Babette Rothschild

Anselm Salomon von Rothschild was the only son of Salomon Mayer von Rothschild and the second head of the Vienna house. Born in Frankfurt in 1803, he trained in his uncles' banks and represented the family in Frankfurt for years before taking over in Vienna on his father's death in 1855, the year he helped found the Creditanstalt, which became the largest bank in Austria-Hungary. He sat in the Austrian upper house and was a notable collector of arms, armour and Renaissance objects. He married his first cousin Charlotte, daughter of Nathan Mayer Rothschild of London; their children included Ferdinand and Alice of Waddesdon Manor, Albert who succeeded him in Vienna, and the composer Mathilde.

Betty de Rothschild was the hostess of the Paris branch at the height of its influence. Born in Frankfurt in 1805, the daughter of Salomon Mayer von Rothschild of Vienna, she married her uncle James Mayer de Rothschild in 1824 and presided over his house in the rue Laffitte and the Chateau de Ferrieres, where her salon drew Rossini, Chopin, Balzac and Heinrich Heine, who dedicated verse to her. Ingres painted her celebrated portrait in a red gown, completed in 1848. She was the mother of Alphonse, Gustave, Salomon James and Edmond de Rothschild, and after her husband's death in 1868 she remained the senior figure of the French family until she died in Paris in 1886.

Gustave de Rothschild was a partner in the Paris house of de Rothschild Freres, which he ran jointly with his elder brother Alphonse after their father James died in 1868. Born in Paris in 1829, he handled much of the bank's business in Italy and Spain and served for many years as president of the central consistory of French Jews, the community's governing body, as well as supporting Jewish schools and relief work. He married Cecile Anspach and built the mansion on the avenue de Marigny in Paris that remained in the family for generations. His descendants continued in the bank and at Chateau Lafite in Bordeaux. He died in 1911.

Baron Albert Salomon von Rothschild was the third head of the Vienna house, succeeding his father Anselm in 1874. Born in Vienna in 1844, he ran S. M. von Rothschild as the dominant private bank of Austria-Hungary, financed the Nordbahn railway and the Vitkovice ironworks, and became one of the wealthiest men in the empire. He was a serious amateur astronomer and photographer who paid for an observatory on the Kahlenberg above Vienna, and a steady patron of the city's charities. He married his Paris cousin Bettina, daughter of Alphonse de Rothschild, and was the father of Louis Nathaniel, the last head of the Vienna bank. He died in 1911.

Edmond James de Rothschild, the youngest son of James Mayer de Rothschild, was the family's great patron of Jewish settlement in Palestine. Born in Paris in 1845, he was a partner in de Rothschild Freres and a serious collector of prints and drawings, the bulk of which he left to the Louvre. From 1882 he bought land and funded agricultural colonies in Ottoman Palestine, backing Rishon LeZion, Zikhron Yaakov and dozens of other settlements and establishing the winery at Rishon LeZion that still operates. He married his Frankfurt cousin Adelheid, daughter of Wilhelm Carl von Rothschild, and was the father of James Armand and Maurice de Rothschild. He died in 1934.

Edouard Alphonse James de Rothschild led the Paris house through the First World War and the interwar years. Born in Paris in 1868, the son of Alphonse and his English cousin Leonora, he succeeded his father in 1905 as senior partner of de Rothschild Freres and as a regent of the Banque de France. He was a major shareholder in the Chemin de Fer du Nord, president of the Jewish consistory of Paris, and an owner of racehorses whose Brantome was among the best in France. After the German invasion of 1940 he left for the United States, returning after the war to a bank that had been seized and stripped. He died in Paris in 1949.

Lionel Walter Rothschild, 2nd Baron Rothschild, was a zoologist and the addressee of the Balfour Declaration. Born in London in 1868, the elder son of the 1st Baron, he worked in the family bank for a time but gave his life to natural history, building at Tring a museum and a collection of some two million specimens, including the largest private bird collection ever assembled, and naming thousands of new species with his curators. He was famous in London for the zebras he trained to pull a carriage. As president of the Zionist Federation he received the British government's 1917 letter supporting a Jewish national home in Palestine. He left his museum to the nation and died in 1937.

Dame Miriam Rothschild was a naturalist of international standing who never attended university. Born in 1908, the eldest child of Charles Rothschild and Rozsika, she continued her father's work on fleas, publishing the six volume catalogue of the Rothschild flea collection and showing how the flea's jump is powered, and she worked on butterflies, parasites and the chemical defences of insects. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1985. A campaigner for wildflower meadows and for conservation, she lived at Ashton Wold in Northamptonshire, married George Lane in 1943, and died in 2005.

Baron Guy de Rothschild rebuilt the French house after the Second World War. Born in Paris in 1909, the son of Edouard de Rothschild, he was decorated for his service with the French army in 1940, escaped to London to join the Free French, and returned to find the bank seized and the family's property looted. He led de Rothschild Freres from 1949, modernised it, and developed the Le Nickel mining company and the Imetal group, before the bank was nationalised by the Mitterrand government in 1981 and the family had to start again. A leading owner of racehorses and master of the Chateau de Ferrieres, he died in Paris in 2007.

Baron Edmond Adolphe de Rothschild founded the Swiss based banking group that still carries his name. Born in Paris in 1926, the only son of Maurice de Rothschild, he spent the war years in Switzerland and then built his inherited fortune into La Compagnie Financiere Edmond de Rothschild, a private bank in Geneva and Paris with interests in hotels, wine, agriculture and shipping. He was a major investor in Israel, where he backed industrial development and the Caesarea Development Corporation, and he owned Chateau Clarke in Bordeaux. His son Benjamin succeeded him on his death in 1997.

Jacob Rothschild, 4th Baron Rothschild, was a financier and one of Britain's most influential patrons of the arts. Born in London in 1936, the son of Victor, 3rd Baron Rothschild, he worked in the family bank until he left in 1980 after disagreeing with his cousin Evelyn over its direction, then built RIT Capital Partners into one of the largest investment trusts in London. He chaired the trustees of the National Gallery and the National Heritage Memorial Fund, restored Waddesdon Manor and Spencer House, and chaired Yad Hanadiv in Israel, which built the Supreme Court in Jerusalem. He married Serena Dunn in 1961 and was succeeded in 2024 by their son Nathaniel.