The will Mayer Rothschild completed a few days before his passing contained a rigid set of rules the House of Rothschild was to abide by. The first and foremost was that all key positions were to be held by male family members only and not just hired workers. The power of the House of Rothschild based on strict confidentiality governed by equally rigid family control over all business transactions and the nearly supernatural ability to profit from just about anything that came their way.  The Rothschilds’ biographer, Frederic Morton, wrote that Mayer Amschel and his five sons were “financial wizards driven by a demonic urge to succeed in their secret undertakings.” 

The founding father of the Rothschild’s financial empire, the son of a small Jewish ghetto storeowner in Frankfurt-on-the-Main, Mayer Amschel Rothschild was born in 1743. Just how he founded the future empire we do not know, neither have we seen any of his portraits. All we know is that he wore a little Van Dyke, was a tall, slender and kind-faced man. Just like many other men, he wore a wig but, being a Jew, he never powdered it because the Torah forbids Jewish males to use cosmetics and otherwise spruce up their looks. And, like the majority of German Jews, Mayer Amschel did not have a last name borrowing his from the red shield – ‘roten Schild” in German - that adorned the façade of their house.  In 1770 Mayer Amschel married the daughter of an old family of Jewish merchants, Gutle Schnaper, who bore him 10 children, five sons, later known as the  Five Frankfurters, and as many girls. 

Mayer Amschel Rothschild still lived in Frankfurt. His kids had all grown up and his best beloved son, Nathan, had left home. Once, as the family was breakfasting on dry bread and milk, Mayer told his wife about the dream he had had the previous night. “That was a strange dream,” he said,  “I saw our house engulfed in water and fire and our sons fighting hand in hand against the elements defending our common cause. These heralds something outstanding for us, we are going to be rich. Soon, my darling, soon… The House of Rothschild will stand for centuries…” 

In everyday life Mayer Amschel Rothschild was a modest introvert spending much time with his kids. And his sons fully lived up to his expectations. James, Nathan, Karl, Salomon and Anselm carried on the family business in Paris, London, Naples, Vienna and Frankfurt always guided by their father’s dictums of capital being the fruit of human labor and the affluence of a man being the result of his thriftiness, not the profit he makes.

Rothschild’s first bank was in a shack just four square meters large. The American War of Independence, European wars fought in the wake of the Great French Revolution, the Napoleonic campaigns all breathed vigor in the Rothschilds’ financial activity. A man of a highly penetrating mind, Mayer Amschel detested middlemen and preferred to do everything himself. The Rothschilds never established friendly ties with anyone nor did they ever ally with others. They regarded their colleagues just as acquaintances they used for their own good only to throw them away as soon as they were no longer useful to the House of Rothschild.  Prince William was exactly one such acquaintance and, as Frederic Morton writes, Napoleon had every chance to be used exactly the same way taking money from the Rothschilds in exchange for granting them free access to the French markets. Some years later, as France and Britain were blockading each other’s coastlines the only merchants who were allowed to freely run the blockades were the Rothschilds simply because they were financing both sides! 

By the end of the 20th century the Rothschild dynasty had its main branches operating in France, Britain and Switzerland. The family’s aggregate fortune boggles the mind and the city of Frankfurt-on-the-Main owes its status of a European financial capital to the Rothschilds.

And we are winding up this brief narrative about Mayer Amschel Rothschild with a characteristic given him by the journalist and writer Ludwig Berne who also hailed from Frankfurt’s very same Jewish quarter and was a good friend of Mayer Amschel’s. “The old Rothschild was a religious man, devout and kind,” Berne wrote. “He never dressed up and used to walk about the city in the company of beggars he was handing out alms or good advice to. Anyone who saw a mob of beggars with happy and serene expression on their faces could be certain that old Amschel had been just sticking around…”

“Like many other Jews, he believed that the Lord is especially gracious to those who do good things without waiting for gratitude,” Berne wrote. “That’s why late at night Mayer Amschel would come out into the street and, handing out coins to every beggar who came his way, quickly moved on…”

Yes, you’ve really got to be a very special person not to show off your wealth if you have one…
 
 

09/20/2005