Ferdinand Moritz Delmar

Baron Ferdinand Moritz Delmar born Salomon Moses Levy (21 March 1781 - 27 November 1858) was a wealthy Prussian banker. He also owned coffee and tea plantations in Sri Lanka (Ceylon) including the namesake Delmar Estate.

Salomon Moses Levy was born in Charlottenburg, Berlin to a Jewish family that came from Poznan. His father was Moses Salomon Levy, also a banker and grain merchant and his mother Belle was the daughter of the court banker Ruben Hesse Goldschmidt in Kassel. Delmar was also a banker and financier involved in the Prussian war tributes after the Treaties of Tilsit. He inherited Delmar and Co in 1809 and along with his brothers, he adopted the name of Delmar (meaning "of the sea") and became a Christian. He also became a councilor for Berlin and was a friend of the French aristocracy there. In 1810 he received the title of Freiherr von Delmar (baron). He moved around 1815 to Paris where he married Emily (d. 1861), the daughter of Sir George Rumbold (1764-1807) and died in 1858.[1] Delmar adopted Emily Victorine Elizabeth Rumbold daughter of Sir William Rumbold, 3rd Baronet who married George Henry Cavendish (1824-1889).[2] The Delmar company went out of business in 1825. Baron Delmar's estates in Ceylon were mortgaged to Baring Brothers and in 1897 the Ceylon lands were liquidated after a complicated court settlement between his daughter Emily who had become Countess de la Rochefoucald and John Boustead who had taken possession of the estates.[3]