Portrait of Mauricio (Moritz) Hochschild

People/magnate, rescuer

Mauricio (Moritz) Hochschild

Mauricio (Moritz) Hochschild (born 1881), magnate, rescuer, from Germany. Linked to tin, silver.

The lucky break

Risk-taking in Bolivian mining made him one of the richest men in South America and one of the three tin barons.1,2

The downfall

Twice jailed and threatened with execution as Bolivia moved to the 1952 revolution, he fled into exile. Critics called him the toughest of the three tin barons.1,2

Legacy

Documents found from 1999 show he helped as many as 20,000 Jews escape the Nazis, funding resettlement in Bolivia from 1939. Unesco added his company archive to the Memory of the World Register in 2016.1,2

Story cards

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People

Partner ofSimon Iturri PatinoBolivia's tin barons were seen as a cartel that negotiated among themselves.1Partner ofCarlos Victor AramayoThe youngest and the Oxford-educated of Bolivia's tin barons.1Rival ofVictor Paz EstenssoroThe 1952 decree took Hochschild's mines too.3

Mines

Worked atCerro Rico de PotosiHis company files were found in Potosi and Oruro warehouses.1

Sources

  1. How Bolivia's ruthless tin baron saved thousands of Jewish refugees The Guardian (Dan Collyns, 11 Aug 2022)
  2. File pages and licence metadata for portraits (via the Commons imageinfo/extmetadata API) Wikimedia Commons
  3. Foreign Relations of the United States 1952-1954, vol. IV, document 145 US Department of State, Office of the Historian

Pictures on this page: 1026470 F82658.png, Irene Bran (Public domain); 1922-06-06, El Liberal, Simón I. Patiño (cropped).jpg, Ángel de la Fuente (Public domain); Carlos Víctor Aramayo - 2.jpg, Unknown author (Public domain).

From the Prospector Trails mining history dataset: each fact links to the source it was checked against. Figures are as the source gives them, in the money of their day. Not investment advice.

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Pictures: Chiquicamata Mine, Chile, NASA/METI/AIST/Japan Space Systems, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team (Public domain (NASA media, no copyright)); Dolcoath tin mine, Camborne, Cornwall: miners in a mine shaft, standing on wooden platforms connected by ladders. Photograph by J. C. Burrow, 1890/1910., Burrow, J. C., 1852-1914 (Public Domain Mark 1.0); Salar de Atacama, Chile, NASA/METI/AIST/Japan Space Systems, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team (Public domain (NASA media, no copyright)); Kopermijn te Kolwezi in de provincie Shaba (Katanka), Mieremet, Rob / Anefo / Europeana (Public Domain Mark 1.0).