Hermann Kahn

The KAHNS of Fifth Avenue: the Crazy Rhythm of Otto Hermann Kahn and the Kahn Family

It was a time when money was plentiful. Dreams were hung on the wind. Those that had talent flaunted it, those that hadn’t bought it. Alcohol danced to the rhythm of Prohibition. This was the Roaring Twenties and boy did they roar as no decade had done before. Jazz was all the rage.
In New York City, at the center of the revelry was the Kahn family; banker and philanthropist Otto Hermann Kahn, his beautiful wife Addie, and their four spirited offspring, Maud, Margaret, Gilbert, and Roger. Theirs was a family of extravagance. For them, the 1920s inspired more dreams than they could have dared to imagine. With the gaiety came a price tag, accompanied by a soundtrack of jazz ... so much jazz.
Merchant banker Otto Hermann Kahn was one of America’s most generous patrons of the arts; he was also chairman of the Metropolitan Opera Company and a connoisseur of Europe’s avant-garde. When his teenage son, Roger, took up the baton as a bandleader, Otto and Addie hit the roof. Stories of the family’s subsequent bickering and infighting graced the headlines for months. From that moment onwards, the Kahns became public property. Throughout the 1920s and ’30s, their scandals, lawsuits, marriages, divorces, and deaths were splashed across the tabloids.
So what really went on behind the closed doors of the Kahns’ magnificent mansions? Where did all their wealth come from, and where did it go? And did Otto Kahn purchase a secret stash of stocks using an alias? These questions and more are answered in The KAHNS of Fifth Avenue: the true story of a family that dared to dream big.

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