FRIEDENBERG, SAMUEL

FRIEDENBERG, SAMUEL (1886–1957), U.S. collector of medals. Brought to New York from Poland at the age of seven, Friedenberg later built up a fortune in the textile business and   then in real estate, and became active in philanthropic and cultural work. Beginning with the purchase of a small collection of medals in 1935 from a German refugee, he established what became the most complete collection of Jewish medals in existence. He commissioned from artists such as I. Sors, benno elkan , Paul Vincze, F. Kormis, a supplementary series of portrait medals, mainly of contemporaries. He left the collection to the New York Jewish Museum, where his son, Daniel M. Friedenberg, who wrote widely on the subject, became honorary curator of coins and medals. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: D.M. Friedenberg (ed.), Great Jewish Portraits in Metal (1963). (Cecil Roth)