Paul Hirsch

Paul Adolf Hirsch (24 February 1881 in Frankfurt am Main25 November 1951 in Cambridge, England) was a German industrialist. He was also a musician, bibliophile and musicologist who assembled the largest private music library in Europe. The Hirsch Collection is now housed at the British Library. Biography Paul Hirsch was born into a wealthy Jewish mercantile family, the fourth of five children of Anna Pauline (née Mayer) and Ferdinand Hirsch (1834–1916). He had two brothers—Robert von Hirsch (18831977), a noted art collector, and Carl Siegmund Hirsch, a district court judge who died in 1938 in the Buchenwald concentration camp. Ferdinand Hirsch founded Hirsch and Company, an iron works, in 1867. After completing school, Paul Hirsch entered the family business, training in England and France, which also broadened his acquaintance with musicians and collectors. In 1911 he married (1889–1969), daughter of a Frankfurt banker. They lived first in Beethovenstraße and later at (destroyed in 1944). They had two sons and two daughters. From 1930 to 1933 Hirsch was vice president of the Frankfurt Chamber of Industry and Commerce. He was also served on the advisory board for export trade, the foreign trade committee of the German Industry and Commerce Association, and chaired the foreign trade office.