Originally an impoverished Jewish peddler from Switzerland, Guggenheim built a worldwide mining conglomerate after immigrating to the United States.
Born during the early nineteenth century in a Jewish ghetto in the Aargau canton of Switzerland, Meyer Guggenheim worked as a traveling peddler in Switzerland and Germany. In 1848, Guggenheim immigrated to the United States at the age of twenty and settled in Philadelphia. In 1854, he married Barbara Meyers, whom he had met on the Atlantic voyage; they would have ten children.
Guggenheim’s remarkable rise in the world of industry bore several marks of his immigrant background. His success as a peddler of stove polish and instant coffee to
Meyer Guggenheim.
Guggenheim acquired silver mines and smelting operations in Colorado, expanding into Monterrey, Mexico, in 1890. By the turn of the century, M. Guggenheim’s Sons dominated the American Smelting and Refining Trust and mining interests worldwide. Soon the Guggenheims relocated to mansions in New York City. Meyer Guggenheim died in 1905. The philanthropy that his descendants pursued during the twentieth century reflected Guggenheim’s cosmopolitan perspective and determination to make a permanent legacy in his adopted country.
Davis, John H. The Guggenheims (1848-1988): An American Epic. New York: Shapolsky, 1988. Unger, Irwin, and Debi Unger. The Guggenheims: A Family History. New York: HarperCollins, 2005.
Anti-Semitism
Family businesses
Jewish immigrants
Marriage
New York City
Pennsylvania
Philadelphia
Swiss immigrants