"A sweeping, colorful saga, The Patron is the first biography of Salman Schocken, the founder of a large department store chain and a Jewish philanthropic titan. We follow Schocken's transformation from an impoverished migrant selling textiles door-to-door to a captain of German industry, at once media magnate, collector, talent scout, and patron. The merchandising millionaire then harnessed his fortune to a vision: to produce and disseminate Jewish secular culture to the Jewish masses, in much the same way as he marketed well-designed coffeepots to the working class.

With his success, the breadth of Schocken's many ventures grew to include an extensive library, educational institutes, a publishing house, and a newspaper, as well as the patronage of such influential modern thinkers as Martin Buber and Thomas Mann. But as the Nazi regime closed in on Schocken's empire, the ever-resilient tycoon transferred his energies and passions to Palestine and New York." "The Patron fills in a missing piece of twentieth-century history, the towering life of a self-made man who, with courage and tenacity, helped fashion a people's national and cultural renaissance."--Jacket.