Aron Hirsch

Hirsch was born to a Jewish family on 6 February 1858 in Halberstadt, Germany. In 1877, he joined the family business, metal trading company Aron Hirsch & Sohn, founded by the grandfather Aron Hirsch (1783–1842), in Halberstadt. In 1898, he moved to Berlin to take over the management of the Eberswalder Messingwerk after the death of his uncle Gustav Hirsch. In 1906 he joined the de:Gesellschaft der Freunde (Society of Friends). In 1907, Aron Hirsch & Sohn discontinued its industrial activities and incorporated them into the newly founded company Hirsch Kupfer- und Messingwerke AG (HKM), Berlin, which went public in 1909 where he served as chairman of the board and shareholder.

He became a member of the management board of the Berlin Stock Exchange and served on numerous supervisory boards, including Deutsche Bank. During the First World War, HKM profited due to German armaments orders but simultaneously lost money as their overseas raw material base was expropriated by Germany's war opponents. In 1929, the Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) took over the firm's industrial activities and the trading house was subsumed by Handelshaus H. Schoyer.

Hirsch was involved in the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums (the Academy for the Science of Judaism) and in the Berlin Jewish community. In 1922 he received an honorary doctorate from the Technische Universität Darmstadt. He was married to Amalie "Mally" Hirsch (b. Mainz d. 1865 in Frankfurt); they had two children: Siegmund Hirsch (1885–1981) and Dora "Dodo" Hirsch Schwartz (d. 1893). In 1932, Hirsch retired to Wiesbaden with his wife and initially lived in the Hotel Nassauer Hof. Due to the increasing persecution after the rise of the National Socialists and their seizure of power in 1933, the couple was forced to continuously relocate. Aron Hirsch died on 22 February 1942, in Wiesbaden; his wife Amalie committed suicide on 27 August 1942, shortly after it was announced that she would be deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp.

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• Stefi Jersch-Wenzel (1972), "Hirsch, Aron", Neue Deutsche Biographie (in German), vol. 9, Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, pp. 211–212; (full text online)