RUINED BY NAZIS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 13 October 1939, Page 8

RUINED BY NAZIS

DUTCH FINANCIAL WIZARD.

“MAN WITH GOLDEN HEART.”

An amazing Nazi plot to ruin Fritz Mannheimer, the Dutch financial wizard, because of his Jewish descent, was revealed at Amsterdam (states a London paper). Mannheimer was regarded as an a'reh-enemy by the Nazis not only because he had Jewish blood, but because of his dealings with the French Government.

The Dutch Nazis fought him, but their efforts were of no avail against the plump smiling man who stood behind Mendelssohns, the greatest financial house in Holland. Eut where the Dutch National Socialists failed the German Nazis succeeded. Pressure was secretly brought to bear on many big banks not to take any of Mendelssohn’s bills. This deprived Mannheimer of current cash to finance his dealings and brought about the crash.

When he died suddenly, a few weeks ago, Mannheimer knew he was a ruined man. He dashed from his home, crammed with art treasures, in Amsterdam's aristocratic Hobbematstraat, to see his beautiful Anglo-Brazilian girl wife. She was waiting for him in the Chateau Monte Cristo, near Paris. He told her what had happened. Thon, a few hours later, he died in her arms from .a heart attack. The knowledge that ho had failed had killed him. In Amsterdam Mannheimer was known as “the man with the golden heart." Half of his vast income he gave to the poor. No appeal for help ever went unheeded. Mannheimer was buried in the village cemetery at Vaucresson. His body, in a horse-drawn hearse, was carried along the same path that, two short months ago. he was driven to his secret wedding to 26-year-old Miss Jeanne Marie Antoinette Reiss. Mannheimer was worth £20.000,000 three years ago. It is not known how much of it remains for the weeping girl bride from Brazil.