Walter A. Eberstadt was a New School trustee and investment banker. Eberstadt was born to a wealthy German-Jewish family in Frankfurt, Germany in 1921. After the passage of the Nuremberg Laws, his parents sent him to study at the University of Oxford in 1935. He was interned by the British government at the outbreak of World War II and joined the British Army in 1940 once service was opened to persons considered enemy aliens. Wounded in 1944, he was briefly posted to the British occupation zone after the war before moving to London to write for The Economist.

Eberstadt moved to the United States in 1951, where he worked for Lehman Brothers, and later Lazard Frères & Co., where he became a partner in 1970. He joined the New School Board of Trustees in 1975, and was granted the Distinguished Service Award in 1990, an honorary doctorate in 1996, and made a life trustee in 2011. He also served as trustee and Vice Chair of The Frick Collection. He died in 2014.

Sources: “Walter Eberstadt”. The Martha’s Vineyard Times. March 4, 2014. Accessed June 11, 2024. https://www.mvtimes.com/2014/03/04/walter-eberstadt/

“The New School Mourns the Loss of Walter A. Eberstadt, Philanthropist and Financial Executive”. The New School. Accessed June 11, 2024. https://www.newschool.edu/pressroom/pressreleases/2013/EberhardtObit.htm