Theodore Dietrich Garbade (12 September 187326 January 1961) was a merchant and banker. He was President of the Union of Manufacturers of Cigars of Cuba.
As a young man he moved from the German Zigarrenmacherdorf ("cigar-making village") of Hastedt,[1] Bremen to Cuba where he worked as a leaf buyer for Hermann Dietrich Upmann and his tobacco company.[2] He was President of the Union of Manufacturers of Cigars of Cuba, and joined H. Upmann as an associate member and became their partner[3] at the bank H. Upmann & Co. till 1917 when he moved to New York.[4] He was Head of the Chamber of Commerce in Cuba in 1917.[5]
Garbade played a significant role in the settlement between Cuba and the United States after President Wilson succeeded in passing the Revenue Act of 1913. The act established the lowest rates since the Walker Tariff of 1857. Most schedules were ad valorem basis, a percentage of the value of the item. This had a profound impact for the Cuban tobacco industry concerning their import to the States. As President of the Union of Manufacturers of Cigars of Cuba Garbade, aided by an appointed committee, laid this out to Cuba's president Mario García Menocal in January 1914, insisting upon an allowance of 50 per cent on their exports of cigars as an equivalent in Cuba's next reciprocity treaty and urging a prompt solution of this matter so vital to the Cuban cigar industry.[6]
A German citizen in the United States in 1916, he was considered prisoner of war, and put under house arrest in his mansion in Mount Kisko, New York. In 1919 he moved to San Sebastián, Spain and in 1921 to Lucerne, Switzerland where he applied for a Swiss passport. An owner of plantations and other properties in Cuba, he lost a great part of his fortune by confiscation in 1960 after the Cuban Revolution. He died only one year later. Garbade was married four times. Theodor Jr is son of his first spouse Graziella Aguirre del Monte who died in 1909. His second wife Aida Heydrich (1887–1920),[7] daughter of Emilio Heydrich, gave him two sons: Robert D. Garbade (a filmmaker and first cameraman of the Swiss Television) and Bernhard R. Garbade, father of Swiss artist Daniel Garbade (director of Zurich Insurance Group, philanthropist and sponsor of Church Organs). Theodore Garbade is buried with his last wife Hildegard von Ohlen (1903–1962)[8] at the Flims Waldhaus cemetery, Switzerland.[9]