Max von Oppenheim (1860 – 1946), second son of Bank partner Albert von Oppenheim (1834 – 1912), rejected the career he had been expected to pursue in the family business, finding his calling in the Orient instead, as explorer, archaeologist, ethnologist, collector and political advisor. The openness and tolerance he showed in his dealings with oriental lifestyle and culture set him apart from the majority of his contemporaries.

Oppenheim's most important achievement was the excavation of the 3,000-year old Aramaean city of Guzana at Tell Halaf in what is now Syria. He was able to display a large number of his findings in his privately-financed Tell Halaf Museum in Berlin. He also gained lasting rewards from his exploration into Arabic culture. His studies on the history of the Bedouins and their way of life are outstanding. Oppenheim documented his travels in Southwest Asia and his excavations in a unique photographic collection. He had been interested in Oriental arts and crafts ever since his youth, and assembled a thematically diverse collection in the course of his life. In 1922, he founded an Orient research institute in Berlin, which adopted an interdisciplinary approach. Oppenheim ultimately became known for a memorandum he wrote in the initial stages of World War I, in which he recommended the German government to incite Muslims living under British and French colonial rule to wage a "Holy War" against their colonial masters.

In spite of considerable losses resulting from World War II, Max Oppenheim's legacy is now more alive than ever. The Max Freiherr von Oppenheim Foundation which he founded in 1929 has acted as coordinator and sponsor for a large number of projects. German archaeologists resumed the excavation at Tell Halaf in 2006. Oppenheim's photographic collection has now been digitised and can be viewed on the Internet. The original works were displayed in an exhibition at the Museum for Photography in Berlin from February to May 2011. Since it reopened in the autumn of 2010, the "Rautenstrauch Joest Museum – Cultures of the World" has dedicated an exhibition space in Cologne to the Orientalia collection of Max von Oppenheim. An exhibition entitled "The Rescued Gods from the Palace at Tell Halaf" opened in Berlin's Pergamon Museum in January 2011. The monumental stone sculptures on display had been destroyed in a 1943 air strike. They are being shown again for the first time in nearly 70 years, marking the conclusion of a ten-year restoration project.