Leopold Kronenberg

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Baron Leopold Julian Kronenberg, or Leopold Kronenberg (1849, Warsaw - 1937 Warsaw) was a Polish banker.

Born as a son of the banker and railroad tycoon Leopold Kronenberg (1812-1878) and his wife Rozalia Leo. Both his parents came from Jewish families which converted to Protestantism – the Kronenberg’s to Calvinism, Stanislaw Kronenberg was his brother.

After graduating from the gymnasium he studied in the law department of the high school, and then took up the study of agriculture at Bonn and Popelsdorf. While his father was still active, Kronenberg managed the St. Petersburg branch of the Warsaw Commercial Bank. In 1887, however, he was obliged to resign, on account of his brother's illness, in order to look after the management of the railway lines in which the latter was interested and of the Commercial Bank of Warsaw.

Kronenberg took an active interest in various useful public institutions. He was president of the Society for the Mutual Help of Musical Artists, a working member of the Polytechnical Committee in Warsaw, etc. In recognition of his distinguished services in connection with great commercial undertakings, he was made a hereditary baron of the Russian empire in 1893.

Valuable musical compositions by Kronenberg have been published under the pseudonym "Wiejesky".

Married to a famous soprano singer Jozefina Reszke, he had two children: baron Leopold Julian Kronenberg, and baroness Jozefina (d. 1970) the last of her family. Shortly before his death Leopold Kronenberg converted to Catholicism, so he could be buried in the family valut at the Powązki Cemetery in Warsaw next to his wife.

[edit] References

• This article incorporates text from the 1901–1906 Jewish Encyclopedia article "Leopold Kronenberg" by Herman Rosenthal & J. G. Lipman, a publication now in the public domain.