Mayer Amschel Rothschild

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.

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.

Nathaniel Charles Rothschild, known as Charles, was a banker by profession and one of the founders of British nature conservation. Born in London in 1877, the younger son of the 1st Baron Rothschild, he worked as a partner in N M Rothschild and Sons while becoming the leading authority on fleas, describing hundreds of species including the oriental rat flea that carries plague. In 1912 he founded the Society for the Promotion of Nature Reserves, the ancestor of the Wildlife Trusts, and drew up the first national list of sites worth protecting in Britain. He married Rozsika von Wertheimstein in 1907; their children included Miriam, Victor and Nica. He died in 1923.

Baron Maurice de Rothschild was a French parliamentarian and one of the great art collectors of his generation. Born in Paris in 1881, the younger son of Edmond James de Rothschild, he sat as a deputy for the Hautes-Alpes and later as a senator, and inherited the Chateau de Pregny near Geneva from his cousin Adolph Carl. Stripped of his seat and his French nationality by the Vichy government, he spent the Second World War in Switzerland, and much of his collection was looted and only partly recovered afterwards. His son Edmond Adolphe de Rothschild founded the Swiss banking group that bears his name. He died in 1957.

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.

Baron David Rene de Rothschild led the family's French and British banking businesses back together into a single firm. Born in Paris in 1942, the son of Guy de Rothschild, he joined the family bank in the 1960s, and after the French house was nationalised in 1981 he rebuilt the business from almost nothing as Rothschild and Cie Banque. He became chairman of the Rothschild group in 2003, merged the London and Paris arms, took the group to the stock market as Rothschild and Co in 2012, and handed the executive chairmanship to his son Alexandre in 2018. He has also been a leading figure in French Jewish institutions.

Leonora de Rothschild was the eldest daughter of Lionel de Rothschild and Charlotte, born in London in 1837. In 1857 she married her French cousin Mayer Alphonse de Rothschild, a wedding that joined the London and Paris houses once again in her own generation. She lived in Paris and at the Chateau de Ferrieres as one of the leading hostesses of the Second Empire and the early Third Republic, took a close interest in the family's charities, and was a patron of music. She was the mother of Edouard de Rothschild, who later led the French house, and of Bettina, who married into the Vienna branch. She died in 1911.