Edward Banks (politician)

Banks came from a political family. His father, Edward Banks (1795–1851), was a Hamburg Syndicus while his maternal grandfather, Johann Heinrich Bartels (1761–1851) had been a mayor of the city.^[2] A brother in law was the writer-historian Otto Beneke [de] (1812–1891).

He attended school in Hamburg and Lübeck, before moving on to study Law at Tübingen and Göttingen. While at Tübingen he became a member of the Germania student fraternity.^[3] After an eighteen-month world tour, in 1860 he settled back in Hamburg to work as a lawyer. In 1865 Salomon Abendana Belmonte [de] joined the firm.

In 1866 Banks was elected to the Hamburg Parliament where he sat as a member of the left-wing group. In 1870 he served in the militia in the war against France, and following unification stood successfully for election to the new German Reichstag as a Progressive Party candidate, representing a Hamburg electoral district.^[1] In the 1874 election he lost his seat to the National Liberal Hermann Joachim Eduard Schmidt [de] but was still able to gain a seat in the 1874 assembly, representing a Berlin constituency following a bye-election.^[4] He lost his seat in 1877, however.

In May 1883 Edward Banks killed himself.^[3]