Moritz Hochschild Collection
Scope and Contents
The collection contains extensive correspondence conducted by Helmut Waszkis with relatives of Moritz Hochschild and former employees of the Moritz Hochschild Group, direct and indirect publications about Moritz Hochschild and his company, as well as documents published by his companies and material about Hochschild and his family.
Series I: Personal is divided into three subseries. The first contains documents about Moritz Hochschild and, more extensively, about his family. The most valuable document is the family tree with eight generations of Hochschilds. All documents related to his academic life are in the second sub-series. The third sub-series contains correspondence.
Documents published by the company, business correspondence and names of former employees are located in Series II.
Series III: Publications contains published material about Moritz Hochschild or documents in which he is mentioned. It is separated into two sub-series; the first contains clippings and articles from periodicals; the second, copies from books, manuscripts, booklets and letters from publications, but not periodicals.
Correspondence by Helmut Waszkis and others in order to gather information about the private and business life of Moritz Hochschild can be found in Series IV. This collection contains correspondence with 81 relatives, former employees, historians and business people.
Series V consists of notes Helmut Waszkis compiled during his research.
The photographs contained in Series VI were removed to the Photograph Collection. They portray Moritz Hochschild, relatives and employees, as well as the landscape and mines of Bolivia.
"Moritz Hochschild" will be the exclusive name used in this collection (though he is alternately named, e.g., Moritz Hochschild, Dr. Moritz Hochschild, Mauricio Hochschild, Don Mauricio, Dr. Mauricio Hochschild, etc.). When writing about his companies, the term MHG (Moritz Hochschild Group) will be used.
Dates
- Creation: 1881-2002
Creator
- Hochschild, Moritz, 1881-1965 (Person)
Language of Materials
The collection is in English, German and Spanish.
Access Restrictions
Open to researchers. Series IV: Correspondence is restricted.
Collection is digitized.
Collection is microfilmed - use MF 958.
Use Restrictions
There may be some restrictions on the use of the collection. For more information, contact:
Leo Baeck Institute, Center for Jewish History, 15 West 16th Street, New York, NY, 10011
email: lbaeck@lbi.cjh.org
Biographical Note
Moritz Hochschild was born 1881 in Biblis (Hessen), a small town in Germany near Frankfurt. Members of his family were already in the mining and metal business. Eventually, he studied mining and engineering at the Bergakadamie Freiberg. He began his career working for the Metallgesellschaft, a metal trading company, in 1905 in Germany. He then went to Spain and later Australia before moving to South America to start his own business. After several years in Chile, he went back to Germany and stayed in Europe during the First World War. In 1919, he returned to South America accompanied by his wife Käthe Rosenbaum, whom he had married the year before. Their son Gerardo Hochschild was born in 1920. Four years later, Käthe died.
Meanwhile, Moritz Hochschild's business spread from Chile to Peru and Bolivia, Bolivia being the most important place for his company in the coming decades. The main business of his company was mining and trading tin ores, and he became one of the "tin barons" of Bolivia. During this period of growth, additional family members came over to South America to work for him. His second cousin, Philipp Hochschild, immigrated with his wife Germaine. Moritz Hochschild began an affair with her and, upon her divorce, he married her.
In the 1930s, the Moritz Hochschild Group expanded and his economic and political influence grew. In 1939 and 1944 he was arrested and sentenced to death by the Bolivian government. He was released, but a few weeks later he was kidnapped. After two weeks, he was released and left Bolivia forever.
In 1951, Hochschild and his wife donated the bulk of their fortune to the Hochschild Trust and Foundation. His company was expropriated in Bolivia in 1952, but still managed to survive with 30% of its previous assets. The company grew even bigger, expanding worldwide, including the very successful Mantos Blancos operation. When Moritz Hochschild died in Paris in 1965 he was an internationally known mining industrialist and merchant in ores and metals centered in South America.
Extent
1.6 Linear Feet
Abstract
The collection documents the personal and professional life of Moritz Hochschild, an important German Jewish mining entrepreneur in South America during the first half of the twentieth century. Most of the older materials are copies, but there are also original certificates, correspondence, clippings and photographs.
Arrangement
The collection is organized into six series:
Microfilm
The collection is available on five reels of microfilm (MF 958):
- Reel 1: 1/1 - 1/49
- Reel 2: 1/50 - 1/70
- Reel 3: 1/71 - 2/16
- Reel 4: 2/17 - 2/59
- Reel 5: 2/60 - 2/89
Separated Material
Photographs were removed to the Photograph Collection.
The following books were removed to the LBI library:
- Waszkis, Helmut: Dr. Moritz (Don Mauricio) Hochschild, 1881-1965 : the man and his companies ; a German Jewish mining entrepreneur in South America. Frankfurt am Main 2001
- Achinger, Hans: Wilhelm Merton in seiner Zeit; Frankfurt am Main 1965
- Achinger, Hans: Richard Merton; Frankfurt am Main 1970
- Sobel, Richard: Salomon Brothers, 1910-1985: advancing to leadership. New York 1986
Related materials can also be found in the following collections in the LBI archives:
- Philipp Brothers Collection (AR 25131)
- Metallgesellschaft Collection (AR 25139)
- Title
- Guide to the Papers of Moritz Hochschild (1881-1965), 1881-2000 AR 25048 / MF 958
- Author
- Processed by Benjamin Schultz
- Date
- © 2005
- Language of description
- English
- Script of description
- Latin
- Language of description note
- Description is in English.
Revision Statements
- August 2009.: Microfilm inventory added.
- September 2010:: Links to digital objects added in Container List.
- 2010-09-22 : encoding of linking to digital objects from finding aid was changed from <extref> to <dao> through dao_conv.xsl
Repository Details
Part of the Leo Baeck Institute Repository
