The Rothschild Family Story (They Have So Much Money It’s Impossible to Tell)

You won’t find photos or mentions of any of the Rothschild family members in the society columns or in Forbes magazine articles. This Jewish-German banking family is one of the richest in history, but their fortune today is spread among countless heirs.

Speaking of wealth size, the most modest calculations indicate that they have around 350 billion dollars. Others, less conservative, reach 1 trillion dollars. Anyway, it’s a lot, a lot of money. To give you an idea, the richest man in Brazil, banker Joseph Safra, has a fortune of “only” 25 billion dollars.

Modern Rothschilds live in different countries around the world, and many of them are engaged in activities far removed from banking: managing historical archives in museums or saving glaciers from global warming, for example.

O awesome.club decided to research a little more about this true business dynasty. We also present some little-known facts about one of the most legendary billionaire families in history.

The first generations of Rothschilds lived in an estate whose door was inscribed with a golden eagle in front of a red shield. In German, “Rothschild” can be translated as something like “red shield”. It was from this word that the surname, which is still associated with fortune and power, originated. In the 18th century, Amschel Mayer Rothschild managed to open a bank in one of Germany’s cities and passed the family business on to his five children. The young people ended up showing talent for management and spun off what was just one bank into five, each in a region of Europe. As part of a larger society, these banks were compared to the five fingers of a hand, such was the coordinated and harmonious way in which they acted, practically without conflicts.

Amschel Mayer Rothschild (left) and his five children (right): Nathan, Solomon, James, Carl and Amschel.

The Rothschilds developed their own correspondence network, which allowed them to follow, with extreme agility for the standards of the time, everything that was happening in the world (or in the countries where they operated). At that time, information meant power and agility in decision-making and that was one of its strengths. The family used, for example, carrier pigeons to exchange messages. And, having a well-structured information network, they spread rumors in the name of business. This occurred, for example, during the famous Battle of Waterloo, between France and England (1815), which ended in a defeat for Napoleon Bonaparte. Thanks to the information network, the family’s agents learned that England was winning and sent the leaders a carrier pigeon with the news. Astutely, Nathan Rothschild, one of the leaders of the family, then began to sell shares on the London Stock Exchange, thus indicating that the scenario was critical for the British and that the trend was for the shares to fall. Following the banker’s operations, other holders of shares began to sell them, causing the index to fall sharply, which allowed Rothschild to buy shares cheaply to resell them later at a huge profit, when the information that England had The loser finally made it to London and the stock price rallied. In the 19th century, the clan began to have its own set of rules that all family members had to follow. One of these rules, in particular, established that no descendant through the female line had the right to manage capital. These prerogatives only belonged to male descendants. As was often the case in royal families, in the Rothschild dynasty, marriages were carefully planned by the family patriarch. As a general rule, direct and second cousins ​​married each other. This, of course, served to ensure that power and fortune remained in the family’s hands. The result was a curious effect on the family tree of the dynasty. While the average person has two parents, four grandparents, etc., Lionel Walter Rothschild, for example, had only one great-grandfather and one great-grandmother.

By the end of the 19th century, the clan controlled nearly half of the world. The Rothschilds financed, with their fortune, the Japanese army during the Russo-Japanese War, invested in the creation of a train in Europe, sponsored the construction of the Suez Canal and much more. Since then, the Rothschild surname has become synonymous with wealth. About the dynasty’s influence on the world’s most powerful politicians, there is a well-known story that looks more like a myth. According to the diary of one of the family’s representatives, Queen Victoria of England often visited the Rothschild household. On one such visit, Baroness Alice Rothschild shouted to the queen, “Get out of the garden, you’re trampling the flowers!” and Victoria, one of history’s best-known queens, complied. There are also legends about Rothschild moral principles. In 1861, the Russian government approached the family to ask for a loan and received no for an answer. The fact is that the loan was necessary to suppress some uprisings that were taking place in Poland. The Rothschilds would have made huge gains if they financed the Russians, but in that case they did not want to support a regime that suppressed national liberation movements. The famous Napoleonic wars were also won with the participation of the clan. The Rothschilds invested a notable part of their fortune in the English army, and they also helped to transport expensive metals for the manufacture of weapons and the protection of soldiers.

The celebration of the 200th anniversary of the dynasty. From left to right: Jacob Rothschild, Amschel Rothschild, Guy Rothschild and Edmond Rothschild.

The Rothschild clan’s biggest art collector was called Ferdinand. Everyone knew that, according to his will, he would leave all his art objects to the British Museum. And, without having the funds to acquire certain works, the museum directors cleverly put Ferdinand in contact with the owners of the paintings and he acquired them. An interesting fact is the fact that almost all the women in the family were recognized by their contemporaries as people who had qualities that society used to attribute to men, such as obstinacy and toughness.

The famous dancer and choreographer Rudolf Nuréyev together with Marie-Helene Rothschild

Walter Rothschild, also a collector, entered the history of science. However, he collected butterflies, reaching around 2.25 million copies in his lifetime. But Walter not only collected insects, but also organized numerous expeditions to the most varied and distant places on the planet. Thanks to him, it was possible to discover and describe new types of animals: from beetles to kangaroos. Some of them were baptized in his honor: Some of them were baptized in his honor: the Ornithoptera rothschildi (a butterfly), the Rothschild giraffe and the leucopsar rothschildi (a starling with snow-white plumage from the island of Bali).

Walter Rothschild riding a Galapagos tortoise on his farm

During World War II, one of the Rothschilds was dragged away by German soldiers and offered the following deal: he would be released if he turned over his steel factory and paid a good amount of money (by Rothschild standards) in cash. He agreed to hand over the company, but requested a payment for it. They negotiated for a long time and finally the German command lost patience: it made the deal on the baron’s terms. Rothschild was released, but the agreement was never carried out: in a few days, German troops had occupied the territory where the factory was located. And the need to pay for it disappeared on its own. It remained, however, in history, the “legend” of yet another Rothschild with a talent for business.

From left to right, the modern Rothschilds: Jessica, Edward, Ondin and David

The family owns wineries all over the world, the most famous of which is Château Lafite Rothschild. And, on the label of Israeli wines “Baron” there is a portrait of Edmond de Rothschild. The current president of France, Emmanuel Macron, started his career in one of the Rothschild companies, and he was so good at his job that they called him the Mozart of finance. In Cambridge, there’s a Rothschild file. The family history has as its trustee and guardian Emma Rothschild, who is famous for being the youngest student at the University of Oxford: she joined the institution at just 15 years old. Emma is also Professor of History and Economics at Cambridge and Harvard. One of the descendants of the former clan, David Rothschild, owns the Adventure Ecology company. He is actively fighting for the salvation of our Planet: in 2006, he organized an expedition to the Arctic to study the local ice; in 2007, he traveled to the forests of Ecuador to protect them from contamination and deforestation, and in 2010 he built a boat with 12,500 plastic bottles and, in it, crossed a part of the Pacific Ocean.

David Rothschild and his boat “Plastiki”

Tell us in the comments section: which of the family stories impressed you the most?