Frank J. Manheim

Frank J. Manheim, was a college professor, businessman, author and horse racing enthusiast in the United States.

His parents, Armin Manheim (b. 1876) and Theresa Manheim (b.1880), immigrants from the Austro Hungarian Empire.

Manheim had three siblings.

His older sister, Alice Manheim Kaplan (b. 1903, Budapest) was a New York socialite, patron of the arts, and former president of the American Federation of Arts.

An older brother Paul Manheim, (b. 1906 in what is now the Slovak Republic), a prominent collector of Asian art and a partner at Lehman Brothers.

Manheim was born in New York City August 18, 1910.

Manheim’s younger sister, Louise Manheim Espy (b. 1919 New York City) was the wife of renowned writer and wordsmith, Willard Espy, who credited her for his success as the author of 16 books.

Manheim attended high school at the University Preparatory School in New York.

He taught at Union College in Schenectady, New York in the 1930s and worked at the investment banking firm Lehman Brothers for over 35 years, where he was a partner.

He was a collector of French glass paperweights and wrote a book on that topic.

He also wrote a travel book on London, where he had retired and where he died.

Manheim served as Lehman Brothers’ principal partner in the post-war commercial success of Western Europe, managing much of the U.S. investment into the continent.

He was named a director of more than 20 major publicly traded corporations including manufacturers and was one of the key influences in the rise of Hertz Corporation to its global leadership in rental cars.

He owned a successful racing stable, was adept at fox hunting, and was involved in public charities in New York City.

In 1932 he earned a bachelor's degree in history from the University of North Carolina.

He studied at Harvard University for a semester, then continuing his education in Germany at the University of Bonn then at the University of Berlin.

In September 1933, he returned to the US to study at Columbia University until June 1936 focusing in American and Modern European history, economics, sociology and English.

From 1936 to 1938 Manheim was an instructor in European History and French Literature at Union College in Schenectady, New York.

In 1937, under his leadership as faculty advisor to the university’s International Relations Club, the school sponsored a series of eight radio roundtable discussions on then current news, such as US Latin American policy and re-arming US forces.

Later that year, Manheim was embroiled in controversy when he announced the speaking appearance of Fritz Kuhn, the leader of the German American Bund.

Manheim said of Kuhn, who had been denied a similar speaking engagement in Schenectady earlier, “I abhor and hate the principles for which Mr. Kuhn is said to stand…but subscribe wholeheartedly to the doctrine of free speech; he received phone calls threatening bodily harm as a result.

He also showed a lighter side, acting as Alexander Hamilton in the historic drama One People, written by Dixon Ryan Fox, the school’s president.

Manheim moved to New York City in the early 1940s.

In 1940, Manheim became the president of Howell, Soskin and Co., a publishing firm that had taken over the New York editorial and business personnel of Stackpole Sons of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

One of the first books published by the new firm was Stalin’s Kampf, a collection of the Soviet dictator’s writings.

The firm also published Supreme Court Justice Harlan Fiske Stone’s Public Control of Business.

Manheim joined the industrial department of the New York investment banking firm Lehman Brothers in 1943, becoming a partner in 1951.

He became a member of the board of Sharon Steel Corporation in 1951.

In 1953 the company’s market capitalization was $7 million.

He joined the board of Ketay Corporation, manufacturer of high precision instruments, in 1954;.

In 1954, he joined the board of New York’s Omnibus Corporation (Hertz Corp.) during a period of the company’s expansion and strategic growth, Omnibus purchased Hertz Corporation, previously owned by General Motors; the combined firm took the Hertz name.

Under Manheim’s direction, Hertz began a series of buy-backs of Hertz franchises, then expanded globally.

In 1955, Ketay merged with Norden Laboratories Corporation (manufacturer of WWII’s Norden bombsight) to form Norden-Ketay Corporation, and he became a director of the expanded company.

In 1955, he was named to the board of Glen-Alden Coal Company; he was at that time also was a director at Associated Transport Inc., Pittsburgh Consolidation Coal Co., Southern Express Company, Kagran Corp. and the Chicago Motor Coach Company.

He and two other directors of Glen-Alden resigned from its board after a conflict over their support for the purchase of Chicago’s Maremont Automotive Products.

In March 1957, Manheim was elected to the board of silverware manufacturer, the International Silver Company.

In November 1957, he was named chairman of the finance committee and a director of Hertz-American Express International Ltd., a new joint venture between American Express and Hertz, which took over Hertz car rental subsidiaries in France.

Mexico, Cuba, Puerto Rico and Hawaii.

($67 million in 2020.) and grew to nearly $100 million in 1965.

($559 million in 2020) This global growth was considered as an example of Lehman Brothers’ ingenuity.