Leonora de Rothschild

Mayer Amschel Rothschild was the founder of the Rothschild banking dynasty. Born in 1744 in the Judengasse, the Jewish street of Frankfurt am Main, he trained in Hanover as a dealer in rare coins and medals, then built a business supplying Crown Prince Wilhelm of Hesse-Kassel, becoming his court factor in 1769 and eventually managing much of the landgrave's fortune. With his wife Gutle Schnapper he had ten children who reached adulthood. His decisive move was to place his five sons in five European cities, Amschel Mayer in Frankfurt, Salomon in Vienna, Nathan in London, Carl in Naples and James in Paris, so that the family could move money and information across borders as a single house. He died in Frankfurt in 1812.

Amschel Mayer von Rothschild was the eldest son of Mayer Amschel Rothschild and head of the family's original Frankfurt bank, M. A. Rothschild und Soehne. Born in Frankfurt in 1773, he took over the house on his father's death in 1812 and ran it for more than four decades, acting as treasurer to the German Confederation and, with his brothers, as a creditor to most of the German states. Ennobled by the Austrian emperor in 1822, he was a strictly observant Jew and a persistent advocate for the civil rights of the Frankfurt community, which made him the first Jew granted the freedom of the city. His marriage to Eva Hanau produced no children, so the Frankfurt house passed to his Naples nephews.

Salomon Mayer von Rothschild founded the Vienna house of the family, S. M. von Rothschild. Born in Frankfurt in 1774, the second son of Mayer Amschel Rothschild, he settled in Austria in the 1820s and became the indispensable banker of Prince Metternich's state, financing government loans, helping to establish the Creditanstalt and building Austria's first long distance railway, the Kaiser Ferdinands-Nordbahn. He also bought the Vitkovice ironworks in Moravia, which remained a family asset for a century. Created a baron in 1822, he was the father of Anselm von Rothschild, who succeeded him in Vienna, and of Betty, who married her uncle James in Paris. He died in Vienna in 1855.

James Mayer de Rothschild, born Jakob in Frankfurt in 1792, was the youngest son of Mayer Amschel Rothschild and the founder of the Paris house, de Rothschild Freres. He arrived in France in 1811 and became the dominant private banker of the Restoration, the July Monarchy and the Second Empire, lending to successive French governments, building the Chemin de Fer du Nord railway and buying Chateau Lafite in 1868. He married his niece Betty, daughter of his brother Salomon of Vienna, and their household in the rue Laffitte and at the Chateau de Ferrieres was a centre of Parisian cultural life. Their sons Alphonse, Gustave and Edmond carried on the French bank. He died in Paris in 1868, the last of the five brothers.

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.

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.