Family
Rathenau was born in Berlin, the son of a daughter of Benjamin Liebermann and Emil Rathenau, a prominent Jewish businessman and founder of the Allgemeine Elektrizitäts-Gesellschaft (AEG), an electrical-engineering company.
He studied physics, chemistry, and philosophy in Berlin and Strasbourg. His German Jewish heritage and his wealth were both factors in establishing his deeply divisive reputation in German politics, at a time of anti-Semitism. He worked as an engineer before joining the AEG board in 1899, becoming a leading industrialist in the late German Empire and early Weimar Republic periods. Rathenau is generally acknowledged to be the basis for the German industrialist character "Arnheim" in Robert Musil's novel The Man Without Qualities.
Read more about this topic: Walther Rathenau
Famous quotes containing the word family:
“Civilization, for every advantage she imparts, holds a hundred evils in reserve;Mthe heart burnings, the jealousies, the social rivalries, the family dissensions, and the thousand self-inflicted discomforts of refined life, which make up in units the swelling aggregate of human misery.”
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