The Jews in America Trilogy (22 page)

The thing about August Belmont that impressed the other German Jewish bankers was, of course, that astonishing religion change, that dazzling mixed marriage, that leap out of the ghetto into the perfumed upper air of New York society. The others were eager to be accepted by their new city too, but were unprepared for any move as drastic as his. Privately, they were shocked by the spectacle of Belmont; it seemed to them dishonest. It was one thing to wish to assimilate, but quite another to deny a whole tradition; one thing to embrace a new culture, but another to betray an old. Yet they regarded Belmont with mixed feelings—part admiration for his daring, part distrust of his motives.

Belmont's manner toward his former coreligionists was, in the meantime,
disarming. “Belmont was a bit
too
jovial today,” Joseph Seligman wrote in 1873. When the two met at their railroad board meetings, August Belmont always greeted Joseph with a “Hullo, Seligman!” in his gritty voice. Joseph, out of deference, always called Belmont “Mr. Belmont,” but one day in 1874, feeling bold, Joseph cried out, “Hullo, Belmont!” Belmont's face froze. He chose an interesting way to punish Joseph for his overfamiliarity. For the next few months, he elaborately misspelled Joseph's name on correspondence as “Selligman,” “Seligmann,” or “Suligman.”

Then there was the matter of J. P. Morgan. While Morgan was willing to participate with the Seligmans on certain bond issues, he sometimes seemed a bit more willing to do business with Belmont. Actually, Morgan, who understood the Belmont-Seligman rivalry perfectly, was beginning to use both men to suit his own needs, playing one against the other whenever the opportunity arose. But Joseph was convinced that Morgan's freeze-and-thaw attitude toward him was simply because he was Jewish and Belmont wasn't.

August Belmont defined a dilemma for New York's other German Jewish banking families: how much Jewishness to abandon, how much gentile Americanization to absorb.

Over the years the Sephardim in America had gradually modified their religious services to conform more closely to the prevailing Protestant ways. Early in the 1800's Temple Shearith Israel had introduced English into the service. The cantors, or
chazonim
, began to assume the dignity, and the dress, of Protestant clergymen and were called “Reverend.” The public auctioning of honors, which began to seem undignified, was discontinued. Other modifications evolved slowly. But the German Jews, though there had been steps toward Reform in a few big-city congregations in Germany and in England, felt they must Americanize their New York synagogue in a bold and abrupt sweep.

Partly, they wanted to catch up with the Sephardim in the assimilation-social-acceptance process. They were also concerned for their children. As early as 1854 the
Israelite
had gloomily predicted: “We will have no Jews left in this country in less than half a century” if synagogues did not rapidly adjust to the new age in America.

Temple Emanu-El became the symbol of the Germans' efforts “to become one with progress.” When its new Fifth Avenue edifice was opened in 1870, with men like Joseph and Jesse Seligman on the building committee, it was hailed by the
New York Times
as one of the leading
congregations in the world, “the first to stand forward before the world and proclaim the dominion of reason over blind and bigoted faith.” Reason was the key, and the new temple seemed somehow a beacon for a new era when all men, regardless of race or creed, would join in a “universal communion” of reason. The Judaism that the temple proclaimed was “the Judaism of the heart, the Judaism which proclaims the spirit of religion as being of more importance than the letter.” In 1873 Temple Emanu-El called Gustav Gottheil to its pulpit from Manchester, England, to preach this enlightened Judaism “in impeccable English accents, comprehensible to all New Yorkers.”

The attempt to bridge opposing worlds is apparent in the physical structure of Temple Emanu-El itself. Inside, with its pews and pulpit and handsome chandeliers—where hatted women worship alongside the men (unhatted), and not in a separate curtained gallery—it looks very like a church. But outside, as a kind of gentle gesture to the past, its Moorish façade calls to mind a synagogue.

Yet noble sentiments are often easier to express in rhetoric and architecture than they are in life. In some ways the temple seemed to emphasize the fact that Jews continued to live in two communities, the Jewish and the gentile, and the temple's congregation, by attempting to be a little of each, began to seem a little less than either. This duality of feeling only seemed to isolate the Reform Jew further. Emotionally and theologically, the results of this adjustment were complicated. When Reform Rabbi Sarner had been examined by an army board of chaplains during the Civil War, the notation placed after his name at the conclusion of the interview was “Lutheran.”

While the congregation of Temple Emanu-El seemed uncertain as to just how “Jewish” and how “American” it wished to be, it seemed quite certain that it wanted to retain a third culture: the German. New York's German Jews began, in the 1870's, to say to each other, “We are really more German than Jewish,” and were convinced that nineteenth-century Germany embodied the finest flowering of the arts, sciences, and technology. German continued to be the language the families spoke in their homes. The music children practiced in family music rooms was German music. When a Seligman, Loeb, or Lehman traveled to Europe, he sailed on the Hamburg-America Line; it was the best. When he needed a rest, he took the waters at a German spa—Baden, Carlsbad, or Marienbad. At their dinners they served German wines. When illness struck, the ailing were hurried to Germany, where the best doctors were.

The elite German Jewish club was the Harmonie, founded in 1852
and one of the oldest social clubs in New York. For forty-one years it was the
Harmonie Gesellschaft
, German was its official language, and the Kaiser's portrait hung in the hall. In some ways, however, the Harmonie was as progressive as Temple Emanu-El, where its membership worshiped. It was the first New York men's club to admit ladies at the dinner hour, and it was famous for its food. (Particularly celebrated was the club's herring with sour cream, which it put up in jars and the ladies carried home.)

Prosperous German Jewish men continued to return to Germany on their
Brautschaus
. One summer in Germany, Joseph Seligman encountered his friend Wolf Goodhart of New York, who had come over on just such a mission as Joseph had carried out two dozen years earlier. Joseph had recommended a particular young lady to Goodhart, but said Joseph in a letter home:

He says he has a mind of his own and will not marry unless he gets a lady of the first water—handsome, highly educated, sprightly. In fact he wants something quite
rechercé
, a
ne plus ultra
. I think he may, on his way back, drop in at St. James's Palace and look around there! His brother, Sander, in Lichtenfels who is more of a matter-of-fact man, tells him he is a d—d fool if he does not try to get one with money. (Sander has one in view with
Sechs Tausend Gulden.)

In their New York houses Loebs, Goldmans, and Lehmans employed French chefs, Irish maids, English butlers, but German governesses. When children reached college age, they were dispatched to universities at Berlin, Heidelberg, and Leipzig.

As for elementary schools, the German Jews had, from 1871 on, one of their very own on West Fifty-ninth Street—the Sachs Collegiate Institute, run by Dr. Julius Sachs. Herr Doktor Sachs was a stern, Old World schoolmaster whose uniformed boys, in smart black suits and starched stand-up collars, were seldom spared the rod. He emphasized the classics, languages (including German), and Teutonic discipline. He himself spoke nine languages fluently, including Sanskrit. At the height of his career, Dr. Sachs was turning out Lehmans, Cullmans, Zinssers, Meyers, Goldmans, and Loebs who were ready for Harvard at the age of fifteen. Julius Sachs also established a coordinated school for girls in New York, though it was less successful. It was considered less important to instill the German heritage in girls, and daughters were sent to Brearley or to finishing schools abroad. After a day at Dr. Sachs's schools, children came home for further instruction under German tutors.

Something of an exception in their approach to education—as indeed they often were to other things—were the Seligmans, led by Joseph, whose longing for Americanization was overpowering. Several of his brothers had early Americanized their first names. Henry was originally Hermann, William was Wolf, James was Jacob, Jesse was Isaias, and Leopold was Lippmann. As parents, they began naming their children after the great heroes of their adopted land. Joseph's sons included George Washington Seligman, Edwin Robert Anderson Seligman (after Robert Anderson, the defender of Fort Sumter), Isaac Newton Seligman, and Alfred Lincoln Seligman—a quaint compromise. Joseph planned to call the boy Abraham Lincoln Seligman, but decided the name Abraham was too Judaic to perpetuate in America. At the same time, Joseph and his brothers named their oldest sons David, after their grandfather, following the Jewish tradition, and the oldest daughters Frances, after Fanny. William Seligman's David was David Washington. James modified David to DeWitt, thereby naming his first son after the first David Seligman as well as DeWitt Clinton. James also had a Washington and a Jefferson.

To educate his five boys, Joseph hit upon a dazzlingly American idea. He hired the creator of the great American boy hero, Horatio Alger, to live in his house and tutor his sons. James's five boys were invited to sit in on the Alger classes, where it was hoped they would all acquire the red-blooded standards of “Tattered Tom,” “Ragged Dick,” and Alger's other newsboy-to-riches heroes.

The experiment was not entirely a success. Alger may have been able to invent boy heroes, but he was far from one himself. He was a timid, sweet-tempered little man who, in his nonteaching hours, practiced his ballet steps. He was easily cowed, and his customary cry of alarm was “Oh, Lordy-me!” Ten lively Seligman boys were clearly too much for him, and he was forever having to rush to Babet or James's wife, Rosa, for assistance. Once, when he cried out for help, the boys jumped on him, tied him up, and locked him in a trunk in the attic. They refused to let him out until he promised not to tell their mothers.

The schoolroom was on the top floor of the Seligmans' brownstone, and, as Alger ascended the stairs the boys stood on an upper landing with lighted candles, aiming drops of hot wax at the top of his small bald head. But Alger, who had a classic inferiority complex, was endlessly forgiving. After lessons, such as they were, he liked to play billiards with the boys. He was extremely nearsighted, and when it was his turn at the cue, the boys substituted red apples for the red balls. Alger never caught on, and, as each new apple was demolished with his
cue, would cry, “Oh, Lordy-me, I've broken another ball! I don't know my own
strength!
”

But Alger had his compensations. J. & W. Seligman & Company opened an account in his name, took his literary royalties and invested them for him, and made him a wealthy man. He remained a friend of the Seligmans and, long after the boys were grown, was a regular guest at Sunday dinner, where the practical jokes continued.

There was one favorite. Joseph's married daughter, Helene, and her husband lived with her parents. After dinner one of her brothers would steer Mr. Alger into the library and into a sofa next to Helene. There he would artfully drape one of Mr. Alger's tiny arms around Helene's rather ample waist while another brother ran from the room shouting, “Mr. Alger is trying to seduce Helene!” Helene's husband would then rush into the room brandishing a bread knife, crying, “
Seducer!
” The first three times this happened, Horatio Alger fell to the floor in a dead faint. Perhaps he did teach the boys to be Americans after all.

A few other German Jewish families altered their names slightly to make them sound a bit more American. Stralem, for instance, was originally Stralheim. Neustadt became Newton. Ickelheimer, which was certainly a mouthful, was telescoped to Isles. But the Seligmans rather frowned on this practice. It smacked of Belmont-ism.

Except for William. In the 1870's William Seligman, the most snobbish, probably, of the Seligman brothers, journeyed to New York from Paris for a conference with Joseph. William said, “Joe, now that we're getting to be men of substance, I suggest that we change our name.”

Joseph looked at him for a moment with hooded, sleepy eyes, smiling his famous semismile. Then he nodded soberly. “I agree that you should change your name, William,” he replied. “I suggest you change it to Schlemiel.”

*
To further confuse the situation, a number of Jewish families who had come to America before the Germans and who were not historically Sephardim began calling themselves “Sephardic” to escape the “Jew” label.

17

“THE HAUGHTY AND PURSE-PROUD ROTHSCHILDS”

There was one area in which August Belmont excelled. Its name was Rothschild. Belmont was not a spectacular, brilliant, or even “interesting” financier. He made few, if any, great financial coups. But men like Morgan liked to work with the European Rothschilds, and August Belmont, as their agent, was always there, helpful, collecting his percentage on the money that passed back and forth. When smaller bankers turned to him, he was never more than barely cooperative. When Goldman, Sachs, for instance, first dreamed of establishing an international operation, they approached a London firm called Kleinwort Sons & Company, to see if an English connection could be arranged. Since the Kleinworts did not “know” Sachs or Goldman, they discreetly inquired of the Rothschilds for a report on the New York firm's standing. The Rothschilds didn't know either, and passed the query along to Belmont. Belmont took his time about replying, but eventually sent back a note, via the Rothschilds, saying that Goldman, Sachs & Company was “one firm about which nobody can say anything against.”