Business Magnate. He received international recognition as a German banker, leading West Germany to an economic recovery after World War II. He was the son of a middle-class business lawyer. After studying law for one year at the University of Bonn, he obtained a position in England for two years as a tutor, learning fluent English and studying the economies. Returning to Germany, he joined a merchant bank in Cologne. He held several posts after World War I in Germany and abroad, learning the business of international banking. In 1929 he entered the highly regarded private banking house of Delbruck Schickler & Company, becoming a partner six years later after the traumatic experience of the 1931 financial crash. In 1938 at the beginning of the Nazi regime, he was appointed as manager of Berlin's Deutsche Bank. The Deutsche Bank was established in 1870 and has been a leader in Germany's economy. Although many of his business colleagues were Jewish and facing concentration camps, he became a banker and businessman dealing the Nazi regime in wartime Germany. With the fall of the Nazi regime after World War II, the bank disbanded. For his allegiance to the Nazi regime, he was interned for 90 days after the war. In 1948 he was appointed the deputy supervisory board chairman of the Kreditanstalt fue Wiederaufbau or the Credit Institute for Reconstruction, with the purpose of distributing $12 billion from the Marshall Plan to the businesses and industry to war-torn western Europe. Serving as an adviser to the West German government, one of his most important assignments was to serve as head of the West German delegation to London for debt negotiations from 1951 to 1953. This group settled Germany's foreign debts and initiated conditions for establishing its creditworthiness. The debt accord, which was sign in February of 1953, laid the groundwork for the German economic redevelopment. In 1953 he negotiated the restitution from Germany to Israel and individual Jews for crimes of the Nazi Holocaust. With the reopening of the Deutsche Bank in 1957, he rejoined the organization on the management board, becoming chairman of the supervisory board in 1967, honorary chairman in 1976 and considered the spokesman for the bank. The bank became the largest in Germany and one of the most powerful financial institutions in the world. He continued to work with the Credit Institute for Reconstruction, becoming chairman in 1959. At one point he was on the board of at least 24 important German companies, such as Daimler, the Federal Railway, and Lufthansa Airlines. He was chairman of the executive board of 20 of these companies. In 1965 a German law was passed, called "Lex Abs." The new law limited the number of boards one person could seat to only ten boards. His positions were 'grandfathered" until his retirement age, but even in his late eighties he was active in the business world. He had an abiding interest in the arts and music, being a proficient pianist and devoted admirer of Beethoven. He was a patron of German museums and galleries as well as many in London. He secured sixteen important masterpieces for German collections. His obituary starts with a humorous story about him being the first banker to go to heaven and how St. Peter needed help with heaven's economy. Through the years he received numerous honors including Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1988, Bernhard Harms Prize in 1968, and Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St. Gregory the Great.