Otto Hermann Kahn Otto Hermann Kahn Otto Hermann Kahn (February 21, 1867 – March 29, 1934) was a German-born American investment banker, collector, philanthropist, and patron of the arts. Otto was born on February 21, 1867 in Mannheim, Germany, and raised there, by his Jewish parents, Emma (née Eberstadt) and Bernard Kahn. His father had been among the refugees to the United States after the revolution of 1848 and had become an American citizen, but later returned to Germany. Kahn was educated in a gymnasium in Mannheim. Kahn's ambition was to be a musician, and he learned to play several instruments before he
Leo Kahn (entrepreneur) become a professor at Boston University. Kahn married his first wife, Dorothy Davids, in 1963 and had three children. The family resided in Chelmsford, Massachusetts, until Dorothy Kahn's death in 1975. Leo Kahn continued to operate his family's wholesale food distributor. However, he also launched a new grocery retailing division, which became known as Purity Supreme. The company initially opened small groceries, but then expanded to supermarkets. The Purity Supreme company also included the Heartland Foods Warehouse, which was called "the first successful deep-discount warehouse supermarket in the country" by Inc Magazine. One Kahn's biggest rivals was Thomas G. Stemberg,