G. Peter Fleck

New York Passenger Lists show several transatlantic voyages by Gustav Peter Fleck, 1080 Park Ave., NY, between 1936 and the early 1950s, including one in 1946 by air, and one in 1936 on the SS Volendam. Immigration was in 1941, to New York via Havana, Cuba, on the SS Oriente.

Obituary:

"G. Peter Fleck Is Dead at 86; Represented Rothschilds in U.S." By Laurence Zuckerman, New York Times March 3, 1995

G. Peter Fleck, an international banker and venture capitalist who represented the interests of the Rothschild family in the United States, died on Saturday [Feb. 26] at his home in South Orleans, Mass. He was 86.

The cause was congestive heart failure, his family said.

Mr. Fleck was founder and chairman of the New Court Securities Corporation, an investment management and venture capital firm that provided some of the original financing for such successful companies as Litton Industries, Texas Instruments and Federal Express.

New Court Securities was also the primary investment vehicle for the Rothschilds in the United States. Mr. Fleck was the only person outside the family to serve as a partner and director for both the French and British houses of Rothschild.

"He was among the most trusted members outside the Rothschild family with respect to their affairs," said John Birkelund, who founded New Court Securities with Mr. Fleck in 1967 and served as its chief executive until 1981.

Born in Amsterdam, Mr. Fleck studied at the School for International Trade in Vienna before embarking on a series of one-year internships at major banks in France, England and Germany.

After the Nazi invasion of the Netherlands in 1940, Mr. Fleck fled to the United States with his wife, Ruth Melchior Fleck, who is the first cousin of the financier Sigmund Warburg.

In New York he worked for a Dutch bank owned by the French branch of the Rothschild family. After the war, he founded a credit company called the Amsterdam Overseas Corporation with backing from the Rothschilds and other investors.

As a representative of the Rothschilds in the United States, the company eventually became active as an investment manager and merchant banker. Those activities were transferred to New Court Securities when it was founded in 1967. Amsterdam Overseas was subsequently sold to the Aetna Life and Casualty Company. In 1981, New Court Securities changed its name to Rothschild Inc.

In addition to his business career, Mr. Fleck was active in the Unitarian-Universalist church. After retiring in 1973, he was ordained a minister in Brewster, Mass., and wrote several books on religion, including, most recently, "Come As You Are," which was published in 1993.

Mr. Fleck was named an Officer in the Order of Orange Nassau by the Dutch queen in 1959 and received an honorary doctorate in 1973 from the Meadville-Lombard Theological School in Chicago, where a building on the school's campus was named in his honor.

Buried in Orleans, Mass.

See also eulogy at http://uuchristian.org/Sermons/GratefulbyComparison.pdf, obituary at http://www.thejointlibrary.org/archives/TheTimes/1995/1995-03-02/19... (image 14), and obituary at http://uudb.org/articles/gpeterfleck.html: "Peter was born in Amsterdam to parents who had immigrated to the Netherlands from Cologne and Prague. His parents, non-practicing Jews, brought him up without formal religious education or affiliation. After attending the Amsterdam Lyceum, he studied banking at the International Trade Institute in Vienna. He served banking internships in England, France, Germany, and the Netherlands; then worked for a private bank in Amsterdam. He was already a vice-president when he married Ruth Melchior in 1938. The couple escaped from Amsterdam in 1941 and reached New York City via occupied France, Spain, and Cuba."