Michael Wawelberg


Michael Wawelberg was a Polish-Russian Jewish banker, one of the best known members of the Wawelberg banking family.
Michael Wawelberg received a classical educational at the St. Nicholas Imperial Gymnasium in Tsarskoe Selo, from which he graduated in 1899. His father Hyppolite Wawelberg donated 500 roubles for the gymnasium's own charity, which at the time was a considerable sum of money.
in 1903 Michael Wawelberg graduated from the University of St. Petersburg law school. That year he also took over the management of the Wawelberg Bank, which in 1912 was renamed the St. Petersburg Commercial Bank . In 1913 a branch was founded in Poland and became a publicly traded company – the Western Bank.
According to the legend after one of his new bank buildings was constructed and Michael Wawelberg inspected it and could not find any deficiency with the work, he ordered to change the doors anyway because the door sign said "push." That's not what I do in life, said Wawelberg, I only pull things toward myself.
In 1917 on the eve of the Bolshevik putsch Michael Wawelberg lived in Czarskoe Selo at 66 Boulvardnaia ulitsa. He was the chairman of the Commercial Bank and director of the board of Donetsk and Grushev Coal and Anthracite Mines.
He fled Russia after 1917 and then disappears from the public view. Most likely he settled in Poland or spent some time there, because in Andrei Serkov's book on Russian Free Masonry he mentions that two free masons, Alexander Erdman and Michael Wawelberg, as they considered themselves Russian, petitioned Grand Manster of the Polish Lodge with a request to allow them to found the Russian Lodge in Warsaw.