Today’s Rothschild family are notoriously coy about their wealth, with absolutely no one having any idea how much individual members or the entire family is worth. Yet one broke with this tradition: Baron Benjamin de Rothschild, a member of the family’s French branch.
Having been bankers for countless generations, the Rothschilds have mastered the art of hiding their wealth, meaning that no one – not journalists, not governments and certainly not the public – know what the entire family is worth.
But that’s not strictly true. Though correct in 99.99% of the cases, there was one member of the family whose wealth was fairly well known, and that was Benjamin de Rothschild’s, who Forbes estimated at $1.4 billion at the time of his death.
Ancestry
Though his heritage can be traced as far back as the 1526 birth of Isaak Elchanan zum Rothen Schild, who became the first member of the Rothschild family to live in the Frankenfurter Judengasse (Frankfurt’s Jewish ghetto), Baron de Rothschild’s family didn’t become notable until the late 18th century.
Born into a Jewish family of money changers (the precursor of modern-day bankers) in 1744, Mayer Amschel Rothschild lost his parents early on and became Samuel Wolf Oppenheimer’s apprentice at his bank in Hanover, learning the intricacies of the banking business on the job.
Returning to Frankfurt, Mayer soon began trading rare and precious coins (something introduced to him by Oppenheimer) soon gaining him a repertoire of clients ranging from Christian merchants, to clergymen to even members of the nobility!
Through this, he met and befriended Wilhelm IX, Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel, later Prince Elector. Offered the honorable position of Hoffaktor (otherwise known as “Court Jew”), Mayer was given control of Wilhelm’s finances and even saved them from being pillaged by Napoleon when he invaded Hesse.
Having five sons with his wife, Guttle Schnapper, Mayer and his eldest son, Nathan, concocted a plan to place the family at the forefront of European finance by sending each of the five sons to one of the five major European finance capitals.
Mayer’s oldest, Anselm, would remain in Frankfurt with his father. Mayer’s second oldest, Salomon, would travel to Vienna. Nathan, as the third son, would travel to London (actually being the first to move, doing so in 1798). Mayer’s fourth son, Calmann, would travel to Naples. Finally, Mayer’s fifth son, James, would travel to Paris.
French Rothschilds
Arriving in 1812, James quickly established himself as an agent of his brother Nathan’s, London-based bullion trading company, before establishing De Rothschild Frères (English: Rothschild Brothers) – the French branch of the Rothschild bank – in 1817 and quickly established himself as the banker and financial adviser to ministers and kings.
He even singlehandedly prevented France from collapsing financially following the July Revolution in 1830, which led him to become a favorite of the new king, Louis-Philippe.
Yet not even the French Revolution of 1848 that deposed the King could stop James. Though James lost much of his power and prestige in the immediate aftermath of Napoleon III’s rise to power, his bank had never been more profitable!
Following James’ death in November 1868, the business was passed down to his sons, Gustave, Adolphe and Edmond, who continued the family business of financing wars (this time the French during the Franco-Prussian War).
Upon their deaths, the business was passed down to Adolphe’s son, Édouard Alphonse, Gustave’s son, Robert, and Edmond’s son, Maurice, the latter of whom sold his share in the branch to his cousins.
Inheriting a vast fortune from his childless uncle, Adolph Carl von Rothschild (then the head of the Naples branch of the family) Maurice moved to Geneva, Switzerland with his family, in 1940, partly spurred on by Nazi Germany’s invasion of France that year.
As a member of arguably the richest and most famous Jewish family ever, the Nazis would’ve hunted Maurice and his family down, either ransoming them (as they did Maurice’s Austrian cousin, Louis) or sending them to a concentration camp.
Edmond Adolphe de Rothschild
In 1909, a 28-year-old Maurice de Rothschild married Noémie Halphen, a member of the Péreire banking family that had long challenged the French Rothschilds for control of France’s banking sector.
17 years later, in 1926, the couple had their first (and only) child. A son, the coupled named him Edmond Adolphe de Rothschild – alluding to several of the boy’s ancestors on both sides of his family, namely his paternal grandfather.
Spending most of his childhood in Switzerland, and a scion of one of the richest families in the world, Edmond was given one of the best educations money could buy, later joining De Rothschild Frères in Paris in 1950.
After three years at his family’s bank, Edmond decided to go at it alone, establishing La Compagnie Financière Edmond de Rothschild in 1953, which was based in Paris – a stone’s throw away from the .
Interestingly, it became the first Rothschild-owned, Rothschild-branded bank to only have one Rothschild shareholder (a common theme among Rothschild banks was to own shares in one another to promote the family’s interests over personal ones).
Later specializing as a private bank and wealth management company, La Compagnie Financière Edmond de Rothschild, grew immensely over the 1960’s, 1970’s, 1980’s and 1990’s, expanding beyond France/Switzerland into countries like the US.
Early Life
In 1958, Edmond married Bulgarian artist Veselinka Vladova Gueorguieva, however the marriage was an unhappy one and the couple quickly separated, annulling their marriage in 1960.
That year, Edmond met and fell in love with French actress Nadine Lhopitalier, better known by her stage name, Nadine Tallier. Becoming close, Nadine fell pregnant and Edmond proposed not long after.
Following Nadine’s conversion to Judaism (she was born a Catholic and reasoned that no one bearing the name “Rothschild” could be anything other than Jewish), the couple married on June 26 1963.
A little over a month later, on July 30 1963, Nadine gave birth to a healthy baby boy, who they called Benjamin.
The son of a wealthy banker, Benjamin de Rothschild received one of the best educations money could buy (just as his father, grandfather, great-grandfather etc. had done before him), being educated at the prestigious Institute Florimont.
Graduating from there, he later attended Pepperdine University in California, a state where his father owned several banks, namely the Bank of California.
While attending Pepperdine, Baron Benjamin de Rothschild studied business management (with the intention of joining the family business after graduation) and regularly traveled between the US, France, Switzerland and the UK, often visiting his various Rothschild cousins.
Receiving his BA in business management in 1984, Benjamin spent the next five years working at the Bank of California, where he served as a kind of unofficial liaison between his father and his US banks.
Banking
Returning to Switzerland in 1989, the young Rothschild established his own company in the same vein his father had, naming it Compagnie de Trésorerie Benjamin de Rothschild, an advanced financial risk management company.
Unlike his father however, Compagnie de Trésorerie Benjamin de Rothschild wasn’t completely independent from the other Rothschild family-owned companies. Instead, it was a subsidiary of his father’s bank.
Other Interests
Sailing
Wine
Arts
Death
How do I Replicate What Benjamin de Rothschild Did?
What Can we Learn From Benjamin de Rothschild?
Be Independent
Give Back
Make Powerful Friends
Do Better Than Your Parents
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