Felix Somary

Felix Somary was born on 21 November 1881 in Vienna, then the capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His father, Dr Simon Somary, was a lawyer and advocate of the Imperial and High Court.{{Cite book |last=Somary |first=Felix |url=https://dn790008.ca.archive.org/0/items/theravenofzurich/The%20Raven%20of%20Zurich.pdf |title=The Raven of Zürich: The Memoirs of Felix Somary |last2=Sherman |first2=A.J. |publisher=C. Hurst & Company |year=1990}}{{Cite web |last=SndS.ch |title=FELIX SOMARY - Independent economist, pragmatic analyst, and man of foresight - BPS (SUISSE) – Monaco branch |url=https://www.bps-suisse.mc/en/culture-felix_somary_independent_economist_pragmatic_analyst_and_man_of_foresight.php |access-date=2025-01-18 |website=www.bps-suisse.mc |language=en}} Four of his older siblings had died of dipththeria (then an incurable disease); he was consequently close to his sisters, Ella and Paula. Somary was educated at the Schottengymnasium in Vienna; whilst a schoolboy, he began tutoring in Greek, mathematics, and history at the age of fourteen. Shortly before leaving the Schottengymnasium, he wrote an essay on corporations in Austria, in which he outlined the transition from speculation to investment; the essay received both praise and a "searching critique" from future President of Italy Luigi Einaudi. Upon receiving his Matura in 1899 (aged seventeen), he enrolled in the Faculty of Law and Political Science of the University of Vienna, where he studied under Carl Menger (to whom he also served as an assistant) and Eugen von Philippovich. Whilst there, his classmates included Joseph Schumpeter, Rudolf Hilferding, Otto Bauer, Emil Lederer, and Ludwig von Mises.{{cite journal|journal=History of Economics Review|issue=48|date=Summer 2008|title=One Hundred Years From Today|page=79|first=Peter|last=Kesting|url=http://www.hetsa.org.au/aigaion2/index.php/attachments/single/43|access-date=13 May 2011}}

Shortly after receiving his doctorate in 1904, Somary spent a year at the University of Berlin, intending to qualify later as a university lecturer in Vienna. During that period, he met Gustav von Schmoller, and befriended the legal scholar Otto von Gierke; he also dined with the sociologist Max Weber in Mannheim. Towards the end of his spell in Berlin, Eugen von Philippovich offered Somary the position of Assistant to the President at the Anglo-Austrian Bank, which he accepted; whilst working there, he met Sir Ernest Cassel.{{cite journal|title=The Balkan Railways, International Capital and Banking from the End of the 19th Century until the Outbreak of the First World War|first=Peter|last=Hertner|journal=Discussion Papers|issue=DP/53/2006|date=June 2006|page=31|publisher=Bulgarian National Bank|url=http://www.bnb.bg//bnbweb//groups//public//documents//bnb_publication//discussion_2006_53_en.pdf|access-date=13 May 2011}} From 1910 to 1914 he taught at the Hochschule für Staatswissenschaftliche Fortbildung in Berlin,Vgl- Lebenslauf, Akten der Reichskanzlei der Weimarer Republik (Weblink) and he was also active in promoting commercial ties between Britain, Germany and Austria both in eastern Europe and the Near East. He later said that without the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand "the large-scale catastrophe [of World War I] could have been averted, since all causes of the Anglo-German conflict had been eliminated"; in particular, he considered the summer of 1914 to have marked the start of a "new era" of Anglo-German cooperation, which the assassination interrupted.

During World War I, he reorganized the National Bank of occupied Belgium; he worked together with Hjalmar Schacht, of whom he speaks favorably in his memoirs. While in Berlin in March 1916 he co-authored a famous report with Max Weber. This warned Germany and Austria against intensifying the use of submarine warfare. Their argument was that intensification might provoke the US into entering the war on the side of Britain, and the consequence of this would be to remove the possibility of a neutral source of post-war credit, which would inevitably be needed by the combatant nations once hostilities had ceased.{{cite journal |last=Roth |first=Guenther |year=2003 |title=The Near-Death of Liberal Capitalism: Perceptions from the Weber to the Polanyi Brothers |journal=Politics & Society |volume=31 |issue=2 |pages=263–282 |doi=10.1177/0032329203252271 |s2cid=143980803}}{{subscription required}} He also angered Ludendorff by writing a paper which stated that Poland could find a natural place in the multinational Austrian state.{{cite book|title= Clio's Anticipator, the Silent Networker and "the Specialist for War and Crises": Felix Somary: An Unknown Quantity|first=Alexander|last=Mionskowski|editor=Jaroslaw Suchoples |editor2=Katy Turton|publisher=LIT|location= Berlin|year=2009|pages=35–52: p 48}} In 1919 he entered as a senior partner in Bankhaus Blankart & Co. in Zurich.{{Citation needed|date=May 2011}}

After the war, European banks were long on war bonds, worth absolutely nothing. He realised that the choice was between bankruptcy and hyperinflation, but although he favoured the former it was the latter which ensued. He had argued his viewpoint at a German association for economists called the Verein für Sozialpolitik.{{cite book|title=Macroeconomics in retrospect: the selected essays of David Laidler|first=David E. W.|last=Laidler|pages=146–147|publisher=Edward Elgar Publishing|year=2004|isbn=978-1-84376-384-0|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Scb8hFfh7YcC&pg=PA146}} He predicted the Great Depression, which began in 1929, as early as September 1926 when he gave a lecture warning of the dangers of relying on the US for credit given the protectionist tendencies of that country. It was because of this prediction that he became known as The Raven of Zurich, the raven being a bird associated with dire omens.Somary, Felix (1986). A. J. Sherman (trans.), ed. The Raven of Zurich: The Memoirs of Felix Somary. New York: St Martin's. He was one of several economists who later expressed the view that the depression might not have occurred if there had not been a conjunction of events, including the election of Hitler in Germany and of Roosevelt in the US. He was in New York City when the stock markets were plummeting and, seeing that fellow bankers were buying recklessly, he sent a wire to Zurich telling his associates there to sell all equity. By 1931 he was so convinced of the economic power exercised by the US that he wrote "It is almost an intolerable thought that the U.S.A. will be the centre of industry, while Europe will act as hotel keeper to Americans."{{cite book|title=Changes in the structure of world economics since the war|last=Somary|first=Felix|year=1931|location=London|publisher=P S King & Son|page=74}}

In 1930 he married an Austrian countess called May Demblin and became a Catholic.{{Cite web |date=20 November 1944 |title=Venona document No: 1619-1620 |url=https://www.nsa.gov/portals/75/documents/news-features/declassified-documents/venona/dated/1944/20nov_american_communist_bursler.pdf |access-date=5 January 2024 |website=VENONA files}} Two years later, he took the Swiss citizenship. He taught at the Heidelberg University{{cite journal|journal=Political Science Quarterly|volume=47|issue=1|date=March 1932|pages=144–145|title=Book notes|first=Herbert F.|last=Fraser|doi=10.2307/2142723|jstor=2142723}}{{subscription required}} as well as in US universities. At Chicago, he was a guest of his friend Schumpeter, with whom he shared the interest in the theory of the economic cycle. Before the start of World War II, he tried to convince Baron Rothschild to take his wealth and his person out of Germany but Rothschild did not listen to him and barely saved himself. In August 1934 he was of the recipients - on a list that "reads like a Who is Who? in business cycle theory", according to Boianovsky and Trautwein - of a paper concerning theories of the business cycle, written by Gottfried Haberler.{{cite journal|journal=Wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Diskussionsbeiträge|title=Haberler, the League of Nations, and the Quest for Consensus in Business Cycle Theory in the 1930s|first1=Mauro|last1=Boianovsky|first2=Hans-Michael|last2=Trautwein|date=October 2004|pages=5–6|issue=V – 265–04|publisher=Institut für Volkswirtschaftslehre, Universität Oldenburg|url=http://www.uni-oldenburg.de/vwl/download/V-265-04.pdf|access-date=13 May 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20050220142200/http://www.uni-oldenburg.de/vwl/download/V-265-04.pdf|archive-date=20 February 2005}}

He was an advisor to the chief of the Swiss Federal Department of Public Economy, attending a meeting in Washington, D.C. in 1939 when the Swiss government was trying to obtain emergency war supplies from the US government.{{cite book|publisher=United States Department of State|title=Foreign relations of the United States diplomatic papers, 1939. General, the British Commonwealth and Europe (1939)|chapter=Switzerland|pages=858–867|url=http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/FRUS/FRUS-idx?type=div&did=FRUS.FRUS1939V02.I0033&isize=text|access-date=13 May 2011}}

He, his wife (an Austrian countess called May Demblin), two sons and a daughter moved to the United States in 1940, taking the last ship bound for the US from Spain. Béla Bartók was on the same ship,{{cite news|title=Johannes Somary, debuted in Wash. Sq., dies at 75|publisher=East Villager|date=11 February 2011|first=Albert|last=Amateau|url=http://eastvillagernews.com/?p=847|access-date=13 May 2011}} as was the poet and writer Stefan Zweig, with whom Somary was one of the last people to speak before the latter's suicide.

From 1941 to 1943 he advised the American Department of Defense on finance issues.{{cite book|title=Erinnerungen eines politischen Meteorologen|last1=Somary|first1=Felix|last2=Somary|first2=Wolfgang|publisher=Matthes & Seitz|edition=Reprinted|year=1994|language=de|isbn=978-3-88221-796-4|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=IJwvAAAACAAJ}} He had been consulted regarding the methods that should be deployed in order to establish a sound currency in the European and African war zones, this being seen prior to the allied landings in North Africa and France as an important pre-requisite for achieving economic stability.{{cite journal|title=An Iraq currency game plan|first=Steve H.|last=Hanke|journal=The International Economy|date=Summer 2003|pages=81–82|url=http://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/articles/hanke-summer2003.pdf|access-date=11 May 2011}} When they told him that the Americans were thinking of abolishing the Japanese Emperor, he was outraged: "And then – he asked – with whom are you going to sign a peace treaty?"

His book Bankpolitik was praised by Joseph Schumpeter in his Geschichte der ökonomischen Analyse.Vgl.a.a.O., Band II, p. 1348 After the war, he had a role in the birth of Mediobanca. The Italian large banks were not very enthusiastic about the idea of creating, ex novo, an Italian merchant bank; Mattioli, the president of Comit, turned to Somary for a loan; Somary said he was willing to give a larger loan, and even to buy stock. At this point, the Italians convinced themselves that the project was good, and financed it.{{Cite web |url=http://www.mediobanca.it/about_us/our_history/enrico_cuccia.php |title=Enrico Cuccia - Mediobanca |access-date=11 May 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110102065732/http://www.mediobanca.it/about_us/our_history/enrico_cuccia.php |archive-date=2 January 2011 }}

• {{cite book|title=Bankpolitik|last=Somary|first=Felix|publisher=C B Mohr|location=Tubingen|year=1915|language=de|url=http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000330352}}
• {{cite book|title=Émile Lévasseur|last=Somary|first=Felix}}
• {{cite book|title=Die Erfahrungen des letzten Jahres für die Kriegsbereitschaft des deutschen Geld- und Kapitalmarktes|last=Somary|first=Felix|language=de}}
• {{cite book|title=Währungs-probleme Österreich-Ungarns|last=Somary|first=Felix|language=de}}
• {{cite book|title=Grundriss der politischen Oekonomie|last1=von Philippovich |first1=Eugen |author-link=:de:Eugen Philippovich von Philippsberg |last2=Somary|first2=Felix|language=de}}
• {{cite book|title=Allgemeine Volkswirtschaftslehre|last1=von Philippovich|first1=Eugen|last2=Somary|first2=Felix|language=de}}
• {{cite book|title=Changes in the structure of world economics since the war|last=Somary|first=Felix|series=Wandlungen der Weltwirtschaft seit dem KriegeEnglish |year=1931|location=London|publisher=P S King & Son|url=http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001311786}}
• {{cite book|title=End the crisis! A plea for action|last=Somary|first=Felix|series=Krisenwende?English |year=1933|location=New York|publisher=E. P. Dutton & Co.|url=http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001311785}}
• {{cite book|title=Krisenwende?|last=Somary|first=Felix|year=1932|language=de|url=http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/006657071|location=Berlin|publisher=S. Fischer}}
• {{cite book|title=Die Ursachen der Krise|last=Somary|first=Felix|language=de}}
• {{cite book|title=Democracy at bay: a diagnosis and a prognosis (translation of Krise und Zukunft der Demokratie)|last=Somary|first=Felix|year=1952|edition=1st American|publisher=Knopf|location=New York|url=http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001433457}}
• {{cite book|title=Erinnerungen eines politischen Meteorologen|last1=Somary|first1=Felix|last2=Somary|first2=Wolfgang|publisher=Matthes & Seitz|edition=Reprinted|year=1994|language=de|isbn=978-3-88221-796-4|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=IJwvAAAACAAJ}}
• {{cite book|last=Somary|first=Felix|title=The Raven of Zurich: The Memoirs of Felix Somary|year=1986|publisher=St Martin's|location=New York|editor=A. J. Sherman (trans.)}}

{{Reflist|30em}}

• {{cite book|title=Etchings by Rembrandt: from the collection of Felix Somary|publisher=Artemis|year=1984}}
• [http://www.marquesdecollections.fr/detail.cfm/marque/11899/total/1 Article on his collection in the online edition of Frits Lugt, Les marques de collections de dessins & d'estampes, L.4384.]

• {{Internet Archive author|sname=Felix Somary}}

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Category:Austrian bankers

Category:Swiss bankers

Category:Austrian emigrants to Switzerland

Category:Businesspeople from Vienna

Category:1881 births

Category:1956 deaths