6 minute read
WOMEN OF ROTHSCHILD
Author and historian Natalie Livingstone discusses her latest book, The Women of Rothschild, unveiling the untold stories of the finance dynasty
How did the project begin?
I began researching the project six years ago. Reclaiming the stories of unresearched women as well as the study of Jewish history have always been passions. I felt this project was a fusion of both these lifelong interests.
The occasional references to Rothschild women scattered through histories of the family were enough to convince me that there were fascinating stories waiting to be discovered. But works focusing exclusively on the women were scarce, amounting to a handful of essays and a few single-subject biographies. Then I stumbled on an essay by Miriam Rothschild (1908-2005), on the subject of her female ancestors. That article would transform my research.
The life of the article’s author was itself evidence that the Rothschild women had been unjustly overlooked. Miriam, I discovered, was a 20th century polymath: a brilliant zoologist who had also worked as a translator at Bletchley Park, played a pioneering role in the environmental movement, supported research into schizophrenia, popularised wildflower gardening, sat as the first female trustee of the Natural History Museum, and became known as The Queen of Fleas for her world-leading expertise on the wingless insects. Towards the end of her life Miriam became a familiar figure on TV chat shows and nature programmes – a witty and eccentric octogenarian immediately recognisable by her white gumboots (she refused to wear leather) and flowing Liberty silks. Journalists flocked to visit her at her Northamptonshire home, where she held court surrounded by a menagerie of pets, acres of rewilding land, and clouds of butterflies. ‘It is impossible to prepare for a meeting with Miriam Rothschild,’ wrote one of those who made the pilgrimage. ‘Imagine Beatrix Potter on amphetamines and you come close.’
Towards the end of her long and varied life, Miriam started to investigate the history of her own ancestors. Her essay, Rothschild Women, began as a contribution to the catalogue of a 1994 exhibition at the Frankfurt Jewish Museum. Though it was short and personal, based as much on family lore and recollection as on archival research, the essay confirmed what I’d been determined to believe: that the Rothschild women were not just adjuncts to the male dynasty, dispossessed and underappreciated, but had forged their own community and history. Through Miriam’s essay, I began to learn about a whole line of remarkable Rothschild women, each of them unique in their talents, character and pursuits, yet each shaped by the circumstances and culture of the same exceptional family. The more I investigated, the more I was touched by the forgotten lives of these women.
Can you let us know about some of the family members you have focused on?
The book begins with the mother of the business, Gutle, who married Mayer Amschel Rothschild in 1770. Histories of the family have often focused on the rise of Gutle’s fortunes after her marriage to Mayer Amschel, but initially most of the ascent was his. Gutle was from a wealthier and more reputable
family, and provided her husband with essential business capital through her dowry. As the couple grew their business and family side by side, Gutle managed the Rothschild household and played an integral role in the early years of the bank. After the death of her husband and departure of her descendants to live in splendour in the capitals of Europe, she steadfastly refused to leave her marital home, in the narrow lane that had until recently been a Jewish ghetto.
That decision would make her a figure of fascination across the Continent, with tourists peering to glimpse her in her home, and Hans Christian Anderson penning a story about her. She was mythologised in her own family too, remembered and revered by the men as the ideal Rothschild woman – pious, frugal and deeply domestic. And yet the evidence hints at a lively, robust woman who enjoyed the trappings of her sons’ wealth and whose wit was razor sharp until the day she died. One story from the 1840s had a physician responding to Gutle’s growing list of health complaints by saying ‘Que voulez-vous madame? Unfortunately, we cannot make you younger,’ and Gutle replying: ‘You mistake me doctor. I do not ask you to make me younger. It is older I wish to become.’ Older she got, living to the extraordinary age of 95.
Beyond Gutle, there are too many fascinating descendants to give justice to here.
What contribution to society did these women make?
The range and scale of the Rothschild women’s achievements is astounding. They choreographed electoral campaigns, witnessed revolutions, and traded on stock exchanges. They advised prime ministers, played a pivotal role in the civil rights campaign that led to the election of Britain’s first Jewish MP, and wrote landmark works of feminist art criticism. At every turn, they defied easy categorisation. If one scandalised the world of women’s tennis by introducing the overarm serve, another was such a traditionalist that she gave up swimming when she married. If one had engaged with the media by advising the editor of the Times, another did so by joining the radical collective Spare Rib, where she reviewed art shows that were being investigated by Scotland Yard’s vice squad. If one had sought the friendship of Queen Victoria, another preferred the dinner company of Albert Einstein, and a third preferred to let her wheels do the talking, as she drag-raced Miles Davis through Manhattan.
Why are these women not more widely known?
The Rothschilds’ swift and dramatic rise from the bleak, oppressive conditions of Frankfurt’s Jewish ghetto to the glittering capitals of Europe has become the stuff of legend and the subject of numerous historical works, not to mention countless sinister conspiracy theories.
But what appears at first to be one of history’s most heavily chronicled, widely known and deeply mythologised dynasties is really nothing of the sort. Almost everything about the Rothschilds – the books and articles, the calumnies and myths, the films and plays – concern only the Rothschild men. Half of the Rothschilds – the women – remain virtually unknown.
The root of this exclusion dates back to 1812, and to the last will and testament of Mayer Amschel Rothschild, the founding father of the bank: ‘I will and ordain that my daughters and sons-in-law and their heirs have no share in the trading business existing under the firm of Mayer Amschel Rothschild and Sons… and [that it] belong to my sons exclusively. None of my daughters, sons-in-law and their heirs is therefore entitled to demand sight of business transactions… I would never be able to forgive any of my children if, contrary to these my paternal wishes, it should be allowed to happen that my sons were upset in the peaceful possession and prosecution of their business interests.’
The Rothschild bank – its wealth, its information and its governance – was entrusted exclusively to Mayer Amschel’s sons. His female descendants were explicitly excluded, relegated to the footnotes of history.
The Women of Rothschild: The Untold Story of the World’s Most Famous Dynasty By Natalie Livingstone John Murray Press
