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Otto Kahn: Art, Money, and Modern Time

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In the early decades of the twentieth century, almost everyone in modern theater, literature, or film knew of Otto Kahn (1867-1934), and those who read the financial press or followed the news from Wall Street could scarcely have missed his name. A partner at one of America's premier private banks, he played a leading role in reorganizing the U.S. railroad system and supporting the Allied war effort in World War I. The German-Jewish Kahn was also perhaps the most influential patron of the arts the nation has ever seen: he helped finance the Metropolitan Opera, brought the Ballets Russes to America, and bankrolled such promising young talent as poet Hart Crane, the Provincetown Players, and the editors of the Little Review.

This book is the full-scale biography Kahn has long deserved. Theresa Collins chronicles Kahn's life and times and reveals his singular place at the intersection of capitalism and modernity. Drawing on research in private correspondence, congressional testimony, and other sources, she paints a fascinating portrait of the figure whose seemingly incongruous identities as benefactor and banker inspired the New York Times to dub him the "Man of Steel and Velvet."

"This rich and fascinating biography tells the remarkable story of a remarkable man who, combining the power of an international financier with the finesse of a patron of the arts, helped make New York City a world cultural capital."--Arthur Schlesinger Jr.

"Theresa Collins's Otto Kahn is a superb piece of biography and a major work of historical reclamation. This is history written in the grand manner--sweeping in scope, majestic in style. And it restores to us in all his grandeur and cultural consequence a remarkable figure from our past."--Martin Duberman, City University of New York

"This first full-length biography of Otto Kahn offers a compelling portrait of a major figure in the history of American finance and culture. The keen eye and vivid prose of Theresa Collins illuminate the many facets of this fascinating character and his world."--Maury Klein, University of Rhode Island

"a genuinely transnational biography and a model for those who wish to engage in that rapidly growing field of historical scholarship."(Michael Kammen, Cornell University)

In his day, J.P. Morgan was the best-known head of an American financial house. But Otto Kahn was a close second. Today, Morgan enjoys immortality in the popular imagination, while Kahn is all but forgotten. Thankfully Theresa Collins ... has produced a biography of Kahn that illuminates his importance as a man who successfully combined modern business sensibilities with art patronage. (Review by Ian Drake, Philanthropy Magazine, May/June 2003)

"Collins shows how [Kahn] gave away money nearly as quickly as he earned it, his contributions to music, literature, theater, dance, painting and design establishing New York City as an international cultural mecca. . . . Essential details are expertly negotiated, and thornier questions on the reality of latent anti-Semitism among the heirs of the Gilded Age are explored in depth. . . . As Collins aptly demonstrates, this 'self-made aristocrat' mastered the East without losing his soul, and in the process, he ennobled the arts he loved."--Opera News

"A considered and nuanced account of [the] early twentieth century American Medici. . . . Collins' accomplished biographical study profiles from the cinematic deftness with which she crosscuts facets of Kahn's life, an altogether appropriate technique in limning an existence so enamored of and beholden to modernity. Her use of the language of theater and film in interpretive contexts seamlessly brings his many worlds into a unified vision."--Aufbau