Уолтер А. Хаас: История американского предпринимателя и спасителя Levi Strauss & Co.

American businessman

Walter A. Haas Sr. (May 11, 1889 – December 7, 1979), was an American billionaire businessman who was the president and chairman of Levi Strauss & Co.

Haas was born to a Jewish family, one of four children of Abraham Haas and Fanny Koshland. His father was an immigrant from Bavaria who founded the Hellman, Haas and Company which eventually became the Smart & Final grocery store chain. His siblings were Charles, Ruth (1891), and Eleanor (1900). In 1910, Haas graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, where he was a member of the Order of the Golden Bear. Haas served in the U. S. Army Field Artillery during World War I. – is widely credited with "saving" the company, leading it through the Great Depression, racial integration at its factories, the global popularization of the Levi brand, and the creation of the Levi Strauss Foundation.

A Republican, he was an alternate delegate to the 1952 Republican National Convention. He was Jewish, and was president of the San Francisco Jewish Welfare Federation.

In 1914, Haas married Elise Stern, who was a daughter of Sigmund Stern, who was a son of David Stern who was a nephew of Levi Strauss (Strauss had died unmarried and without children and deeded his company to David Stern). Haas had three children: Rhoda Haas Goldman, Peter E. Haas, and Walter A. Haas Jr. In 1989, the University of California, Berkeley Regents voted to rename the business school the Haas School of Business in his honor, after a large gift from the Haas family.