Fritz Mannheimer

Born into a Jewish family in Stuttgart, Württemberg, he was a son of Max Mannheimer, a wine merchant, and his wife, Lili Sara Fränkel. He attended the University of Heidelberg where he obtained a Doctor of Law and became a Dutch citizen in 1936.

According to an obituary of the banker published in the 21 August 1939 edition of Time:

During the War, barely out of college, he got a job in the German Government bureau directing the flow of raw materials through Germany. In no time, he headed it. At 27 he persuaded Belgian industrialists to accept the paper currency issued in occupied territory. After the War he managed Germany's central monetary office, where his first job was to organize the Amsterdam branch of the famous, 125-year-old Mendelssohn & Co. Bank." The article continued, "Mysterious (few people even knew his name), powerful, grasping, he began to formulate the financial policies of nations and to get fat. At one time he worked simultaneously for the German, Austrian, Czech, Polish, Hungarian, Yugoslav and Romanian Central Banks. Twice he turned down the presidency of the German Reichsbank, the second time proposing Hjalmar Schacht in his place. Schacht got the job. He began to buy antiques, among them the valuable Eucharistic Dove stolen from Salzburg's Cathedral. He was too skeptical to have any truck with Ivar Kreuger or any private financier. His was the last Jewish-owned bank allowed to do business in Germany.

In fact, Mendelssohn & Co. Amsterdam was independent of the Berlin Mendelssohn bank. As such it helped the German industrialist Robert Bosch to establish an American firm, thus circumventing the rules against German capital in the U.S.A.

The Time profile, while acknowledging Mannheimer's power and position, was also remarkably negative, describing him as "fat-lipped, mean, noxious, cigar-chomping" man who gave one of his mistresses a gold bathtub and who, "after 20 years in The Netherlands, could not speak enough Dutch to boss his chauffeur." Another source recalled that while most Amsterdam bankers were discreet enough to use taxis for daily transportation, the flamboyant Mannheimer traveled by a Rolls-Royce limousine. He also raised eyebrows by maintaining two lavish homes: a 1913 redbrick mansion at Hobbemastraat 20 in Amsterdam, which was derogatorily nicknamed "Villa Protski", and Villa Monte Cristo near Vaucresson, France. His offices were located in a palatial 17th-century mansion in Amsterdam, at Herengracht 412.

At his home in Vaucresson, on 1 June 1939, Mannheimer married Marie Jane Reiss (1917–2004). Born in China, she was one of three daughters born to Hugo Reiss, a prominent German Jewish businessman in Shanghai who served as Brazil's consul in that city, and his American-born Irish Catholic wife, Marie Ignatius Murphy. According to the Time profile, Mannheimer, who had long been obese and in ill health, suffered a heart attack during the wedding and had to be revived with two injections. The best man was Paul Reynaud, the French minister of finance and later French prime minister; the banker also was a close friend of prime minister Édouard Daladier.

The couple had one child, Anne France Mannheimer, later known as Anne France Engelhard. She was born on 24 December 1939, six months after her parents' marriage and four months after her father's death. (Commonly called Annette, she later became the second wife of the Dominican-American fashion designer Oscar de la Renta.)