Baron Maurice de Hirsch left his fortune to his widow, who gave it away and passed the rest to an adopted son

Maurice de Hirsch made his fortune building the Oriental Railway to Constantinople. His only child, Lucien, died in 1887 aged 30. In 1891 he founded the Jewish Colonization Association, incorporated in England, and supplied its entire nominal capital of £2 million to settle Jews from Russia on farms in Argentina. The same year he set up the Baron de Hirsch Fund in New York with $2.5 million. By his death on 21 April 1896 the Argentine colonies held 6,757 settlers. The Jewish Encyclopedia put his legacy to the Association at $45 million. His will made his wife, Clara, sole administrator and residuary legatee. As a widow she gave away more than $15 million. Her own will left $10 million to foundations, including $1.2 million each to the Baron de Hirsch Fund in New York and the Baron de Hirsch Institute in Montreal. She died in Paris on 1 April 1899. In 1887 she had adopted two boys, Maurice Arnold and Raymond de Forest, whose parents, American circus performers, had died of typhoid in 1882. Their mother had said the boys were the Baron's sons^†. Maurice Arnold inherited about 25 million francs and the Moravian estates at Rosice and Veveří. He became a Liberal MP for West Ham North in 1911 and, in 1936, Count de Bendern in Liechtenstein. Czechoslovakia confiscated the Moravian estates; he received £100,000 in compensation. He died in Biarritz in 1968.