北京时间2017年3月20日晚（当地时间20日早晨），洛克菲勒家族现存最年长的成员大卫·洛克菲勒（David Rockefeller）在美国纽约州Pocantico Hills的家中逝世，享年101岁。

《纽约时报》在大卫·洛克菲勒去世后发表了长篇讣告，以下是讣告全文：

著名的银行家和慈善家大卫·洛克菲勒（David Rockefeller）已于当地时间周一早上在其位于纽约州Pocantico Hills的家中逝世，享年101岁。

洛克菲勒家族的发言人弗雷泽·赛特尔（Fraser P. Seitel）证实了大卫·洛克菲勒的死讯。

大通曼哈顿银行（Chase Manhattan）长期以来都被称为洛克菲勒银行——尽管洛克菲勒家族的持股比例从来都没有超过5%。但是，大卫·洛克菲勒远非只是一名“管家”而已。作为这家银行在整个二十世纪七十年代期间的董事长兼首席执行官，他使其变成了许多人口中的“大卫的银行”，将其业务扩展到了国际市场上。

洛克菲勒的名望之高，不是任何公司头衔所能传达出来的。他的影响力渗透到了华盛顿和其他国家的首都、纽约市政府、艺术博物馆、大学和公立学校。

对于洛克菲勒这个日渐淡出人们视线的家族来说，大卫·洛克菲勒可能是最后一位在世界舞台上给人留下了深刻印象的出色人物。作为美国以及他自己麾下银行的经济利益的巡游倡导者，他曾是全球金融事务乃至美国外交政策中的一股力量。在其他国家的首都，他曾受到过等同于国家元首的荣宠接待。

在周一逝世以前，大卫·洛克菲勒是约翰·洛克菲勒（John D. Rockefeller）最后一个仍旧在世的孙子，后者在十九世纪创建了标准石油公司（Standard Oil Company），并因此而创造出了庞大的财富，成为了美国的第一位亿万富豪，同时也使其家族成为了美国历史上最富有也是最强大的家族之一。

作为一名遗产继承人，大卫·洛克菲勒一生都过着优渥的特权生活，无论是在曼哈顿（在童年时期，他和他的兄弟们在第五大道上溜旱冰的时候，身后都会跟着一辆豪华轿车，以免他们玩累了）还是在其宏伟的田庄里都是如此。

大卫·洛克菲勒从小被灌输了东海岸精英保持低调态度的礼仪习惯，成年后他在纽约市西装革履的上流社会里脱颖而出。他的慈善事业是不朽的，正如其艺术收藏品一样。他收藏了大约1.5万件艺术品，宛如一个艺术博物馆，其中有很多都是大师级的杰作。在他位于洛克菲勒中心离地面56层高的办公室的墙面上，悬挂了其中的一些艺术品。

他的联络簿是其权力和人脉的无言证词，其中罗列了他作为一名银行家兼政治家所碰面过的大约15万人的姓名。这个名录的规模是如此庞大，以至于他不得不在自己的办公室旁边专门设了一个房间用以保存。

在洛克斐勒中心俯瞰之下的是他深爱的、同时也是他施加了强力影响的纽约市。在二十世纪七十年代中期的纽约市财政危机期间，他在号召私营部门帮助解决那场危机中起到了关键性的作用。他在多年时间里一直都担任纽约市现代艺术博物馆（Museum of Modern Art）的主席一职——这个博物馆是由他的母亲在1929年时帮助成立起来的——在这个位子上，他曾领导过一场鼓励公司购买和在其办公楼里展示艺术品并资助当地博物馆的运动。而作为企业高管联盟“纽约市合作组织”（New York City Partnership）的主席，他致力于在公立学校中培育创新精神，并为中低收入家庭开发了成千上万的公寓房。

大卫·洛克菲勒一直都很清楚地认识到“洛克菲勒”这个姓氏周围所围绕着的神秘性。

“我从来都不觉得它是个障碍。”他在生前曾这样说过。“很明显，有很多次我意识到自己是被区别对待了。毫无疑问，拥有财务资源是个很大的优势；但要感谢我的父母的是，我学会了如何以克制和自由裁量的态度来使用那些资源。”

商业大使

强大的家族名再加上大卫·洛克菲勒本人对出游海外的热情——直到快100岁高龄之时，他还是会出游欧洲——他成为了一种令人生畏的营销力量。在二十世纪七十年代他曾与前埃及领袖萨达特（Mohamed Anwar el-Sadat）、前苏联领袖勃列日涅夫（Leonid Brezhnev）和周恩来会面，这些会面帮助大通曼哈顿银行成为了第一家在埃及、前苏联和中国拥有业务运营的美国银行。

“在这个国家里，很少有人像我那样见过那么多的国家领导人。”他说道。

有些人挑剔地批评称其花了太多时间出游海外，他曾被指无视其在大通曼哈顿银行的职责，而且没有擢升那些积极进取的、远见卓识的经理人。在他领导之下，大通曼哈顿银行在资产和盈利两方面都远远落后于其竞争对手、时为美国最大银行的花旗银行。在有些年头里，大通曼哈顿银行曾是美国大型银行中不良贷款最多的一家。

“根据我的判断，他不会作为一名伟大的银行家而青史留名。”大卫·洛克菲勒生前的好友、也曾担任过大通曼哈顿银行董事长的约翰·麦克克洛伊（John J. McCloy）在1981年接受美联社采访时如是说。“而是将作为一个真正有个性的名人、一位卓越而忠诚的社区成员而被人铭记。”

与此同时，大卫·洛克菲勒涉足国际政治之举也引来了批评，尤其是在1979年，当时他跟前美国国务卿亨利·基辛格（Henry A. Kissinger）一起说服了时任美国总统的吉米·卡特（Jimmy Carter），批准当时遭到驱逐的伊朗国王进入美国就医。在伊朗国王抵达纽约时 ，霍梅尼（Ayatollah Ruhollah KhoMEini）的革命派追随者被触怒了，他们攻占了美国驻伊朗大使馆，在长达一年多的时间里扣押美国外交官作为人质。

“他穷其一生都在统治阶层的‘俱乐部’里游荡，并且忠于这个‘俱乐部’的成员，无论他们做过些什么。”《纽约时报》的专栏作家大卫·布鲁克斯（David Brooks）曾在2002年这样写道。他在当时援引了大卫·洛克菲勒达成的一些交易，比如说跟“富油国的独裁者 ”和“前苏联党魁”之间达成的交易等。

然而，即如卡特和理查德·尼克松（Richard M. Nixon）这样在意识形态上迥然有异的美国前任总统，却都向大卫·洛克菲勒提出了让他担任美国财政部长的邀请，但他拒绝了两人的邀请。

大卫·洛克菲勒的兄长尼尔森·洛克菲勒（Nelson A. Rockefeller）曾做过美国副总统，还曾四次担任纽约州州长，而在他于1979年去世以后，大卫·洛克菲勒几乎成为这个家族唯一还拥有全国影响力的成员。除了他以外，只有约翰·洛克菲勒的重孙杰·洛克菲勒 （Jay Rockefeller）以其曾担任一州州长以及来自西弗吉尼亚的美国参议员的身份而拥有过卓著的声名。在洛克菲勒家族的年轻一代中，没人曾经获得过——或者说很可能是没人渴求过——像大卫·洛克菲勒那样的声望。

“没人能穿进他的鞋。”他生前的长期挚友沃伦·林德奎斯特（Warren T. Lindquist）曾在1995年向《泰晤士报》这样说道。“不是因为他们不够好或是不够聪明，而只是因为（他就像是）在另一个世界。”

优渥生活

大卫·洛克菲勒出生于1915年6月12日，他那一代共有六个兄弟姐妹，而他是其中最年幼的一个。他的父亲小约翰·洛克菲勒（John D. Rockefeller Jr.）是约翰·洛克菲勒膝下独子，将其一生都奉献给了慈善事业；他的母亲艾比·奥尔德里奇·洛克菲勒（Abby Aldrich Rockefeller）则是尼尔森·奥尔德里奇（Nelson Aldrich）的女儿，后者是来自罗德岛州的一名富有的参议员。

除了生于1908年的尼尔森以外，大卫·洛克菲勒的其他四个兄弟姐妹分别是：出生于1903年、在度过了私密不为人知的一生之后于1976年去世的艾比；出生于1906年的约翰·洛克菲勒三世（John D. Rockefeller III），他跟其父一样投身于慈善事业，直至1978年在一场车祸中丧生；出生于1910年的劳伦斯，他生前是一名环境学家，去世于2004年；以及1912年出生的温斯洛普，他曾当过阿肯色州州长，已于1973年逝世。

作为同代人中的幼子，大卫·洛克菲勒是在纽约西54街10号的一座宅邸中长大成人的，这座宅邸在当时是纽约市最大的私人住所，贴身男仆、客厅女仆、护士和家庭女仆随处可见。在每天晚上就餐时，他的父亲都会戴着黑色领结，母亲则总是穿着正式礼服。

夏日周末则总是在位于缅因州Seal Harbor的洛克菲勒“村舍”度过的，这个所谓的“村舍”共有107个房间，坐落于纽约州城市Tarrytown北部的洛克菲勒家族庄园（Kykuit），这个庄园经常都被比作封建时代的封地。正如大卫·洛克菲勒在2002年撰写的自传《回忆录》（Memoirs）中所写的那样：“到最后，家族积累起了周边的大约3400英亩土地，其中包含了Pocantico Hills的几乎所有小村庄，其中大多数居民都为家族工作，生活在我祖父拥有所有权的房子里。”

在那种田园风光的环境里，他培养出了着迷于研究昆虫的爱好，到后来这种爱好使其成为了全球最大的甲虫收藏家之一。

到大卫·洛克菲勒21岁的时候，约翰·洛克菲勒去世了。“他生前会讲很有趣的故事，还会唱小曲。”大卫·洛克菲勒在2002年时回忆道。“他会给我们10分硬币。”

大卫·洛克菲勒秉持“地位高则责任重”的理念，而这种理念跟他在实验性的曼哈顿林肯学校（Lincoln School）的早期受教育经历是分不开的，这所学校是由美国慈善家约翰·杜威（John Dewey）创办的，并由洛克菲勒基金会（Rockefeller Foundation）提供资金支持，宗旨是接纳来自于不同社会背景的儿童入学。毕业以后，他进入哈佛大学深造，在1936年拿到了学士学位，随后在伦敦经济学院（London School of Economics）求学一年，这所学院是社会知识分子的温床。到1940年，他拿到了芝加哥大学的经济学博士学位。

有感于美国内外的“大萧条”（Great Depression）形势，他在自己的博士论文中写道，他“倾向于认同罗斯福新政（New Deal）的观点，也就是在其他条件相同的情况下，赤字融资在经济低迷时期是有助于经济复苏的”。他抱持这样一种经济观可以说是个重磅新闻，这是因为洛克菲勒家族是顽固的共和党人，以其激烈反对时任美国总统的富兰克林·罗斯福（Franklin D. Roosevelt）而闻名。

在拿到博士学位以后，大卫·洛克菲勒成为了时任纽约市市长的菲奥雷洛·亨利·拉瓜迪亚（Fiorello H. La Guardia）的秘书，后者是一位好斗的、自由派的共和党人士。他在1940年娶玛格丽特·麦格拉斯（Margaret McGrath）为妻，后者是他在七年前的一场舞会上认识的，当时他还是哈佛大学的新生，而她则是纽约市查宾学校（Chapin School）的学生。他的妻子是一位全心全意的自然资源保护论者，已于1996年去世，享年80岁。两人育有六名子女：小大卫、艾比、妮娃、玛格丽特、理查德和艾琳。

大卫·洛克菲勒在1942年入伍，进入美国陆军服役。他参加了军官培训学校，二战期间曾在北非和法国战场上服役。到1945年，他以上尉身份退役。

到1946年，他开始了自己作为一名银行家的职业生涯，最开始担任的是Chase National Bank银行的一名助理经理，随后这家银行在1955年与Bank of Manhattan Company合并，从而组建了大通曼哈顿银行。在战后时代的初期，银行业是一份很有身份的职业，业内高管可以照料自己的外部利益，利用社会联系人来培植客户，同时让那些初级银行家来处理日常的管理事务。大卫·洛克菲勒找到了充裕的时间来从事这些活动。到二十世纪四十年代末，他取代了其母成为了纽约市现代艺术博物馆董事会的成员，并最终出任董事会主席，当时他很喜欢招揽那些艺术品收藏家。在1968年，他整合了一个辛迪加，其成员包括其兄尼尔森和哥伦比亚广播公司（CBS）董事长威廉·佩利（William S. Paley）等人，一举收购了美国作家和诗人格特鲁德·斯泰因（Gertrude Stein）的艺术收藏品。大卫·洛克菲勒和妻子玛格丽特·麦格拉斯·洛克菲勒自己最珍爱的画作——其中包括塞尚、高更、马蒂斯和毕加索等人的作品——则已永久性地借给了纽约市现代艺术博物馆。

全球扩张

大卫·洛克菲勒在银行业中的崛起之快不可谓不快。到1961年时，他就已经成为了大通曼哈顿银行的总裁，并与时任该行董事长的乔治·钱皮恩（George Champion）联手担任联席首席执行官。大卫·洛克菲勒提倡海外扩张的观点与钱皮恩相左，后者认为该行的美国国内市场才是更加重要的。在他于1969年取代钱皮恩出任大通曼哈顿银行的该行董事长，并成为该行唯一的首席执行官之后，他就将这家银行的“足迹”扩展到了几乎每块大陆。他曾说道，他的个人外交“品牌”——也就是与各国首脑会面——对于推进该行的利益来说是至关重要的。

“有很多人都宣称这些活动是不合适的，妨碍了我管理这家银行的职责。”大卫·洛克菲勒在其自传中写道。“对这种观点我是绝对无法认同的。”他坚持声称，其“所谓的‘外部活动’给这家银行带来了相当大的利益，无论是从财务方面还是从其全球声望方面来说都是如此”。

到1976年，大通曼哈顿银行的总运营利润为1.05亿美元，而该行旗下国际部门所贡献的运营利润已在其中占据了高达80%的比重。然而，这种数据未能证明大卫·洛克菲勒对于海外扩张的热望的正确性，而是凸显了大通曼哈顿银行美国国内业务落后于其他银行的表现。从1974年到1976年之间，该行的盈利下降了36%，而其最大的一些竞争对手——美国银行、花旗集团、Manufacturers Hanover和J.P.摩根公司（J.P. Morgan）等——的同期盈利则实现了12%到31%的增长。

1974年时发生的经济衰退给大通曼哈顿银行带来了重创，当时这家银行在低迷的不动产行业中拥有庞大的贷款组合。另外，与其他任何一家银行相比，该行在二十世纪七十年代中期所持有的纽约相关证券都要更多，而在那时纽约市正处在破产的边缘。与此同时，大通曼哈顿银行的不良贷款组合也是所有大型银行中规模最大的。

大通曼哈顿银行还在1974年卷入了一桩丑闻。据当时进行的内部审计显示，该行的债券交易账户被高估了3400万美元，并发现相关损失被少报了。其结果是，该行的净利润因此而损耗了1500万美元，其形象也受到了破坏。到1975年，美联储和货币监理署将大通曼哈顿银行认定为一家“问题”银行。

尽管在那时大卫·洛克菲勒正竭力试图扭转大通曼哈顿银行的滑坡局势，但他还是抽出身来解决了纽约市的财务问题。他参与市政事务的时间最早可以回溯到二十世纪六十年代初期，当时他作为“市中心-下曼哈顿协会”（Downtown-Lower Manhattan Association）的创始人及主席建议该市应修建一座世界贸易中心。

在1961年，大通曼哈顿银行在华尔街区域开设了64层楼高的总部，而这一行动主要是由于受到了大卫·洛克菲勒的股东。这笔大规模投资起到了帮助这个金融区域复兴的作用，并鼓励了世界贸易中心项目的实行。

到二十世纪七十年代中期，纽约市由于迟滞的经济增长和不受控制的市政开支而面临着违约风险，这时候大卫·洛克菲勒挺身而出，帮助联邦政府、纽约州政府和纽约市政府的官员与该市的商界领袖联合到了一起，制定出了一项经济计划，最终使得纽约市摆脱了那场危机。

与此同时，他还理顺了大通曼哈顿银行的事务，使其恢复了秩序。到1981年时，他和他的“门徒”维拉德·布彻（Willard C. Butcher）已经带领这家银行恢复到了完全健康的状态。同年，他将董事会主席的位子让给了布彻。

在1976年到1980年之间，这家银行的盈利增长了一倍以上，其在资产回报率方面的表现优于主要竞争对手花旗银行，这是对银行盈利来说至关重要的一项指标。不过，即使是在1981年退休并不再活跃从事该行的管理事务之后，大卫·洛克菲勒还是继续担任其国际顾问委员会的主席职务，同时还充当这家银行的外交家角色。对于他眼中美国政府官员所采取的错误政策，他总是会毫不犹豫地加以批评。

大卫·洛克菲勒尤其是对前任美国总统卡特更为苛刻。在1980年，他在接受《华盛顿邮报》采访时表示，卡特没有去做“那些其他大多数国家自己都会去做、而且预计我们也会去做的事情——那就是让美国的国家利益成为我们首要的国际目标”。

不过，对于卡特的继任者、与卡特相比远为保守的美国前总统罗纳德·里根（Ronald Reagan），他同样也扮演了“牛虻”的角色。当里根政府支持非洲的反马克思主义游击队时，他在1982年巡回造访了非洲大陆上的10个国家，宣称非洲马克思主义对于美国本身或是美国的商业利益来说都并不是什么威胁。

到了晚年，大卫·洛克菲勒卷入了有关洛克菲勒中心的争论，这座装饰艺术风格的办公大厦是其父在二十世纪三十年代建造起来的。在1985年，洛克菲勒家族以13亿美元的价格抵押了这幢大厦，由此而得的收入估计为3亿美元左右。到1989年，洛克菲勒家族将洛克菲勒集团（Rockefeller Group）的51%股份出售给了日本三菱地所公司（Mitsubishi Estate Company），该集团拥有洛克菲勒中心及其他建筑物。随后，三菱地所将其持股比例提高到了80%。

这项收购交易标志着日本企业收购美国物业的浪潮达到了高峰，同时也使得洛克菲勒家族面临批评，被指将一个重要的国家标志出售给了日本企业。当日本的经济泡沫在二十世纪九十年代初破裂时，三菱地所被迫于1995年宣布洛克斐勒中心破产，当时大卫·洛克菲勒再度遭到了批评，这一次则是被指责任由这座大厦滑入了财务毁灭的深渊。

而就在同年年底以前，大卫·洛克菲勒就组建起了一个辛迪加，收购了洛克菲勒中心的控股权。随后，这座大厦在2000年以18.5亿美元的价格被出售，从而切断了其与洛克菲勒家族之间的联系。

大卫·洛克菲勒的身家在2012年时达到了27亿美元，那时候已是耄耋之年的他日益投身于慈善事业，尤其是向哈佛大学、纽约现代艺术博物馆和洛克菲勒大学——由约翰·洛克菲勒创立于1901年——捐赠了数千万美元。

即便是在九十多岁高龄的时候，大卫·洛克菲勒工作起来的劲头也仍旧会令年轻得多的人望而生畏。每年有一半以上的时间，他都会代表大通曼哈顿银行或是外交关系委员会（Council on Foreign Relations）和三边委员会（Trilateral Commission）等组织出行。在2005年，他曾在洛克菲勒中心的办公室里接受采访，那时候他的身体状况仍旧很好，还会在该中心的健身俱乐部里跟一名助理教练一起锻炼身体。

他还是在继续收藏艺术品，其中包括数以百计的画作以及有色玻璃、瓷器、木化石和家具等各种艺术作品。

同年，他承诺将向纽约现代艺术博物馆捐献1亿美元的遗产。从整个社会的层面上来看，他的这种善举起到了一种激励作用。在2005年，现代艺术博物馆曾举行过一次聚集了各界名流的筹款活动，此次活动吸引了850人以最高9万美元的价格购买一张桌子。那次活动是在他90岁大寿之际举办的，到活动结束时他收到了一个生日蛋糕作为礼物，那个蛋糕是以他在缅因州的房子为模型而制作的。

在2002年撰写自传《回忆录》一书时，时年87岁的大卫·洛克菲勒成为了洛克菲勒家族三代人里第一个出版自传的人。在被问及为何要写这本书的时候，他以其特有的矜持语调回答道：“这个嘛，我只是想到我的人生相当有趣而已。”

《纽约时报》讣告原文如下：

David Rockefeller, Philanthropist and Head of Chase Manhattan, Dies at 101

David Rockefeller, the banker and philanthropist with the fabled family name who controlled Chase Manhattan bank for more than a decade and wielded vast influence around the world even longer as he spread the gospel of American capitalism, died on Monday morning at his home in Pocantico Hills, N.Y. He was 101.

A family spokesman, Fraser P. Seitel, confirmed the death.

Chase Manhattan had long been known as the Rockefeller bank, though the family never owned more than 5 percent of its shares. But Mr. Rockefeller was more than a steward. As chairman and chief executive throughout the 1970s, he made it “David’s bank,” as many called it, expanding its operations internationally.

His stature was greater than any corporate title might convey, however. His influence was felt in Washington and foreign capitals, in the corridors of New York City government, art museums, great universities and public schools.

Mr. Rockefeller could well be the last of an increasingly less visible family to have cut so imposing a figure on the world stage. As a peripatetic advocate of the economic interests of the United States and of his own bank, he was a force in global financial affairs and in his country’s foreign policy. He was received in foreign capitals with the honors accorded a chief of state.

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He was the last surviving grandson of John D. Rockefeller, the tycoon who founded the Standard Oil Company in the 19th century and built a fortune that made him America’s first billionaire and his family one of the richest and most powerful in the nation’s history.

As an heir to that legacy, Mr. Rockefeller lived all his life in baronial splendor and privilege, whether in Manhattan (as a boy he and his brothers would roller-skate along Fifth Avenue trailed by a limousine in case they grew tired) or at his magnificent country estates.

Imbued with the understated manners of the East Coast elite, he loomed large in the upper reaches of a New York social world of glittering black-tie galas. His philanthropy was monumental, and so was his art collection, a museumlike repository of some 15,000 pieces, many of them masterpieces, some lining the walls of his offices 56 floors above the streets at Rockefeller Center, to which he repaired, robust and active, well into his 90s.

In silent testimony to his power and reach was his Rolodex, a catalog of some 150,000 names of people he had met as a banker-statesman. It required a room of its own beside his office.

Spread out below that corporate aerie was a city he loved and influenced mightily. He was instrumental in rallying the private sector to help resolve New York City’s fiscal crisis in the mid-1970s. As chairman of the Museum of Modern Art for many years — his mother had helped found it in 1929 — he led an effort to encourage corporations to buy and display art in their office buildings and to subsidize local museums. And as chairman of the New York City Partnership, a coalition of business executives, he fostered innovation in public schools and the development of thousands of apartments for lower-income and middle-class families.

He was always aware of the mystique surrounding the Rockefeller name.

“I have never found it a hindrance,” he once said with typical reserve. “Obviously, there are times when I’m aware that I’m treated differently. There’s no question that having financial resources, which, thanks to my parents, I learned to use with some restraint and discretion, is a big advantage.”

Ambassador for Business

With his powerful name and his zeal for foreign travel — he was still traveling to Europe into his late 90s — Mr. Rockefeller was a formidable marketing force. In the 1970s his meetings with Anwar el-Sadat of Egypt, Leonid Brezhnev of the Soviet Union and Zhou Enlai of China helped Chase Manhattan become the first American bank with operations in those countries.

“Few people in this country have met as many leaders as I have,” he said.

Some faulted him for spending so much time abroad. He was accused of neglecting his responsibilities at Chase and failing to promote aggressive, visionary managers. Under his leadership Chase fell far behind its rival Citibank, then the nation’s largest bank, in assets and earnings. There were years when Chase had the most troubled loan portfolio among major American banks.

“In my judgment, he will not go down in history as a great banker,” John J. McCloy, a Rockefeller friend and himself a former Chase chairman, told The Associated Press in 1981. “He will go down as a real personality, as a distinguished and loyal member of the community.”

His forays into international politics also drew criticism, notably in 1979, when he and former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger persuaded President Jimmy Carter to admit the recently deposed shah of Iran into the United States for cancer treatment. The shah’s arrival in New York enraged revolutionary followers of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, provoking them to seize the United States Embassy in Iran and hold American diplomats hostage for more than a year. Mr. Rockefeller was assailed as well for befriending autocratic foreign leaders in an effort to establish and extend his bank’s presence in their countries.

“He spent his life in the club of the ruling class and was loyal to members of the club, no matter what they did,” The New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote in 2002, citing the profitable deals Mr. Rockefeller had cut with “oil-rich dictators,” “Soviet party bosses” and “Chinese perpetrators of the Cultural Revolution.”

Still, presidents as ideologically different as Mr. Carter and Richard M. Nixon offered him the post of Treasury secretary. He turned them both down.

After the death in 1979 of his older brother Nelson A. Rockefeller, the former vice president and four-time governor of New York, David Rockefeller stood almost alone as the remaining family member with an outsize national profile. Only Jay Rockefeller, a great-grandson of John D. Rockefeller, had earned prominence as a governor and United States senator from West Virginia. No one from the family’s younger generations has attained or perhaps aspired to David Rockefeller’s stature.

“No one can step into his shoes,” Warren T. Lindquist, a longtime friend, told The Times in 1995, “not because they aren’t good, smart, talented people, but because it’s just a different world.”

A Privileged Life

The youngest of six siblings, David Rockefeller was born in Manhattan on June 12, 1915. His father, John D. Rockefeller Jr., the only son of the oil titan, devoted his life to philanthropy. His mother, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, was the daughter of Nelson Aldrich, a wealthy senator from Rhode Island.

Besides Nelson, born in 1908, the other children were Abby, who was born in 1903 and died in 1976 after leading a private life; John D. Rockefeller III, who was born in 1906 and immersed himself in philanthropy until his death in an automobile accident in 1978; Laurance, born in 1910, who was an environmentalist and died in 2004; and Winthrop, born in 1912, who was governor of Arkansas and died in 1973.

David, the youngest, grew up in a mansion at 10 West 54 Street, the largest private residence in the city at the time. It bustled with valets, parlor maids, nurses and chambermaids. For dinner every night his father dressed in black tie and his mother in a formal gown.

Summers were spent at the 107-room Rockefeller “cottage” in Seal Harbor, Me., weekends at Kykuit, the family’s country compound north of the city in Tarrytown, N.Y. The estate was likened to a feudal fief. As Mr. Rockefeller wrote in his autobiography, “Memoirs” (2002), “Eventually the family accumulated about 3,400 acres that surrounded and included almost all of the little village of Pocantico Hills, where most of the residents worked for the family and lived in houses owned by Grandfather.”

In that bucolic setting he developed a fascination for insects that would lead to his building one of the largest beetle collections in the world.

David was 21 when John D. Rockefeller died. “He told amusing stories and sang little ditties,” Mr. Rockefeller recalled in 2002. “He gave us dimes.”

His sense of noblesse oblige was heightened by his early education at the experimental Lincoln School in Manhattan, founded by the American philosopher John Dewey and financed by the Rockefeller Foundation to bring together children from varied social backgrounds. He went on to study at Harvard, receiving his B.S. in 1936, and then spent a year at the London School of Economics, a hotbed of socialist intellectuals. Mr. Rockefeller was awarded a Ph.D in economics from the University of Chicago in 1940.

Moved by the Great Depression at home and abroad, he stated in his doctoral thesis that he was “inclined to agree with the New Deal that deficit financing during depressions, other things being equal, is a help to recovery.” The notion that a Rockefeller would take such a liberal economic view was major news; the family, rock-ribbed Republican, was known for its fierce opposition to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the New Deal’s author.

After receiving his doctorate, Mr. Rockefeller became a secretary to Fiorello H. La Guardia, New York’s pugnacious, liberal Republican mayor. In 1940, he married Margaret McGrath, known as Peggy, whom he had met at a dance seven years earlier, when he was a Harvard freshman and she was a student at the Chapin School in New York. His wife, a dedicated conservationist, died at 80 in 1996. They had six children: David Jr., Abby, Neva, Margaret, Richard and Eileen. A complete list of his survivors was not immediately available.

Mr. Rockefeller enlisted in the Army in 1942, attended officer training school and served in North Africa and France in World War II. He was discharged a captain in 1945.

He began his banking career in 1946 as an assistant manager with the Chase National Bank, which merged in 1955 with the Bank of Manhattan Company to become Chase Manhattan. Banking in the early postwar era was a gentleman’s profession. Top executives could attend to outside interests, using social contacts to cultivate clients, while leaving day-to-day management to junior officers. Mr. Rockefeller found plenty of time for such activities. In the late 1940s he replaced his mother on the Museum of Modern Art’s board and eventually became its chairman. He courted art collectors. In 1968, he put together a syndicate, including his brother Nelson and the CBS chairman, William S. Paley, to buy Gertrude Stein’s collection of modern art. David and Peggy Rockefeller’s own prized paintings — by Cézanne, Gauguin, Matisse, Picasso — were lent to the museum permanently.

Expanding a Bank Globally

Mr. Rockefeller’s rise in banking was swift. By 1961 he was president of Chase Manhattan and its co-chief executive with George Champion, the chairman. Promoting expansion overseas, Mr. Rockefeller clashed with Mr. Champion, who thought that the bank’s domestic business was more important. After Mr. Rockefeller replaced Mr. Champion as chairman and sole chief executive in 1969, he was able to enlarge the bank’s presence on almost every continent. He said his brand of personal diplomacy, meeting with heads of state, was crucial in furthering Chase’s interests.

“There were many who claimed these activities were inappropriate and interfered with my bank responsibilities,” Mr. Rockefeller wrote in his autobiography. “I couldn’t disagree more.” His “so-called outside activities,” he insisted, “were of considerable benefit to the bank both financially and in terms of its prestige around the world.”

By 1976, Chase Manhattan’s international arm was contributing 80 percent of the bank’s $105 million in operating profit. But instead of vindicating Mr. Rockefeller’s avidity for banking abroad, those figures underlined Chase’s lagging performance at home. From 1974 to 1976 its earnings fell 36 percent, while those of its biggest rivals — Bank of America, Citibank, Manufacturers Hanover and J.P. Morgan — rose 12 to 31 percent.

The 1974 recession hammered Chase, which had an unusually large portfolio of loans in the depressed real estate industry. It also owned more New York-related securities than any other bank in the mid-1970s, when the city was edging toward bankruptcy. And among major banks, Chase had the largest portfolio of nonperforming loans.

Chase also got caught up in a scandal in 1974. An internal audit discovered that its bond trading account was overvalued by $34 million and that losses had been understated. A resulting $15 million drain in net income tarnished the bank’s image. In 1975, the Federal Reserve and the comptroller of the currency branded Chase a “problem” bank.

Even as he struggled to reverse Chase Manhattan’s decline, Mr. Rockefeller found time to address New York City’s financial problems. His involvement in municipal affairs dated to the early 1960s, when, as founder and chairman of the Downtown-Lower Manhattan Association, he recommended that a World Trade Center be built.

In 1961, largely at his instigation, Chase opened its 64-story headquarters in the Wall Street area, a huge investment that helped revitalize the financial district and encouraged the World Trade Center project to proceed.

In the mid-1970s, with New York City facing a default on its debts because of sluggish economic growth and uncontrolled municipal spending, Mr. Rockefeller helped bring together federal, state and city officials with New York business leaders to work out an economic plan that eventually pulled New York out of its crisis.

At the same time, he put his bank’s affairs in order. By 1981, he and his protégé Willard C. Butcher had restored Chase Manhattan to full health. He yielded his chairmanship to Mr. Butcher that year.

From 1976 to 1980, the bank’s earnings more than doubled, and it outperformed its archrival, Citibank, in returns on assets, a critical indicator of a bank’s profitability. Even after retiring from active management in 1981, Mr. Rockefeller continued to serve Chase as chairman of its international advisory council and to act as the bank’s foreign diplomat. He did not hesitate to criticize United States officials for policies he considered mistaken.

He was notably harsh about President Carter. In 1980 he told The Washington Post that Mr. Carter had not done “what most other countries do themselves, and expect us to do — namely, to make U.S. national interests our prime international objective.”

But Mr. Rockefeller also played the gadfly to Mr. Carter’s far more conservative successor, President Ronald Reagan. When the Reagan administration was supporting anti-Marxist guerrillas in Africa, Mr. Rockefeller took a 10-nation tour of the continent in 1982 and declared that African Marxism was not a threat to the United States or to American business interests.

Late in life Mr. Rockefeller was involved in controversies over Rockefeller Center, the Art Deco office building complex his father built in the 1930s. In 1985, the Rockefeller family mortgaged the property for $1.3 billion, pocketing an estimated $300 million. In 1989, the family sold 51 percent of the Rockefeller Group, which owned Rockefeller Center and other buildings, to the Mitsubishi Estate Company of Japan. Mitsubishi later increased its share to 80 percent.

The purchase marked the high tide of a buying spree of American properties by Japanese corporations, and it opened the family to criticism that it had surrendered an important national symbol to them. When Japan’s economic bubble burst in the early 1990s, and Mitsubishi was forced to declare Rockefeller Center in bankruptcy in 1995, Mr. Rockefeller was criticized again, this time for allowing the site to slip into financial ruin.

Before the year ended, Mr. Rockefeller had put together a syndicate that bought control of Rockefeller Center. Then, in 2000, it was sold in a $1.85 billion deal that severed the center’s last ties with the Rockefeller family.

As an octogenarian, Mr. Rockefeller, whose fortune was estimated in 2012 at $2.7 billion, increasingly devoted himself to philanthropy, donating tens of millions of dollars in particular to Harvard, the Museum of Modern Art and the Rockefeller University, which John D. Rockefeller Sr. founded in 1901.

Even in his 90s, Mr. Rockefeller continued to work at a pace that would tire a much younger person. He traveled more than half the year on behalf of Chase or groups like the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission. By 2005, when he was interviewed in his offices at Rockefeller Center, he had remained physically active, working with a trainer at the center’s sports club.

He continued to collect art, including hundreds of paintings as well as works in colored glass, porcelain, petrified wood and furniture.

That same year he pledged a $100 million bequest to the Museum of Modern Art. Such giving became grist for the society pages. One celebrity-filled fund-raising gala at the museum in 2005 drew 850 people paying as much as $90,000 for a table. The occasion was Mr. Rockefeller’s 90th birthday, and at the end of the evening he was presented with a birthday cake modeled after his house in Maine. Then it was off to a week in southern France to continue the celebration with 21 members of his family.

With the book “Memoirs” in 2002, he became, at age 87, the first in three generations of Rockefellers to publish an autobiography. Asked why he wrote it, he replied in his characteristic reserved tone, “Well, it just occurred to me that I had led a rather interesting life.”