Siegfried Kramarsky

Siegfried Kramarsky (1893 – 1961) was a German-American banker, art collector, and philanthropist.

Kramarsky was born on April 14, 1893, in Lubeck, Germany.

In 1915, he moved to Hamburg to work for the German banking firm Lisser & Rosenkrantz. He performed well professionally and within a few years, he became a partner with the bank.

In 1921, he married Lola Kramarsky. (Lola Kramarsky was later the president of Hadassah Women's Zionist Organization of America from 1960-1964.) In 1923, he and his family emigrated to Amsterdam, Netherlands, where he served as the head of the local branch of Lisser & Rosenkrantz.

In the following years in Amsterdam, he and his wife built a substantial art collection that included works by celebrated artists such as Vincent van Gogh, Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Georges Seurat, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.

Immigration to Canada and New York

The growing Nazism in the neighboring Germany compelled the family to emigrate to Canada in 1938. Eventually, in 1940, they settled permanently in New York City. Chaim Weizmann was their family friend and helped them in the move.

In New York, he participated actively in the Jewish communal affairs and regularly contributed to the United Jewish Appeal (UJA.) He was also a supporter of the Chaim Weizmann-founded Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel.

From the late-1950s until his death in 1961, he was the chairman of the finance advisory committee of Hadassah, of which his wife was the president.

Kramarsky died on 25 December 1961 at his New York home. He was 68.

Auction of "Portrait of Dr. Gachet" painting

"Portrait of Dr. Gachet," a van Gogh painting that they had purchased from Franz Koenigs, was sold by Kramarsky's family at Christie's New York for the record-price of $82.5 million in 1990. The painting was acquired by Ryoei Saito, chairman of Daishowa Paper Manufacturing in Japan.