Max Warburg

Max Warburg, 1904

Max M. Warburg (5 June 1867 – 26 December 1946) was a German banker. He was a scion of the illustrious Warburg family of Altona. From 1910 until 1938, he was director of M. M. Warburg & Co. in Hamburg, Germany. Prior to his directing of the Warburg banking company, he developed apprenticeships in Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Paris, and London. As head of that firm, he advised Kaiser Wilhelm II prior to World War I.

His brother Paul Warburg was the chief architect of the Federal Reserve Board in the United States.

In the 1930s, despite the rise of the Nazi Party, Warburg felt there was hope for the future in Germany and tried to wait out the Nazi crisis. Beginning in 1933 he served on the board of the German Reichsbank under governor Hjalmar Schacht. He sold the bank because the 1935 Nuremberg laws set the framework and campaign of “Aryanization”. He then emigrated to the United States in 1938.

Max Warburg married Alice Magnus in 1899, and together they had four daughters and a son, Eric Warburg (1900—1990), founder of E.M. Warburg & Co, later known as Warburg Pincus.