Sub-Fonds - Arnhold, Georg

Arnhold, Georg was born on 1 March 1859 at Dessau, Principality of Anhalt, Germany. He died on 25 November 1926 at Innsbruck, Austria.

Jewish Banker and pacifist.

Georg Arnhold was one of the generous supporters of the peace movement in Germany, such as the German Peace Society.

In 1875, Georg Arnhold became co-owner of the bank in Dresden that his brother had founded.
This banking firm, which provided financial backing for the electrical and brewery industries, developped so favorably that a Berlin branch could be opened in 1911.
Georg Arnhold became a royal Saxon privy commercial councillor, a royal Bavarian commercial councillor, and a royal Würtemberg consul, all indications of the high esteem that he enjoyed within and beyond the borders of Saxony.

In Dresden Georg Arnhold was extolled for his generous support of charitable institutions. His deep commitment to humanity led him and his wife into the peace movement. The final impetus for the decision at the turn of the century was the reading of a "Summons to the Nations", produced by one of the international peace congresses. Soon thereafter, he joined the German Peace Society and established a local group in Dresden.

For years he was chairman of this local group and took part in numerous international peace congresses, such as Paris (1900), Boston (1904), and Munich (1907), as well as in numerous German congresses. Up until the time when a subsidy from the Carnegie Foundation (1911-1916) made possible the publication of "Die Friedenswarte", the journal was almost totally dependent on Arnhold for its financing. Likewise, Arnhold supported Alfred H. Fried's "Handbuch der Friedensbewegung" (Handbook of the Peace Movement) and gave generously to the Association for European Understanding, the German-French Rapprochement Committee, and the Esperanto movement.

Although shaken by the outbreak of the First World War, Arnhold still believed firmly in the breakthrough of the peace movement to a broader public after the war. Thus he participated vigorously in the establishment of the Bund Neues Vaterland (New Fatherland League), while warning, quite in keeping with older socially conservative pacifism, against a discussion of domestic political problems.

He came to believe, however, that the German peace movement was moving in too radical a direction after the pacifist congresses of 1919 in Berlin and 1920 in Brunswick, both of which he attended.

He died of a heart attack on a return trip from Meran.