Henry H. Arnhold
Henry H. Arnhold (1921-2018) was born into the banking family of Arnhold in Dresden. One of five children of Heinrich Arnhold and his wife Lisa, née Mattersdorff, he grew up in the family villa in Dresden’s Tiergartenstrasse and went to school at the Kreuzschule. Heinrich Arnhold died in 1935, at a time when the persecution of Jews was gathering pace. The bank fell victim to ‘Aryanisation’ and the family in Germany found itself exposed to increasing reprisals. When the Second World War broke out, Henry Arnhold was visiting a school friend in Norway. He remained there, but was arrested after the invasion of Norway by German troops in April 1940. Fleeing first to Sweden and then to Cuba, he managed to reach the USA in April 1942, where the rest of his family had meanwhile emigrated.
After a brief period of study at UCLA and three years’ service in the US Army, he entered the family business in New York, the investment bank Arnhold & S. Bleichroeder, where he served as chairman from 1960.
After the peaceful revolution of 1989 that led to the reunification of Germany, the Arnhold family resumed its tradition of civic engagement and patronage, supporting the restoration of the Georg-Arnold swimming baths and the rebuilding of the Frauenkirche and the synagogue. Since then, Henry Arnhold has been an extremely generous sponsor of student exchanges between New York and Dresden and patron of Dresden’s museums. In May 2011, TU Dresden made him an ‘honorary senator’, a title it had previously awarded to his grandfather, father and uncle. Henry Arnhold holds the Saxon Order of Merit and the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. He died on August 23, 2018 in New York.
Obituary of the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden
Obituary of the Sächsische Landesbibliothek – Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Dresden
Obtituary in the New York Times