Joseph Günzburg — banker and philanthropist with roots in the Russian Empire
Joseph Yozel Günzburg, known in Russian as Iosif-Evzel or Osip Gavrilovich Gintsburg, was born in 1812 in Vitebsk, in the Russian Empire, the son of Gabriel Jacob Günzburg, a merchant whose family came from Vilna. He became one of the founders of the modern Jewish financial and communal elite of the Empire, and the first of a dynasty of bankers, scholars and philanthropists.
He began as a contractor to the government and as a vodka tax farmer, a trade in which he had high-level connections in the 1840s and 1850s, and acquired great wealth during the Crimean War as a supplier to the army. In 1858 he led a group of merchants who petitioned the government to allow Jewish merchants to live outside the Pale of Settlement. The following year, 1859, he opened the I. E. Günzburg bank in St Petersburg, with a branch in Paris, and the family divided its time between the two capitals. Along with other wealthy Jewish families of the Empire, he financed the building of a large part of its railway network.
Günzburg used his position on behalf of the Jewish population of the Empire. In 1861 the government appointed him to a rabbinical commission, and in 1863, with official permission, he founded the Society for the Promotion of Culture among the Jews of Russia, whose aim was to spread knowledge of the Russian language and secular education; he was its president until his death. The society sponsored translations of the Bible and other works into Russian. His efforts contributed to the 1874 reform that made the rules of military service for Jews the same as for subjects of other faiths, and to greater freedom of movement for Jewish merchants and artisans. He also endowed a fund for the Talmud Torah of Vilna, his father's native town, and served as head of the St Petersburg Jewish community, in which post he was succeeded by his son Horace.
The family was ennobled by the Grand Duke of Hesse-Darmstadt, on 9 November 1870 according to the Jewish Encyclopedia or in 1871 according to other sources, and on 2 August 1874 Joseph received the title of baron. He died in Paris on 12 January 1878. His son Horace carried on his banking and communal work, and his grandson David became a well-known orientalist.
"With a bank branch in Paris, the family divided its time between St Petersburg and the French capital; Joseph Günzburg died in Paris in 1878."
Migration storyTracing the roots — Vitebsk, Vitebsk Governorate (now Belarus)
Born in Vitebsk in 1812, he made his fortune as a tax farmer and army contractor, founded a bank in St Petersburg in 1859 and led the city's Jewish community, while dividing his later years between St Petersburg and Paris, where he died in 1878.
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Vitebsk, Vitebsk Governorate (now Belarus). At the time, this region lay within the Russian Empire, which spanned from Poland to the Pacific.