Isaac Seligman was a German-American merchant banker and philanthropist. He was the youngest of eight brothers, all of whom emigrated to America and became involved in running various branch offices of the merchant banking house J. & W. Seligman & Co.

J. & W. Seligman & Co.

J. & W. Seligman & Co., founded in 1846, was a prominent U.S. investment bank c. 1860s–1920s until the divestiture of its investment banking arm in the aftermath of the Glass–Steagall Act. The firm was involved in the financing of several major U.S. railroads in the 1870s and the construction of...

, co-founded in Manhattan, New York City in 1846 by Isaac's elder brothers, James and Joseph Seligman

Joseph Seligman

Joseph Seligman was a prominent U.S. banker, and businessman. He has been described as a "robber baron". He was born in Baiersdorf, Germany, emigrating to the United States when he was 18. With his brothers, he started a bank, J. & W. Seligman & Co., with branches in New York, San Francisco, New...

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Biography

He was born Isaak Seligmann in Baiersdorf, Erlangen-Hochstadt, Bayern, Germany (Bavaria), to David Isaak Seligman and Fanny Steinhardt. He later changed his name to Isaac, and in August 1857, at the age of 23, Seligman joined his entrepreneurial brothers in the United States.

Seligman went on to run 'Seligman Brothers', the London branch of the Seligman merchant-banking

Merchant bank

A merchant bank is a financial institution which provides capital to companies in the form of share ownership instead of loans. A merchant bank also provides advisory on corporate matters to the firms they lend to....

 empire with his brother Leopold. He married 18-year-old Lina Messel (b. Darmstadt 1851) in London in 1869. Between 1869 and 1886, Lena bore him three daughters and four sons, the eldest son being Charles David Seligman.

Seligman was also a fundraiser for, benefactor to, and activist in, a large number of charitable and political organisations including the American Society in London, the Anglo-Jewish Association (lobbying against oppression of Serbian Jew

Jews in Serbia

The history of the Jews in Serbia goes back two thousand years. Jews first arrived in what is now Serbia in Roman times. The Jewish communities of the Balkans remained small until the late fifteenth century, when Jews fleeing the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions found refuge in Ottoman-ruled...

s), the German Association (raising funds for those wounded or made destitute by the Franco-Prussian War

Franco-Prussian War

The Franco-Prussian War or Franco-German War, often referred to in France as the 1870 War was a conflict between the Second French Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia. Prussia was aided by the North German Confederation, of which it was a member, and the South German states of Baden, Württemberg and...

), the Mansion House Committee (raising funds for distressed Jews in Russia), the Eighty Club in London (social and political), and the Jew's Deaf and Dumb Home (lip-reading for deaf and dumb), originally founded by Baroness M. de Rothschild, of which home Seligman was the treasurer in 1875.

In 1896, Seligman was appointed joint legal owner and trustee of the 'Tregullow Offices' (later Zimapan Villa), a former Cornish mine office belonging to the Williams mining-mogul family of Scorrier, Cornwall, by Charles Augustus Vansittart Conybeare

Charles Conybeare

Charles Augustus Vansittart Conybeare was an English barrister and a radical Liberal politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1885 to 1895....

, barrister-at-law and MP for Camborne, Cornwall (1885-1895). Seligman was released from his trusteeship in 1902 when Charles Conybeare and his wife Florence sold the property, which originally formed part of a marriage settlement, to mining engineer Charles Rule Williams,

In 1899, Seligman bought 17 Kensington Palace Gardens, London, a grand mansion built in the north Italian villa style, near Arthur Strauss

Arthur Strauss

Arthur Strauss was a British Liberal Unionist, and later Conservative Member of Parliament who later joined the Labour Party....

 MP (Charles Conybeare's parliamentary successor), who lived down at the end of the tree-lined boulevard at No. 1 Kensington Palace Gardens

Kensington Palace Gardens

Kensington Palace Gardens is a street in west central London which contains some of the grandest and most expensive houses in the world. It was the location of the London Cage, the British government MI9 centre used during the Second World War and the Cold War.A tree-lined avenue half a mile long...

. At that time, Seligman's principal home, now part of London's billionaire's row, had at least four reception rooms and 13 bedrooms.

Seligman died a wealthy man in 1928 at the age of 93, leaving a fortune in his will valued at more than ₤18 million in today's money.