Warburg family

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The Warburg family is a German family of bankers. The Warburgs are Jewish and moved from Bologna to Warburg in Germany in the 16th century before moving to Altona, near Hamburg. They took their surname from the city of Warburg. The brothers Moses Marcus Warburg and Gerson Warburg founded the M. M. Warburg & Co. banking company in 1798 that is still in existence. Their great-great grandson, Siegmund George Warburg, founded investment bank S.G. Warburg & Co in London in 1946.

One of the members of the family in the United States was Felix Warburg. He was a philanthropist, and his house in New York City became the Jewish Museum. Another American Warburg was Paul Warburg, the father of the U.S. Federal Reserve System.

The German branch of the family included Max Warburg who was one of the founders of the IG Farben industrial conglomerate which later played such an ominous role in helping the Third Reich. At the outbreak of WWII however all jewish members had been expelled from the board of IG Farben (and most other companies). Max Warburg fled to the United States in 1938.

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For a list of members of the Warburg family, see Warburg (disambiguation)

As authors Tarpley and Chaitkin discuss in the second chapter of their "George Bush, the Unauthorized autobiography, Max Warburg was appointed to the board of the Bush group controled Hamburg-Amerika line on March 7, 1933. In turn, Warburg wrote the infamous letters which helped convince rightist American Jewish groups to campaign against opposition to 'the New Germany'. While thousands of his fellow German Jews along with many other of his fellow citizens were being rounded up, Warburg played his lucrative role until the Nazi race laws brought about his ouster from his directorships and he left to join his American relatives. Note that this was in 1938 when US racist laws and 'our brave sailors' were turning back Jews and other victims of Fascism.