Otto Petschek (17 October 1882 – 2 July 1934) was a European industrialist known for building the

Petschek Villa The Petschek Villa ( cs, Vila Otto Petschka) is a palatial home built by Otto Petschek in the early 1920s in Prague. Since 1945 it has been the residence of the United States Ambassadors first to Czechoslovakia, and subsequently, to the Czech Rep ...

Prague Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 million people. The city has a temperate ...

Early life

He was the eldest of four sons of Isidor Petschek and Camilla (

née A birth name is the name of a person given upon birth. The term may be applied to the surname, the given name, or the entire name. Where births are required to be officially registered, the entire name entered onto a birth certificate or birth re ...

Robitschek) Petschek, who were German speaking Jews. His younger brothers were Paul (1886–1946), Friedrich (1890–1940) and Hans (1895–1968), who later served as president of the family's investment firm, United Continental Corporation. Among his family were uncles

Julius Petschek Julius Petschek (14 March 1856 – 22 January 1932) was an industrialist of Jewish origin in former Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic). Together with his brother Ignaz, he was one of the wealthiest persons of interwar Czechoslovakia. Petschek was ...

and Ignaz Petschek, all of whom were originally from

Kolín Kolín (; german: Kolin, Neu Kolin, Collin) is a town in the Central Bohemian Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 32,000 inhabitants. The town centre is well preserved and is protected by law as an urban monument reservation. Administra ...

. Among his first cousins was Frank C. Petschek, a son of his uncle Ignaz.Petschek family
on yivo encyclopedia

Career

The Petschek family founded various international mining and chemical enterprises in Prague,

Czechoslovakia , rue, Чеськословеньско, , yi, טשעכאסלאוואקיי, , common_name = Czechoslovakia , life_span = 1918–19391945–1992 , p1 = Austria-Hungary , image_p1 ...

(now

Czech Republic The Czech Republic, or simply Czechia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Historically known as Bohemia, it is bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the southeast. The ...

). Their concern controlled also 30% of the German and, in total, almost 50% of the European

brown coal Lignite, often referred to as brown coal, is a soft, brown, combustible, sedimentary rock formed from naturally compressed peat. It has a carbon content around 25–35%, and is considered the lowest rank of coal due to its relatively low heat ...

mining Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the Earth, usually from an ore body, lode, vein, seam, reef, or placer deposit. The exploitation of these deposits for raw material is based on the economic via ...

industry in the years after

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

.Profit.cz: Uhelný magnát jsem já!
/ref> In 1920, his uncle Julius founded the Petschek Brothers Bank (Bankhaus Petschek & Co.). Between 1923 and 1929, the family built

Petschek Palace The Petschek Palace (in Czech Petschkův palác or Pečkárna) is a neoclassicist building in Prague. It was built between 1923 and 1929 by the architect Max Spielmann upon a request from the merchant banker Julius Petschek and was originally ca ...

. His cousin Walter (Julius' son) and Otto's brother Hans Petschek ran the company until 1938 when they moved to New York as a consequence of the

Munich Agreement The Munich Agreement ( cs, Mnichovská dohoda; sk, Mníchovská dohoda; german: Münchner Abkommen) was an agreement concluded at Munich on 30 September 1938, by Nazi Germany, Germany, the United Kingdom, French Third Republic, France, and Fa ...

. After the death of his uncle, Ignatz Petschek, Otto was considered the head of the Petschek family.

Personal life

Petschek was married to Magda "Martha" Popper, the daughter of JUDr. Julius Popper. An optimist, Otto built the

in Prague in the early 1920s between the two World Wars. Today is home to the U.S. Ambassador to the Czech Republic. Together, they were the parents of four children: * Viktor Petschek (1914–2005), who married Miriam Rachel "Mary" Fogelman. * Eva Petschek (1920–2014), who married the journalist Robert B. Goldmann, an immigrant from Germany. She lived in New York City. * Rita Petschek (1922–2006), who married Alexandre Kafka, son of Bruno Kafka, a member of the parliament of Czechoslovakia . * Ina Louise Petschek (b. 1922), who married Adolf Schlesinger. Petschek died on 2 July 1934 in

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...

. He was buried at the New Jewish Cemetery in Prague. His widow died on 9 May 1940 in

Toronto Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the ancho ...

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

Descendants

In December 1966, Otto's granddaughter, Angela Conway Petschek, was married to Alain Patrick Maze-Sencier of Paris and New York, the Count de Brouville. Alain was a son of Jean Maze-Sencier and the late Nicole Maze-Sencier, Countess de Brouville.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Petshek, Otto 1882 births 1934 deaths Czechoslovak businesspeople Czech Jews Czech bankers People from Prague