James Loeb

James Loeb (/loʊb/;[3] German: [løːp]; August 6, 1867 – May 27, 1933) was an American banker, Hellenist and philanthropist.

For the 20th-century American politician and activist, see James I. Loeb.
James Loeb
Loeb in his youth, possibly during his time at Harvard
Born(1867-08-06)August 6, 1867
New York City, New York, U.S.[1]
DiedMay 27, 1933(1933-05-27) (aged 65)
Munich, Germany
NationalityGerman
American
Alma materHarvard College[2]
OccupationBanker
Parent

Biography

James Loeb, of German-Jewish descent, was the second son of Solomon Loeb and Betty Loeb.[4] James Loeb joined his father at Kuhn, Loeb & Co. in 1888 and was made partner in 1894, but he retired from the bank in 1901 due to severe illness.

In memory of his former lecturer and friend Charles Eliot Norton, Loeb created The Charles Eliot Norton Memorial Lectureship in 1907.[5] In 1911, he founded and endowed the Loeb Classical Library. He assembled a team of Anglo-American classicists to oversee the series, and arranged for publication through Heinemann (publisher) in London[6] When James Loeb died, he bequeathed the Loeb Classical Library and funds to Harvard University to establish The Loeb Classical Library Foundation and to support research in the classics. [7]

He founded the Institute of Musical Art, which later became part of the Juilliard School of Music. That year he also turned over his collection of Arretine pottery to the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard.[8]

Loeb in his 30s

He donated a large amount of funds to what is now called the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry, which helped his former psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin to establish and maintain the Institute in its early days.[1] Nevertheless, presumably unknown to Loeb, Kraepelin held racist views about Jews, and his student who took over the Institute, Ernst Rudin, was a leading advocate of racial hygiene and forced sterilization or killing of psychiatric inpatients for which he was personally honoured by Adolf Hitler.[9][10][11]

Loeb left a large portion of his significant art collection to the Museum Antiker Kleinkunst in Munich (today the Staatliche Antikensammlungen) ("Sammlung James Loeb"). He was a member of the English Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies.[8]

Loeb's correspondence with Aby Warburg has been characterized as creating a Renaissance of relationships of the European to classical antiquity. [12]

Translations
  • Paul Delcharme, Euripides and the Spirit of His Dreams
  • Maurice Croiset, Aristophanes and the Political Parties at Athens
  • Auguste Couat, Alexandrian Poetry under the First Three Ptolemies, 324-222 B.C.

References
  1. "About James Loeb, Founder". Harvard University Press. Retrieved March 31, 2020.
  2. "James Loeb Bequeaths Over $800,000 To Harvard College". The Harvard Crimson. September 21, 1933. Retrieved August 25, 2022.
  3. "Loeb". Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary.
  4. Born Betty Gallenberg. Salomon Loeb met and married Betty in Mannheim, Grand Duchy of Baden, Germany in 1862. She was then 28 years old, educated as a musician and teaching the piano. The James Loeb biography from the Loeb Classical Library calls her Betty (Goldman) Loeb.
  5. The Charles Eliot Norton Memorial Lectureship Archived November 4, 2005, at the Wayback Machine, Archaeological Institute of America
  6. McDonough, Christopher M. 2012. “The Red and the Green: James Loeb and His Classical Library.” Sewanee Review 120 (4): 553–58.
  7. History of the Loeb Classical Library. Harvard University).
  8. Rines, George Edwin, ed. (1920). "Loeb, James" . Encyclopedia Americana.
  9. Brüne, Martin (January 1, 2007). "On human self-domestication, psychiatry, and eugenics". Philosophy, Ethics, and Humanities in Medicine. 2 (1): 21. doi:10.1186/1747-5341-2-21. PMC 2082022. PMID 17919321.
  10. Science and Inhumanity: The Kaiser-Wilhelm/Max Planck Society William E. Seidelman MD, 2001
  11. Who's Who in Nazi Germany Robert S. Wistrich, Routledge, July 4, 2013
  12. "Aby Warburg's Collaboration with James Loeb and Fritz Saxl" in McEwan, D. (2023). Studies on Aby Warburg, Fritz Saxl and Gertrud Bing (1st ed.). Routledge.

Further reading
  • "Aby Warburg's Collaboration with James Loeb and Fritz Saxl" in McEwan, D. (2023). Studies on Aby Warburg, Fritz Saxl and Gertrud Bing (1st ed.). Routledge.
  • James Loeb, 1887–1933: Kunstsammler und Mäzen, by Brigitte Salmen (ed.) for the Schloßmuseum des Marktes Murnau, Murnau, 2000. [This is a German-language exhibition-catalogue for a presentation of the life of James Loeb, collector and philanthropist at the Schloßmuseum Murnau, April 7 – July 9, 2000. The book contains essays from various authors (Brigitte Salmen, Dorothea McEwan, Erika Simon and others). It also contains a German translation of James Loeb's biographical essay Our Father: A Memorial [privately printed, 1929]; James Loeb: Unser Vater: Eine Denkschrift für Salomon Loeb, pp. 9–16.]
  • Olmstead, Andrea. “The Toll of Idealism: James Loeb—Musician, Classicist, Philanthropist.” The Journal of Musicology (St. Joseph, Mich.) 14.2 (1996): 233–262.
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