The Bethmann family (/ˈbɛtmɑːn/; BET-mahn) has been remarkable for the high proportion of its male members who succeeded at mercantile or financial endeavors.

[2][7] The surname "Bethmann" likely was an occupational name (like "Bäcker"/"Baker") given to collectors of the bede penninc, a tax requested (erbeten) from freemen in the Middle Ages.

[3] Another Tile buys a house on Knochenhauerstraße in 1492, serves on the town council, and is mentioned ten times between 1503 and 1520 as Munteherr, the title of an official responsible for minting of specie and weighing the metals produced from mining.

[8] Henning's grandson Hieronymus is recorded in 1590 as a member of the merchants' guild; four years later, he married Ilsebey Drönewolf in St. Stephan's church.

[7][20] As a Protestant, the widowed Anna Elisabeth and her children quitted the Archbishopric for the Lutheran city of Frankfurt am Main; there she found it easier to comply with her religious obligations and benefited from the presence of relatives.

[7] Her son Simon Moritz Bethmann (1687–1725) served the House of Nassau-Weilburg[13] as an Amtmann or bailiff-magistrate, in Bergnassau on the river Lahn.

[28] As the daughter of a Kaiserlicher Rat and Schöffe, Katharina Margarete Schaaf gained her husband Johann Philipp access to Patrician society; she was on familiar terms with the mother of Goethe and, even after she was widowed, maintained a respected salon where she received Madame de Staël in 1808.

[23] By 1816, when Frankfurt's new constitution abolished the privilege of heritable office for the Patrizier,[28] the cachet of belonging to one of their societies had already become much less significant.

[12] His financial dealings gained him entrance to nearly all the ruling families of Europe, and he exploited these contacts on numerous diplomatic missions on behalf of his hometown.

[23] In the negotiations on the German mediatisation, he bargained for and achieved the secularization of ecclesiastical assets within the territory of Frankfurt for the benefit of the imperial city.

[22] Besides promoting commerce, Simon Moritz von Bethmann was an ardent supporter of the arts and sciences in the city of Frankfurt.

[1] In 1812 Bethmann inaugurated a museum of antique and classicist sculpture within a stretch of land that he had turned into a park six years earlier.

In 1687 when Anna Elisabeth Bethmann named a son Simon Moritz, it may have been that she wanted to show her support for ecumenicism or it may simply have been that she fondly remembered the twin landmarks of her hometown.

Unusually, however, at the same time that Simon Moritz was helping the Jews of Frankfurt to secure greater freedoms for themselves, he was carrying on a fierce business rivalry with the Rothschilds in which no quarter was ever given.

[29] Simon Moritz von Bethmann had married Louise Friederike née Boode (1792–1869), daughter of a respected Dutch family,[2] granddaughter of a Huguenot named Martin[33] and a native of British Guiana, in 1810.

[29] The Louisa park off a major carriage route in the southwest part of Frankfurt is named after Louise von Bethmann.

[29] He financed the construction of numerous railways in Germany and made especially sure that Frankfurt turned into an early node of rail traffic.

On 18 September 1848, he gave refuge to mortally wounded Prince Felix Lichnowsky who had been attacked by a mob ostensibly outraged over foreign policy decisions.

[37] Moritz' brother Carl Ludwig Caesar von Bethmann purchased the castle of Fechenbach in 1842, earning him the title of a Bavarian Freiherr.

His oldest son Karl Moritz "Charly" von Bethmann proved a spendthrift and got himself in hock to a loan shark charging 6 per cent interest a week.

In 1914, he married Maximiliane Countess Schimmelpenninck,[33] a granddaughter of Dr. Eugen Lucius, a founder of Hoechst AG, thus adding the landed estate with Castle Schönstadt near Marburg to the Bethmann holdings.

[36] This Simon Moritz contributed his time to numerous cultural institutions of Frankfurt, such as the administration of the Städel museum, as well as non-profit foundations.

[29] According to a popular story, the Bethmännchen, a marzipan confection, was created in 1838 by the Paris pastry chef Jean Jacques Gautenier, then the head cuisinier in the Bethmann household.