Valentin Weisbach

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Valentin Weisbach (* 11 March 1843 in Berlin; † 23 October 1899) was a German banker, patron of the arts and social reformer in Berlin.

Live life
The son of the textile merchant Wolf Weisbach was a banker and change, fund and money broker and joined the Jewish auxiliary association Gesellschaft der Freunde in 1879. In 1888, he became the first chairman of the Association for the Improvement of Small Apartments in Berlin (formerly the Zentralverein für die Wohl der Arbeiterwohnungs in Berlin) which he co-founded and which worked in the spirit of the reform building program for the improvement of the housing of workers. The architect Alfred Messel was the deputy chairman of the association since 1888, the merchant Emil Minlos became volunteer director.
Weisbach lived in one of the villas built by Alfred Messel in Tiergartenstraße 4.

As patron, Weisbach enabled the Museum für Völkerkunde zu Leipzig to acquire the collection of Cypriot antiquities by Max Ohne falsche-Richter, which was shown at the Berlin trade exhibition in 1896. The collection reached Leipzig in 1898, where it was kept in the Museum of Ethnography until 1974. She then joined the Museum of German History in East Berlin until 1991. Today the collection is housed in the Museum of Prehistory and Early History in Berlin.

As a member of the Ethnological Auxiliary Committee in Berlin, Weisbach organized loans for the Royal Museum of Ethnology in Berlin, as a result of which, among other things, the museum succeeded in 1899 in purchasing a valuable memorial head of a Queen Mother and other objects from the Kingdom of Benin at an auction held by art dealer and auction house operator J. C. Stevens in London.

The art historian Werner Weisbach (1873–1953) was his son.

Literature
Volker Viergutz: Valentin Weisbach (1843–1899) – banker, stockbroker and benefactor. Marie Hoffmann’s memories of her father with supplementary remarks. Berlin in History and Present. Jahrbuch des Landesarchivs Berlin 2004, pp. 39–80.
For collection
Melitta Brönner: Exhibition and sale of Cypriot antiquities at the Berlin Trade Exhibition 1896. The prehistory of the collection “Ohne Fehl-Richter / Weisbach”. Acta Praehistorica et Archaeologica 31, 1999, pp. 107-123 (summary of the article).
Melitta Brönner: The collection of Cypriot antiquities “Ohnefalse-Richter/Weisbach”. The Berlin Museum of Pre- and Early History. 175th anniversary celebration (= Acta Praehistorica et Archaeologica 36/37, 2004/05). Berlin 2005, pp. 320–332 (Digitalisat).

Sources
Archival material at the Ethnologisches Museum Berlin: List of members Ethnologisches Hilfscomité, file I B Litt. W. Jacobsen, Vol. II.

Weblinks

Bankers
Entrepreneur (Berlin)
German
Born in 1843
Died in 1899
Man