Background
He was born Isaak Seligmann in Baiersdorf, Erlangen-Hochstadt, Bayern, Germany (Bavaria), to David Isaak Seligman and Fanny Steinhardt.
He was born Isaak Seligmann in Baiersdorf, Erlangen-Hochstadt, Bayern, Germany (Bavaria), to David Isaak Seligman and Fanny Steinhardt.
He was the youngest of eight brothers, all of whom emigrated to America and became involved in running various branch offices of the merchant banking house J. & West. Seligman & Company, co-founded in Manhattan, New York City in 1846 by Isaak"s elder brothers, James and Joseph Seligman. Seligman was also a fundraiser for, benefactor to, and activist in, a large number of charitable and political organisations including the American Society in London, the Anglo-Jewish Association (lobbying against oppression of Serbian Jews), the German Association (raising funds for those wounded or made destitute by the Franco-Prussian War), the Mansion House Committee (raising funds for distressed Jews in Russia), the Eighty Club in London (social and political), and the Jew"s Deaf and Dumb Home (lip-reading for deaf and dumb), originally founded by Baroness M. de Rothschild, of which home Seligman was the treasurer in 1875. In 1896, Seligman was appointed joint legal owner and trustee of the "Tregullow Offices" (later Zimapan Villa), a former Cornish mine office belonging to the Williams mining-mogul family of Scorrier, Cornwall, by Charles Augustus Vansittart Conybeare, barrister-at-law and Member of Parliament for Camborne, Cornwall (1885-1895).
In 1899, Seligman bought 17 Kensington Palace Gardens, London, a grand mansion built in the north Italian villa style, near Arthur Strauss Member of Parliament (Charles Conybeare"s parliamentary successor), who lived down at the end of the tree-lined boulevard at Number.
1 Kensington Palace Gardens. At that time, Seligman"s principal home, now part of London"s billionaire"s row, had at least four reception rooms and 13 bedrooms.
Seligman died a wealthy man in 1928 at the age of 93, leaving a fortune in his will valued at more than GBP 18 million in today"s money.