The word "Rothschild" in German roughly means "red shield" - historians suggest that the red shield may have hung at the gates of the family home in Frankfurt.
The first known Rothschild was Mayer Amschel, who was born in Frankfurt in 1743. He was a dealer in rare coins, medals, antiques and curiosities. He had many children with his wife Gutl, 10 of whom survived, including five sons: Nathan, James, Salomon, Amschel and Karl.
As the Mayer's family grew, his business grew. He started providing loans to his clients, then he was engaged in foreign exchange trading and government loans. By the early 19th century, he was very wealthy. And he was no longer an antiques dealer. He was a banker. Mayer's and Gutl's children went all over Europe: Nathan to London; James to Paris; Salomon to Vienna; Karl to Naples; Amschel, senior, stayed in Frankfurt.
They were all involved in trade. They built railways. They have invested in gold and precious metals. And they specialized in lending to governments. "There is only one power in Europe, and that is Rothschild," wrote a French journalist in 1841. There were many exceptional Rothschilds - too many to mention.
Besides the bankers, there was Charlotte de Rothschild (1819-1884), who founded the Nursing Home and the Society for Jewish Emigration; Nathaniel de Rothschild (1812-1870), who bought land near Bordeaux, which became the vineyards of Château Mouton Rothschild; and Arthur de Rothschild (1851-1903), philatelist. Among the English branch, perhaps the most intriguing are Lionel Walter Rothschild (1868-1937), the zoologist who established an extensive private natural history museum at his home in Tring Park, Hertfordshire, and his younger brother Charles (1877-1923), banker and protector nature, who committed suicide after contracting encephalitis.
Charles's children included Miriam Rothschild (1908-2005), a pioneering naturalist, entomologist and vegetarian who worked as a code breaker at Bletchley and was the first woman to become a trustee of the British Museum. She also established the Schizophrenia Research Foundation. Miriam's brother Victor (1910-1990) played county cricket in Northamptonshire, was an employee of Trinity College, Cambridge, zoologist, book collector, director of research at Shell, chairman of NM Rothschild & Sons, and friend of Cambridge spies. During World War II, Victor was responsible for checking gifts sent to Churchill for poisons and explosives.
His published scientific works include Fertilization (1956) and Classification of Animals (1961). Sister Miriam Pannonica (1913-1988), named after a moth discovered by her father, was a keen aviator who became known as the jazz baroness after as she moved to New York in the 1950s, and befriended jazz musicians including Art Blakey, Sonny Rollins, Bud Powell and Charlie Parker.
MIKHAILOV ALEXEY
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