Baron Cornelius von Berenberg-Gossler (2 March 1874 – 29 September 1953) was a German banker, a member of the illustrious Berenberg-Gossler banking dynasty, and owner and head of

Berenberg Bank Joh. Berenberg, Gossler & Co. Kommanditgesellschaft, KG, commonly known as Berenberg Bank and also branded as simply Berenberg, is a Multinational corporation, multinational full-service private bank, private and merchant bank headquartered in H ...

from 1913. He withdrew from active management of the bank in 1932. Born as Cornelius Gossler, he was the son of Johann Berenberg Gossler (who was later ennobled as Baron von Berenberg-Gossler) and the brother of Senator and Ambassador John von Berenberg-Gossler. Through his American-born grandmother he was a descendant of Samuel Eliot. Although he was the younger brother, the leadership of Berenberg Bank as well as the Baronial title passed to him, as his older brother John chose to become a politician against the wish of their father. He was married to Nadia von Oesterreich (1887–1962), a daughter of Constantin von Oesterreich, a member of a merchant and banking family in Hamburg originally from

St. Petersburg Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea. The city had a population of 5,601, ...

in Russia. They were the parents of Baron Heinrich von Berenberg-Gossler. Cornelius von Berenberg-Gossler was an avowed opponent of the

Nazi regime Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a totalitarian dictat ...

and determinedly sought to help Jewish friends and associates keeping their assets under the pressure of

Aryanization Aryanization () was the Nazi term for the seizure of property from Jews and its transfer to non-Jews, and the forced expulsion of Jews from economic life in Nazi Germany, Axis powers, Axis-aligned states, and their occupied territories. It enta ...

, petitioned for their release when arrested and eventually helped them to leave the country. In 1939, he secured the release of Fritz

Warburg Warburg (; Westphalian: ''Warberich'' or ''Warborg'') is a town in eastern North Rhine-Westphalia, central Germany on the river Diemel near the three-state point shared by Hessen, Lower Saxony and North Rhine-Westphalia. It is in Höxter distr ...

. He was a member of the board of directors of Deutsche Warentreuhand, that had been founded in 1920 by Max Warburg and Paul von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy of Mendelssohn & Co. He was also Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Universitäts-Gesellschaft Hamburg.

Literature

* Genealogisches Handbuch des Adels, Band 16, Freiherrliche Häuser B II, C. A. Starke Verlag, Limburg (Lahn) 1957

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Berenberg-Gossler, Cornelius von Cornelius Berenberg Bank people Grand burghers of Hamburg Prussian nobility 1874 births 1953 deaths Bankers in the Nazi Party Nobility in the Nazi Party 20th-century German nobility