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BAMBERGER, HEINRICH VON (1822–1888), Austrian
physician and teacher. Bamberger was born in Prague and
studied medicine there. In 1854 he was appointed special
professor of pathology at Wuerzburg University, where he
remained until 1872, when he became professor at the University
of Vienna. Bamberger became famous for his brilliant
lectures and for his diagnostic techniques. He is especially
known for his textbook on cardiac diseases and for his diagnoses
of symptoms of cardiac diseases. His name was given
to Bamberger’s disease, Bamberger’s bulbar pulse, and Bamberger’s
sign for pericardial effusion. He advocated the use of
albuminous mercuric solution in the therapy of syphilis and
reported albuminuria during the latter period of severe anemia.
He also described muscular atrophy and hypertrophy.
During the last two years of his life Bamberger was president
of the Vienna Medical Association.
Bibliography: S.R. Kagan, Jewish Medicine (1952), 292.
[Suessmann Muntner]
BAMBERGER, LOUIS (1855–1944), U.S. merchant and philanthropist.
Bamberger was born in Baltimore, Maryland. As a
boy, he began work in a dry goods store, but while still a young
man he moved to New York to engage in wholesale merchandising.
In 1892 he and his brother-in-law, Felix Fuld, founded
L. Bamberger and Co., a small department store, in Newark,
New Jersey. Adopting advanced methods of merchandising
and the latest techniques of publicity, Bamberger’s grew into
one of the largest and most profitable American establishments.
In 1929 R.H. Macy of New York took over the Bamberger
firm but Louis Bamberger continued to serve as president
of the Newark store until 1939. He gave his employees a
cooperative interest in the firm, established a pension program
for them, and marked his own retirement by distributing cash
gifts and annuities to workers who had been employed for a
minimum of 15 years. Another of Bamberger’s successful enterprises
was the Newark radio station WOR, which he built
in the 1920s. Bamberger’s philanthropies covered a wide range
of interests. He gave generously to Newark’s hospitals and
Community Chest, and to the furtherance of the arts and sciences.
The long list of Jewish causes and institutions to which
he contributed included the *Jewish Theological Seminary
of America. A charter member of the Newark Museum, and
later its honorary president, he provided the funds for the new
building, opened in 1926, and donated a vast quantity of art,
archaeological, scientific, and industrial objects. Bamberger’s
greatest philanthropic act, which he shared with his sister,
Mrs. Felix Fuld, was a gift of $5,000,000 for the establishment
of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. He and his
sister also contributed to the Fuld House at Princeton, which
provided quarters for the Institute.
Bibliography: Newark Museum Association, Louis Bamberger
… a Tribute… (1944); T. Mahoney, Great Merchants (1955),
167–70, 194.
[Morton Mayer Berman]
bamberger, seligmann baer
BAMBERGER, LUDWIG (1823–1899), German banker,
politician, and economist; leading advocate of a gold standard
for German currency. He studied law at Heidelberg and
practiced as an attorney in his native city of Mainz. He joined
the revolutionary movement of 1848 and edited the republican
newspaper Mainzer Zeitung which advocated the unification
of Germany and democratic government. He took part in the
insurrection of 1849, fled to Switzerland, and was condemned
to death in absentia. When, in 1866, a general amnesty was
declared, Bamberger returned to Germany, and entered politics
as a liberal, sitting in the German Reichstag from 1871 to
1893. During the years of his exile in London and in Paris he
had entered the family firm of *Bischoffsheim where he acquired
considerable knowledge of finance. In 1870 he was a
leading founding figure of the Deutsche Bank (together with
Adelbert Delbrueck) and became one of Bismarck’s principal
advisers on financial matters after the Franco-Prussian war
of 1870. Later, Bamberger disagreed with Bismarck’s policy of
protective tariffs which he considered reactionary and in 1884
he and other followers seceded and formed the more liberal
Freisinnige Partei. Though in opposition, he continued to exercise
great influence on legislation of economic or financial
character. He was an enthusiastic advocate of the gold standard
and a champion of free trade and founded an association
for its promotion. Bamberger was not a practicing Jew
but in his memoirs he deplores German antisemitism. Stung
by the antisemitic attacks of the German historian, Heinrich
von Trietschke, he published a pamphlet “Deutschtum und Judentum”
which was a vigorous rejoinder. He made numerous
contributions to political and economic literature and his articles
in the weekly Die Nation were published in book form
under separate titles: Wandlungen und Wanderungen in der
Sozialpolitik (1898); Bismarck Posthumus (1899). He also published
his collected writings in five volumes (1894–98), and his
memoirs appeared posthumously (1899).
Add. Bibliography: S. Zucker, Ludwig Bamberger (in English,
1975); L. Gall (ed.), Die Deutsche Bank (1995); M.-L. Weber, Ludwig
Bamberger (in German, 1987); B. Koehler, Ludwig Bamberger (in
German, 1999).
[Joachim O. Ronall / Marcus Pyka (2nd ed.)]
BAMBERGER, SELIGMANN BAER (Isaac Dov ha-Levi;
1807–1878), rabbinical scholar and leader of German Orthodoxy.
Born in the Bavarian village of Wiesenbronn, Bamberger
studied at the yeshivah of Fuerth and in his native village.
Bamberger opposed the proponents of Reform at a meeting
of Jewish communities of Lower Franconia in 1834, and at an
assembly of notables called by the Bavarian government in
1836 where he represented A. *Bing, the district rabbi of Wuerzburg.
In 1840 he was elected to succeed Bing in the face of
fierce opposition from the Reformers. Bamberger continued
the local yeshivah, founded an elementary school in 1855, and
a teachers’ training college in 1864.
By the middle of the 19th century, the Frankfurt Jewish
community was dominated by the Reform movement. As a
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