Ernst (later mostly Ernest) Alfred Eliat was born in Geldern on the Lower Rhine in 1881. Nothing is known about his Jewish family background. His career path, which led him to banking, is also unknown. There are some indications that he was already working in Paris before the First World War. He always referred to himself as a "banquier", which suggests that he ran his own banking business and was not an executive employee of a bank.
He first became tangible in Berlin in 1923 (Berlin address book 1923-1933), where he lived in Charlottenburg at Marchstrasse 7e together with Helene, née Clavier (October 23, 1894 in Berlin - 1989 in New York), whom he had married in 1920 and who came from a wealthy Jewish family. The couple kept an open house frequented by artists, writers and scientists. Friends from his Berlin days included the Austrian writer Ernst Weiss and the architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. In 1925 Mies van der Rohe designed a villa for a lakeside property in Potsdam-Nedlitz for the Eliat couple, which, however, was never built. Helene Eliat was a journalist and writer. She published three novels that can be classified as sophisticated entertainment literature.
Ernst Eliat had probably been working as a consultant for Deutsche Bank since the mid-1920s, without ever having been directly employed by the bank. From the beginning of 1929 at the latest, he was the official representative of Deutsche Bank in Paris, which opened its representative office at 2, rue Meyerbeer on 12 January 1929. Eliat maintained close contacts with French politics and business and advised and supported the Berlin management of Deutsche Bank in a variety of matters. Several members of the Management Board were in direct correspondence with him.
In Paris, too, the Eliat couple socialized with artists and intellectuals, such as the surrealist Jean Cocteau and the writer André Gide. At the latest during his time in Paris, he also became friends with Stefan Zweig, for whom Eliat was "the smartest financier in Germany", who represented "the Reich, the Deutsche Bank" and was "actually the financial envoy of Germany in France". (Stefan Zweig from Paris to Friderike Zweig of 16 January 1932, in: "Wenn einen Augenblick die Wolken weichen" : Briefwechsel 1912-1942, edited by Jeffrey B. Berlin and Gert Kerschbaumer, Frankfurt am Main 2006, p. 254).
Eliat's official activity for Deutsche Bank ended in 1935, whereby his Jewish descent, which had not gone unnoticed by representatives of the Nazi state, may have played a role. In a public statement, it was said that the bank had closed its Paris representative office at the end of 1935 due to the decline in foreign business. The Frankfurter Zeitung reported that Eliat had gone into business for himself in Paris. In November 1937, he opened a new office at 9, rue Auber. In the background, he continued to work as a consultant for the bank. Hermann J. Abs, who had just been appointed to the Management Board of Deutsche Bank and was responsible for international business, met with Eliat in February and August 1938. As late as January 1939, Eliat travelled to Berlin to meet with the Management Board members Eduard Rösler and Hans Rummel. For his services, the bank paid him a monthly sum.
The outbreak of World War II and the German occupation of France forced Eliat to flee. He was imprisoned in a French camp, but managed to escape to Brazil in late 1940/early 1941. The exact circumstances are unknown. His wife Helene, from whom he had been separated since this time, was interned in the Gurs camp in 1940, where she spent five months. She managed to escape across the Pyrenees to Spain and on to Lisbon. From there, she managed to reach New York after a five-month stay in Cuba. After World War II, she studied psychology and ran a respected practice in New York, where she died in 1989.
Eliat, who had arrived in Rio de Janeiro completely destitute, tried his hand at art dealing as a passionate antique collector. His health was deteriorating. In 1953, he turned to Hermann J. Abs for help and subsequently received voluntary monthly support from the bank of initially 400 D-marks, which was later increased to 650 D-marks. Eliat died after a long illness in Rio de Janeiro in 1960.

1929 - 1935 official representative of Deutsche Bank in Paris

Volker M. Welter, Ernst L. Freud und das Landhaus Frank. Ein Wohnhaus der Moderne bei Berlin, Berlin 2014, pp. 62-3.
Klaus-Peter Hinze, Helene Eliat van de Velde (1894 - 1949), in: Exil. Forschung. Erkenntnisse. Ergebnisse. XIII. vol. (1993), no. 1., pp. 56-61.

https://dfg-viewer.de/show/?tx_dlf%5Bid%5D=https%3A%2F%2Fblha-digi.brandenburg.de%2Frest%2Fdfg%2Fxml%2FwDOmJkMOUpKpeWtM

https://www.landesarchiv-berlin.findbuch.net/php/main.php#42205265702e203032352d30392d3134x813

https://www.geni.com/people/Ernst-Eliat/6000000005442365936

https://www.moma.org/collection/works/100362

www.curatescape.unhartsprojectspace.org/eliat