.
Raising the money and setting up the Jewish Colonial Association was the easiest part of the resettlement project. Almost from the outset the Russian settlers found themselves beset by obstacles. Many lost their possessions during the long land and sea journey from Russia to Argentina and when they arrived they found they did not have the tools needed to work the land. They had to contend with locusts, droughts and the very different conditions of life in a land so far from where they had come. The project had been ambitious, with hindsight it had always been likely to suffer from teething troubles, but it survived. A considerable proportion of today’s Jewish communities in Argentina and Brazil are descended from those who Baron Hirsch helped to leave Russia.
Baron Hirsch died in 1896 but his legacy lives on. The Baron Hirsch Jewish Farmers Community links the descendants of his beneficiaries in the USA, Canada, Argentina and Brazil. The Baron is also getting more attention today than in the past. A biography The Baron by Mathias B. Lehmann was published in 2022 and Javier Sinay’s The Murders of Moisés Ville tells the story of the town established by those first unfortunate settlers who arrived in Argentina only to find that their title deeds were no longer valid.
Baron Maurice de Hirsch may not be as well remembered as some of the other 19th century Jewish philanthropists but the work he and his wife Clara did is of no less importance.