The Warburgs

by Ron Chernow

  CHAPTER 43

  ––

  My Viking

  Even as Siegmund Warburg became the storied financier, he never lost his extreme attachment to his mother. Arriving in England in 1939 at seventy-three, Lucie shared her son’s admiration for British gentleness and fairness. Sure of Hitler’s defeat, she endured the wartime bombing with surprising aplomb. Even in old age, she displayed a quiet joie de vivre that masked an iron core. Despite arthritis that made her hands clawlike, she played her grand piano two hours daily. For much of the war and after, she lived with Siegmund and Eva—a trial for her patient daughter-in-law, who never complained but was sorely tested. Lucie never quite adjusted to Siegmund’s being married and, to Eva’s mortification, would appear at bedtime to serve hot chocolate to her son.

  Lucie and Siegmund spoke virtually every day and his devotion to her seemed unlimited. With their shared values, attitudes, and humor—they even had a remarkably similar handwriting—they enjoyed an easy rapport. However hostile Siegmund might feel toward some Warburg relatives, his love of the Kaullas was spontaneous and unalloyed.

  Lucie spent her last years in a nursing home in Holland Park. In spring 1954, while Siegmund was at Kuhn, Loeb, Lucie fell in her room and broke several ribs. It speaks much of her consideration for her son that this eighty-eight-year-old woman made everyone swear not to tell Siegmund, lest he curtail his trip. By early 1955, she was suffering frightful asthma attacks, yet never lost her humor. About to visit New York, Siegmund remarked, “You really should come with me in the plane to America.” “I would gladly do that,” Lucie answered facetiously, “if I didn’t have so many business obligations here.”1

  Lucie Warburg died on October 25, 1955, at age eighty-nine. That day, she was overheard playing Beethoven’s Appassionata sonata—music as turbulent and bravely triumphant as her life. Siegmund was overcome with grief. For more than fifty years, they had been welded together by common solitude, suffering, and problems. Lucie had been the linchpin of his life, his career’s cornerstone. To his staff Siegmund preached her principles of disciplined self-criticism. As he said, she had endowed him with a complete set of standards and objectives.2

  No less ascetic than Siegmund, Lucie didn’t want a funeral and was cremated in privacy. Though Siegmund lived for another twenty-seven years, her influence always remained with him. He had a death mask made of Lucie, converting remembrance into a sacred duty. Soon after she died, he wrote an affecting memoir about her in German. Each year, the S. G. Warburg & Co. staff dreaded the anniversary of her death, for Siegmund would arrive in a black and inconsolable mood. The smallest misstep could trigger him off. Because Lucie had served as both father and mother, he never came to terms with her death. In later years, when people visited Siegmund in Switzerland, they would notice the painting of Lucie prominently hanging in his study.

  The solitary boyhood and the stern but doting mother had combined to produce a self-centered man. Brought up as the center of the universe, Siegmund grew accustomed to the role and kept it until the end. From Lucie he learned to transmit love with a kind of didactic severity, mingling the roles of father and instructor. This didn’t bode well for marriage.

  Many people suspect that Eva Warburg lived a life of quiet desperation, suffocating in the immense social enterprise of being Siegmund’s wife. This overstates the matter, but it certainly had an element of truth. This shy, private woman was a magnificent actress and a fathomless mystery to the outer world. She seemed quiet around her husband and often sat apart when Siegmund talked business with visitors. She never spoke a word out of turn. She had a silken strength, a cool, lovely Swedish impenetrability. Exceedingly gentle and feminine, she confided in few people and struck many as aloof. “You could be close to Eva, but you couldn’t touch her,” said Siegmund’s cousin, Elsbeth Oppenheimer.3 Beneath her soft radiance, she had an inner toughness that Siegmund valued and he fondly dubbed her “my Viking.”

  ——

  Eva and Siegmund Warburg in the flowers.

  (Private collection)

  Siegmund chose a wife who catered to his minutely exacting tastes and could endure his constant absence from home. Eva looked and behaved like a duchess (without the supercilious air) and turned the act of pouring tea into exquisite stagecraft. A fine lady with no petty instincts, she was shocked by the catty gossip of the English society women when she arrived in London. She was never affected or haughty and when people stopped by their table at the Savoy Grill, Eva would rise with Siegmund to greet them—at a time when other women remained seated. Eva had natural class.

  In the early 1950s, Siegmund and Eva moved from Roehampton Lane to a penthouse flat at 95, Eaton Square. Stanley Baldwin had lived two doors down and Neville Chamberlain across the square. The move to Belgravia signified that these Jewish refugees had arrived. With a natural gift for decorating, Eva created a faultless stage setting for Siegmund’s career. On Saturday afternoons, they shopped for antiques, buying the old silver, Old Masters, modern paintings, and eighteenth-century English furniture that would set just the right tone of subdued elegance.

  As a banker, Siegmund’s style was to erase the barriers between business and pleasure. “You cannot be someone’s banker until you are their friend,” he would say.4 Another time, he commented, only half in jest, that he never attended a meeting where business was discussed. By fusing home and office, Siegmund had to subordinate Eva to the massive requirements of his career. Over time, Siegmund’s business and social calendar would expand to fill his waking hours, removing any chance for a relaxed or natural private life.

  From Eva, Siegmund demanded superhuman precision as they entertained an endless stream of bankers, politicians, clients, and trainees. Everything had to be planned, with nothing left to chance. With her slight, hesitating voice and rather British manner, Eva could uniquely deliver that perfection. Many visitors marveled at the clockwork precision at Eaton Square, with a butler in black tie brought in from the office to serve dishes from silver platters. If Siegmund wished to appear casually elegant, he might slip into black patent leather pumps. Evenings ended with port and cigars for the men. Eva played her role beautifully and Siegmund called her his greatest career asset.5

  On the surface at least, it often seemed that Eva was reduced to a splendid ornament with little chance to develop her own personality. Their marriage revolved around his life, not hers. Siegmund even had to approve her dresses. Because he hated polka dots, she didn’t wear polka dots. And she was always turned out immaculately, as Siegmund required. With another man, Eva might have experimented—might even have been a bit of a rebel—but Siegmund froze her into a formal social role. She came from a generation of women who took their cue from the men and she felt it her task in life to help her husband. As a girl, she had received tough training, which made the transition to being Siegmund’s wife less jarring than it might otherwise have been. She also took for granted the terrific pace of his work, which she had grown accustomed to in Hamburg and Berlin.

  The relationship that started so romantically in Hamburg had been tested by many trials: Eva’s early cancer, the flight to Sweden and London, the death of Eva’s mother, the breakdown of Siegmund’s mother, the Danilova affair, the London blitz, the adjustment to a new country, etc. Their bark had weathered rough seas. In the late 1930s, Siegmund often didn’t arrive home until late at night. After the war he spent more than half the year on the road, so that Eva had to adapt her life to his extended absences.

  In 1948, Eva, forty-five, developed cancer in her remaining breast. Siegmund didn’t see how she could cope with its loss and wouldn’t let her have surgery. This ultrarational man then did something strange: He took Eva to an unconventional doctor who rubbed ointment on the breast and the cancer, implausibly, went into remission. The fear of cancer haunted their lives although Eva, with her extraordinary self-discipline, never voiced that fear. Whenever she fell ill, Siegmund was beside himself with worry. His friend, Dr. Goldman, who treat
ed Eva for cancer in the 1960s, recalled, “He was frightfully worried about her, but in an almost impersonal way. Siegmund adored his wife, but he didn’t understand her. She was very interested in clothes, fashion, and decorating. Their relationship was cordial but distant.”6 One should note that there was always a certain coolness between Dr. Goldman and Eva. But other people had a similar sense of a curious distance, a forced ceremony, between the couple.

  At bottom, Eva was far more than a pretty decoration. She was shrewd and worldly while Siegmund retained a touch of naïveté. If he breakfasted in New York with his secretary, it didn’t dawn on him that people might gossip. Eva warned Siegmund against putting people on a pedestal only to set himself up for later disappointment. She mothered Siegmund and constantly advised her exhausted husband to take vacations. When he traveled, she would pull aside aides at the airport to tell them what Siegmund needed. She always felt protective toward him. Siegmund greatly respected her judgment and would often pull her out of the kitchen to eavesdrop on a long-distance business call so that she could offer her advice afterward. They shared many values, including the need for punctuality and reliability.

  The marriage had a strong Pygmalion streak. If Siegmund read a book, Eva had to read it. If he liked erudite books, he assumed this gave her equal contentment. They had shared pleasures, ranging from bridge to country walks, and each year went on what Siegmund called a “fasting cure” together so he could lose weight. But with Siegmund chained to his ambition, Eva never demanded parity. He also paid little heed to his in-laws. Not fond of the Philipsons, he seldom went to Sweden, even on business. When he did, the trips were short, carefully orchestrated, and didn’t include Eva.

  Eva had great difficulty in expressing herself and tended to swallow her anger. She had many unexpressed regrets. As someone who enjoyed ceremony, she would have gladly celebrated the Sabbath, but Siegmund shunned any traditions that lacked logic. He was allergic to organized religion, which played no real part in their lives. Eva might want to linger over dinner and talk, but Siegmund would bolt down his food and go back to his briefcase. Siegmund was such a scintillating talker that Henry Kissinger and other luminaries would fly across the Atlantic just to lunch with him. Yet, after Siegmund’s death, Eva lamented that they had never just sat and talked after dinner.

  Siegmund read late at night and had a separate bedroom from Eva. Even when they traveled, he took a room with two beds—one for sleep, the other to set out his books and business papers. A creature of habit, with a manic need for order, he arranged everything down to the last detail. If he had apples in his hotel icebox, he neatly lined them up in red, green, and yellow parallel rows. Similarly at work, he had yellow folders for mail, blue for notes, orange for stock-exchange lists, etc. In his closet, he had three versions of each blue and gray suit—one for summer, one for winter, one for medium weight.

  At times, Eva revolted. When she packed his suitcase for trips, he demanded that every pen and pencil be lined up. Once Siegmund raised a terrible ruckus when she omitted an item. Indignant, Eva swore she would never pack his suitcase again and made good on her promise. In later years, she wouldn’t go with him to New York, fearing she would be dragooned into nonstop dinners. Perhaps resenting this, Siegmund didn’t let her come to New York in the 1960s when she once wanted to visit some friends. He sent a sanctimonious telex from New York, saying he didn’t wish his “dear one” to “overstimulate” herself by traveling there.7 One senses that, in the end, Eva struck a bargain: She would give part of herself to Siegmund’s career, but the rest she would keep to herself. This may explain the private, aloof air people noticed about her. One side of her felt relieved by Siegmund’s frequent absences, which gave her a little time to herself. Life with Siegmund was alternately exhilarating and oppressive.

  Complicating the marriage was Siegmund’s relations with George and Anna, who experienced the predictable problems that come from having a strict, workaholic German father with authoritarian tendencies. As with everything, Siegmund formed precise pictures in his mind of how his children should behave then refused to modify that image. Both children were British in style: polite, understated, modest, private, and rather inscrutable. They didn’t have their father’s fierce ambition and were much more like Eva. This meant Siegmund was somewhat isolated in his own family. Eva, meanwhile, walked a delicate tightrope. As a good mother, she had to protect the children from Siegmund’s excesses without setting him off. She learned to invite Anna’s friends over only when Siegmund was away and it wouldn’t conflict with his schedule. When she defended the children against Siegmund’s wrath, he would arrive at the office in a terrible state of agitation, asking the uncles rhetorically how Eva could possibly take George or Anna’s side?

  Siegmund adored Anna, who didn’t bear the dynastic burden of being a son in a banking family. She was a fine, modest young woman with little self-confidence. She was so shy that she trembled in young men’s arms when they danced. Yet, underneath, she was imaginative and strong-minded. Very bright, she went to St. Paul’s Girls’ School and to Oxford University. In true Max Warburg fashion, Siegmund blocked Anna’s wish to marry an Indian cartoonist for The Observer and arranged for her to work at the Weizmann Institute. Whether by chance or secret rebellion, Anna fell in love with men who seemed the antithesis of Siegmund.

  At Christmas 1959, Anna had visited Israel with her parents and decided to live there. In 1962, age thirty-one, Anna married a real estate developer, Dov Biegun, who was nearly twenty years her senior. They had met while Dov was visiting Israel and decided to settle there. In some respects, Dov was a prototypical Eastern European Jew. Raised in a shtetl rich in Jewish folklore, he remembered mounted Cossacks bursting into his house and whipping his grandfather. After studying economics in Prague, he ended up in the British Army during the war, performing intelligence work in Norway. All but one of his sisters had died in the Holocaust. A zealous Zionist, he participated in dangerous underground work in the period immediately preceding Israel’s creation.

  Dov was a talented, cosmopolitan man who knew fourteen languages and was a superb storyteller. But by Siegmund’s standards, he was rough, crude, and engaged in business that definitely wasn’t haute banque. Though Siegmund opposed the match, Anna persisted and she and Dov had one daughter. Dov—who called Siegmund “the Chief”—used to joke with Anna that Siegmund’s ideal wedding would contain two people: “You and him.” Siegmund was forever dispatching lieutenants to help Dov with commercial deals that never seemed to pan out.

  Siegmund had a more troubled relationship with his son, George, who was tall, blue-eyed, sensitive, and self-effacing. His facial structure resembled Siegmund’s, but otherwise he looked like Eva’s brother. His gentle, courteous manner owed something to Eva, something to his proper British education. During the war, when George attended Westminster School, Siegmund saw with delight a British gentleman in the making. “I am very pleased with the development of George who is a keen and gentle young man,” he told a friend, adding that his son had “a lot of the reserved gentleman in him.”8 The fiery, obsessive German father and the quiet, soft-spoken son would stare at each other across a deep cultural chasm. Of her shy son, Eva would say, “George is a wonderful young man. But when he goes out to meet people, I have to tell him in advance, ‘Now George, be charming.’ ”9

  Perhaps because he experienced little frivolity as a boy, Siegmund adopted a serious attitude toward his son. On George’s twenty-first birthday, Siegmund gave him a life insurance policy—with George expected to pay the premiums himself.10 As a young man, George fantasized about joining his father’s firm and for five years trained as an accountant in preparation. In 1954, Siegmund brought him into S. G. Warburg & Co. under the tutelage of Frank Smith, who worked with medium-sized British companies. George was terrific with numbers and enjoyed the clients, but Siegmund pictured him as a big international banker. Wanting George to follow in his own footsteps, he tried to inspire him, telling him t
he firm needed new ideas. In the end, it upset Siegmund that he and Eva hadn’t spawned another superman, but only a bright, pleasant, polite young man of above-average intelligence and verbal gifts—not a world-historical figure.

  Siegmund was tough with George, criticizing him sharply if he failed to write a proper letter, as he did with all the young men. Sometimes he gave him especially difficult accounts. George felt the full burden of paternal expectation. He and Siegmund had mismatched sensibilities. Siegmund demanded dawn-to-dusk elegance, while George was informal, loved folk and modern art, and didn’t try to impress people. One Monday morning in the 1960s, Siegmund arrived at work aghast: He had seen George wandering through the London streets on Saturday in casual clothes! George liked the free spirit of London in the sixties, while Siegmund jeered at the student demonstrators as Rebels Without a Cause. Both father and son were stubborn and refused to yield ground to each other.

  Another son might have rebelled or have capitulated to all of Siegmund’s wishes. Instead, George tried to please his father while quietly asserting his own autonomy. Siegmund opposed George’s wish to marry Ellie Bozyan, a non-Jewish woman of Armenian extraction whose father was a professor at the Yale Music School and the university organist. Short, cheerful, warm, and friendly, Ellie was very musical and encouraged George’s Bohemian bent. She wasn’t the soignée fashion-plate blonde with old-money antecedents that Siegmund had in mind for George and she was certainly too American and emancipated for his tastes. Ernst Spiegelberg was courageous enough to intercede with Siegmund and put in a good word for Ellie. In return he suffered a permanent demotion in his standing with Siegmund.