Trudy Gold
Meyer Amschel Rothschild: The Beginnings

Trudy Gold - Meyer Amschel Rothschild: The Beginnings

- Today, I’m going to talk about Frankfurt, where the founder came from. I’m going to talk about the incredible adversity that Jews faced. And the fact that this man who had 10 children, five sons, five daughters, was to create a dynasty that really sparkled the world. And today, it has both the negative and the positive connotations. The Rothschild family have been leaders of the Jewish community really since the first generation, from Mayer to in England, the extraordinary, Nathan Rothschild. They are huge philanthropists in every sphere, in the Jewish world, in the non-Jewish world. But to those who hate the Jews, to anti-Semites, the Rothschilds are centre of this extraordinarily mad Jewish world conspiracy. So the world itself really does, you can’t say the word Rothschild as a neutral word. So what I’m going to talk, can we see the picture, the first picture, if you don’t mind? There are no paintings of Mayer Amschel Rothschild. And this is about the nearest we can get. He was born in 1744 in the ghetto in Frankfurt. He died in 1812. His wife, Gutle, who he married when he was 25 and she was 17, she survived to be 91, and she never left the ghetto, by which time, her five sons were some of the most important men in the world. But every family marriage had to, they had to take prospective brides to see the grandma, to see Gutle who never left the ghetto of Frankfurt. What an extraordinary story, some of the richest people in the world with their wives going to the ghetto. So what is the background to Frankfurt? And I’m going to talk a little bit about mediaeval Jewry because it gives you, it also gives you a smell of what these German Jews faced, and how they overcame them. Now, we know that there’s a charter of 1074 where Jews are granted certain privileges.

Remember the role of the Jew in European society at this time. On the whole, the church, up until the first crusade, there were reasonable relations between Jews and Gentiles in many places. It’s the church that really puts the lid down. But to secular princes, they were useful. Why were they useful? Because if you think about it, every guild was a Christian guild. The Jews entered the niche of the economy, which others couldn’t reach. Jews were international, which meant for trading, they were incredibly useful. It also meant, and they could deal with co-religionists country-to-country because they had a common language. Plus, of course, they were flexible and fluid. Jewish history had made Jews into people who could wear many, many coats, change careers, change professions. At the back of it was survival. And I think the other point to note, in mediaeval and late mediaeval times, they would’ve been pretty sure that their culture was superior to that of the gentile world, certainly in the Christian world. Later on, it’s going to change, and that’s exactly the period that we are talking about at the moment. When many Jews fall in love with the new German culture and see their own cultures downgraded, but that certainly was not the case in mediaeval times. And we even know when they lived, they lived in the old city between the cathedral and the main river, which contained the town hall, the mint, and the residents of the archbishop of Mainz who ruled the city.

Do you see why? Because quite often, Jews were mint masters. Don’t forget, there were so many different city states in Germany and free cities, and each one of them had their own customs, their own customs unions, their own currency. And quite often, they had a Jewish court factor who was really responsible to the prince, the archbishop, the whoever was in charge fought really the economics of the kingdom. Now, we know in May, because I’ve already said this to you, when you’re looking at mediaeval history, you haven’t got enough documents. When you’re looking at modern history, you’ve got too many. And we do know that in May, 1241, there was a massacre of Jews, which had been bought on over a problem in Jewish-Christian marriages, which also tells us something else, that Jews and Christians are marrying. And also, if there’s a mixed marriage, the church insisted that the children of such a marriage be baptised. And it was also recorded that 24 Jews actually managed to avoid a death sentence by acceptance, by accepting baptism. And remember, this is still why they’re under the protection of the archbishop. We also know that at that time, the synagogue was plundered, the Torah scrolls were actually destroyed despite the fact that the Holy Roman emperor, Frederick II, had put the Jews specifically under his protection. It seems that this was a riot that lasted over a day. Who was responsible? Today, most historians believe it was the Dominicans. This is the period of the growth of these strict monastic orders. Dominicans, dominis cane, the hounds of God. These work with the Augustinians were what? They were the inquisitors. This is when there’s cracks in Christianity. Whenever there’s cracks in Christianity, heresies.

What comes to the fore? Persecution of anyone who is not Catholic. And that, of course, the Jews were at the forefront of that. Now, Judengasse, the actual ghetto itself was established in 1462, and it’s going to last right up until the year before Mayer Amschel Rothschild died. And it becomes the home to Germany’s largest Jewish community in early modern times. Now, it had been granted the status of a free city, which meant that it is now responsible only to the Holy Roman emperor. It operates as a city state, which led to a certain amount of wealth and freedom for Christian merchants. And remember, competition. By the mid 14th century, think Black Death, 1348, Jewish competition, and it led to arrests of Jews, murder of Jews, and Jews fleeing the city. And the Frankfurt Jewry, to enable them to return to the city, had to pay a huge amount as a group, again, communal responsibility, to the Holy Roman emperor to let them back. We know that in 49, 1349, he actually sold the special Jewish tax to the city. So now, the town council is responsible. So this is a very, very, it’s a very, very dark time. But we do know that although there are Christian merchants, Frankfurt doesn’t have a powerful enough mercantile class. Why? Now, I want you to think about Frankfurt. It’s on the confluence of various cities, and they had trade fairs. How did people trade in the late middle ages, early modern period? It’s the trade fairs. And we know now that what Jews did in the ghetto. Some were bankers and provided small loans to craftspeople. Where does the money come from? It comes because most bankers are also traders. We know they provided loans to the nobles who lived around the city. They provided loans to farmers if there’s a crop failure. We also know that the poorer ones, they were in the pawnbroking business.

We know that they traded in horses, wine, grain, cloth, dresses and jewellery for the various courts, for the various noble houses. And this is where the Jews are particularly well-placed because we’ve already discussed in the class, the Radanites, the movement of Jews as far as the Silk Road. There are Jewish merchants in India, there are Jewish merchants all over the Ottoman world. And even over the, I beg your pardon, it’s not, yes, it is the Ottoman Empire, the Ottoman Empire. And before that, the various Arab dynasties under Islam. Despite the fact that Christianity and Islam are at loggerheads and often at war, they still want each other’s goods. They still trade. And it’s the Jews that are the people who fulfil an incredibly important function. They might be hated theologically, but they are very useful. We also know that then there’s an upswing in church power in 1386. They forbade the employment of Christians. And also, in return for protection, again, they have to pay a huge amount to the Holy Roman Empire. Then you go through a period of appalling its, the German cities, Trier, then from Vienna, then from Cologne, Augsburg, Breslau. So what happens? More and more of them come into Frankfurt. And that meant that the guilds are facing even more, Jewish facing even more competition. But gradually, what happens is that this, depending on the power of the emperor, depending on the power of the town council, they finally manage to, they manage to survive.

The ghetto is established. There are 11 houses within the ghetto. There’s one community centre, which the city paid for. There was a mikvah and there was a synagogue paid for by the Jewish community. So within the ghetto, they are allowed to run their own affairs, and this is very, very important. Yes, the outside world might be hostile, but within the community itself, of course, the rabbis would held sway. If a Jew had an, dispute with another Jew, he didn’t go to the town council or the emperor’s people. Who did he go to? He went to a beth din. So, and also, within the Jewish community, the council, which composed in the main of rabbis and a couple of laypeople, they would decide how much money had to be given to orphans, how do you look after the poor, how do you look after widows, et cetera. And of course, there was a certain amount of corruption. But the point is, it’s a self-governing community. And frankly, the Judengasse expands but it’s going to remain virtually unchanged right up until the 19th century. We know that in 1613, there were 2,700 Jews living in the ghetto, and they couldn’t enlarge the territory. So new houses were created by dividing existing houses. And new stories were added. I want you to see the ghetto as completely overcrowded. It’s very tiny. It’s very narrow. And look, there, you see the Rothschild home in the Judengasse. And this is the second home he built. So this is a much more prosperous home. But in most of the streets, the houses are almost touching. There’s very little light coming through. And life in the ghetto was totally regulated. Jews were not allowed. The ghetto gates were late, were actually locked at night. And can we see the next slide, please? Yes. This is a etching of the ghetto. Do you see how tall the houses are, how narrow the houses are? And can we see the next slide, please?

Yes. This isn’t from the ghetto in Frankfurt, but they had their Judensau too, which was on the wall. And this is that ghastly picture of a rabbi looking at the tail of a pig, and Jews sucking up the teats. Now, this is something that the Jews going into the ghetto would see every day. So they’re not allowed. They are locked in at night. They’re only allowed in out in the day to trade. They’re not allowed out on a Sunday. And they’re not allowed out on Christian holidays. And not for the election and coronation of the Holy Roman emperor. And also, every Jew had to wear distinctive clothing, which was a yellow circular mask. Jewish women were not allowed to display any ostentation outside of the ghetto. They weren’t allowed to have any jewellery. So it’s a terribly, they are marked out. They’re very much marked out as a people apart. And if a Jew came out of the ghetto to trade, which they were allowed to do, if they had a permit, any Christian could mock them, and they would have to stand aside. And it was almost a sport. And we know that in 1616, there were 500 Jewish families living in the Judengasse. And they kept the numbers down by allowing only 25 weddings each year. No Jewish man could marry before he was 25. We keep the numbers down. We need a certain number because they are traders, they are money lenders, they are pawnbrokers, but we don’t want too many of them. And also, can we go on to the next slide? Now, this is the synagogue in the Judengasse. It does become one of the most important cities, one of the most important centres in Germany. It has a yeshiva. And in 1903, 1800, sorry, 1603, there was a rabbinic conference to discuss the responsibility of the beth din, all sorts of religious questions.

And this was in Frankfurt, and representatives attended from most of the cities of Germany. So Frankfurt’s becoming a very, very important hub. And also, as trade expanded, they went more and more into wholesale, and Gentiles would come into the ghetto to borrow money. A lot of these shops, these houses have fronts were shops where they sold secondhand clothes, and all sorts of other wears. So the population, as I said, it’s absolutely bursting at the seams. A squalled four roomed house at the northern end of the Judengasse sold for 6,000 gulden, which is the same price that Gutle’s family came from Frankfurt. That’s the same price that Gutle’s father paid for his 20 room mansion with a garden in the gentile part of the city. So Jews want to live in the Frankfurt ghetto because it’s emerging as a very important trading place. But there aren’t enough properties, so families are sharing houses. There are also now four synagogues, public baths. There’s a clinic, there’s a Jewish doctor in the, and a communal baker for bread and also for the cholent. And of course, as was true of so many of these Jewish communities, it was Judaism that saved the Jews. They lived according to their own way of life. They were literate. Every male Jew had to be able to read and write. And they wouldn’t have wanted the world of the Gentile in the main. And now, let’s turn to Mayer Amschel Rothschild. Can we go back to his face if you don’t mind, Lauren? Let’s go back to Mayer while I talk about it. Okay. So he is born on the 23rd of February, 1744. The man who is going to create one of the greatest dynasties the world has ever known. He’s born in the Judengasse.

And as I said, remember the background of his birth? The gates are locked at night. They’re locked all day Sunday, they’re locked on Christian holidays, and he’s now living, it’s now the largest Jewish community in Germany. We know, and I’m going to give you some proportions now, the house he was born in, it was 10 foot wide. It was so narrow that beds were on the side walls, that the house actually stood, the original house actually stood till the 18th of May, 1944 when it was raised to the ground in an American air raid. Now, by the time Mayer is born, it’s a major trading centre. Now, let’s look at why. It’s at the junction. Now, remember, he’s born in 1744. We’re in the era of mercantilism. It’s at the centre of five international trade routes through the, via river, linking Britain, the Netherlands, Russia, Venice, France, and the Hanseatic League. Do you see how important two trade fairs a year? Plus, it’s this incredibly important confluence. And we also know that the population of Frankfurt itself was 32,000. And now, there are 3000 Jews in the ghetto, about 10%. Yes. Last week, I was talking about the age of the Enlightenment. But even though it’s a free imperial city, the Enlightenment hadn’t made much en route in Frankfurt. In his memoirs, Goethe himself actually remembers seeing a public book-burning he’d seen in his youth. And as I’ve already mentioned, the supreme ruler was the Holy Roman emperor.

Now, also, another point that really made the Jews stand out, they are the only group in Germany that had resisted Christianity. Remember, Germany is now either Lutheran or Catholic. Jews were legally called serfs of the city. They’re answerable to the senate, and their life is monitored in every detail. They are referred to in the correspondence as the accursed race. They had to pay a toll tax for their property and for individuals, but they are taxed as a community. By the time we get to Myers’s birth, a few wealthy Jews are dealing more and more in luxury goods, jewellery, lace, silks. But the majority, remember there are 3000 of them in the ghetto now, are pawnbrokers. They’re money changers. Money changing is very important because there are 360 different entities in Germany. Think about it. They have a common language, but they have different customs in terms of money. They have different coinage. So say, you’re going into Frankfurt for the trade fair, and you’ve come from, let’s say Prussia, Berlin, you’d have to change your currency. And who’s changing the currency? It’s mainly the Jews. And also, secondhand goods is very, very important. Now, right up until 1726, they all had to wear a Jew badge. That had been abolished, just not the couple 20 years before Mayer was born. But at this stage, there are still only 500 families allowed in the ghetto. So they’re not allowed to, they are allowed out, but not on a Sunday. They could only, Jewish women could only go to the market after Christian women had shopped. So they couldn’t ever be on an equal footing. So you have a situation where the Christian women would go to the shops. The Jewish women could only go once the Christian women had done their shopping.

They were not allowed to enter public parks, which are being built. They’re not allowed to go along the wonderful promenades, and all these conditions are really going to last right up until the French Revolution. Jews could only enter the city on business, never more than two abreast. They could never visit inns or coffee houses. They were banned from the vicinity of Frankfurt’s main cathedral. Heine talked about malice and stupidity. This is what he wrote. “Like street dogs used to mate, their brood can still be recognised by their sectarian hate.” Whenever the senate tried to relax any of these rules, the merchants, the Christian merchants protested because they wanted to keep the Jews as restricted as possible. And a man, and let me just emphasise this business of customs tolls. A man travelling from city to city, this is a non-Jew, will be stopped by customs officials several of times a day. Only coins accepted from inside the city where they had to have the same silver content as the Frankfurt gulden. All the others had to be changed before a purchase could be made. That is particularly pertinent at the time of the Frankfurt fairs. There were 200 money changes in Frankfurt. They were mainly Jewish. The local market generated what? It needed letters of credit, bills of exchange, and all sorts of devices to avoid the inconvenience of sending large amounts of silver and gold abroad because you’ve got this problem with the currency. Bills of exchange, of course, promissory notes.

Now, before this state, such bills were often traded a discount. It was practised by Jewish bankers and money lenders. And many of these people had also become wholesalers in English woollens, cottons, Italian silks. So at the time of the trade fairs, at least 3,000 extra people came to town. Tradespeople from all over Europe would give their, would offer their words, adventurers. There were theatre performances, nobility, scholars, knights, all sorts of people. We know for example, in the 1743 trade fair, which is a year before Mayer was born, Mozart and his sister gave a concert, and Goethe was present. Jews were allowed at the fairs, they were allowed to peddle their wares, and they were even allowed to attend the entertainments. I wonder if any of them went to hear Mozart. Heine actually described it. “But as you entered from the riverside of the city, the first thing the travellers saw, ” this was the bas relief, the Judensau. And Goethe noted it and said it was maintained by the city authority. Now, when Moses Mendelssohn went to Berlin through the gate, Berlin had the gate, in 1775, he was asked, “What are you selling, Jew? And he actually said, "You will never want to buy what I’m peddling.” “Well, what do you dealing?” Said the gatekeeper. “Reason.” Goethe himself described the Judengasse, “The confinement, the dirt, the swarm of people, the accents of an unpleasant tongue.” This is the great Goethe, so beloved of Jewish people. Let me repeat this. “The confinement, the dirt, the swarm of people, the accents of an unpleasant tongue, all made a disagreeable impression. even when one only looked in when passing outside the gate.”

This is Goethe again. “It took a long time before I ventured in alone, and I didn’t easily return after once escaping the obtrusiveness of so many people, intent on haggling, either demanding or offering. And yet, they were also human beings, energetic, agreeable, and even their obstinacy in sticking to their own customs.” And then he says, “Moreover, the girls are pretty.” So we get, it turns into a more rounded picture. So now, let’s talk about the man who created one of the greatest dynasties the world has ever known who is born, I wanted to spend a bit of time with you on the background. Because when you think within a generation, this man’s five brilliant sons are going to conquer the world. And it’s important that you realise where they come from. And in the first generation, certainly they maintained their Jewishness. So Mayer Amschel, he was the son of Amschel Moses Rothschild and his wife, Schonche Lechenich. His father had been born in 1710, the second son of Moses Kalman, also born in the ghetto, and the first known member of the family lived at 69 Judengasse, in a house named the Red Shield. This is where the name came from. His, the first ancestor, Isaak Elchana, died in 1585, had the building erected, and began to use the name Rothschild after they moved in 1664. So that’s where the name came from, the House of the Red Shield. And we know that Amschel, in 1749, when his son was five, from the tax registry, he had a small shop and modest assets. He had eight children, five of whom survived to adulthood. We know that Mayer received a very traditional education. Every day, he went to synagogue with his father. He was very bright. We know that when he, by the time he was five years old, he knew his prayers by heart.

We also know that by the mid-century, by the 1750s, the community already had eight rabbis, 12 teachers, five counters, one scribe, and two doctors. Mayer would’ve been fluent in Hebrew, Judendeutsch, and Aramaic by the age of five. We also know that he helped in the family business, counting out the coins. If you think about it, in the 16th century, Jewish men were had to be the best educated in the German lands. But by the 18th century, it’s beginning to change because they are not exposed to the education of the outside world, which I’ve already begun to talk about with the ideas of the Enlightenment. Now, Mayer was the brightest of the children. And of course, the dream of any Jewish family, what you do with a clever boy? You send him to become a rabbi. We know that he would also have acquired mathematics either through counting the coins, but also, mathematics was often taught in yeshiva because of numerology. Although many subjects are banned, and as I began to discuss this with you last week, nevertheless, mathematics was important. Don’t forget, the Vilna Gaon himself had written a textbook on trigonometry. Now, when he’s 11 years old, in 1755, he’s sent to Furth to the yeshiva, where, of course, he would’ve gone in for an intense study of the Talmud, and the dream, my son, the rabbi. However, a few months after his departure, there was a smallpox epidemic in the ghetto. His father died, and later on, his mother.

And with his surviving brothers and sisters, he is now in the care of relatives. Each were left a few hundred gulden. In age 13, he’s now launched into the world. He is an orphan. But he had family connections. Again, the Jewish help network It’s fascinating, isn’t it? Even today, it’s fascinating, this idea of communal responsibility. Through family connections, he was given a position in the banking firm of Wolf Jacob Oppenheim in Hanover. It’s a brilliant opportunity. Now, the Oppenheim family were not in the ghetto, and they were bankers who had managed to branch out to Vienna, Stuttgart, and Bonn. And they had been previously a family of court Jews. In fact, Wolf’s grandfather, Samuel Oppenheim, was the court factor to the emperor in Vienna in 1683, and it was his finances that saved the city from the Turks. So the Oppenheim family are very, very important. And in 1757, when Mayer Amschel went there to have an apprenticeship, it was a merchant bank with princely clients in Holland and in North Germany. Now, Hanover was a much more liberal city than Frankfurt because it belonged to the English crown. Think about it. Who is on the throne of England? The Hanoverians. I don’t want to divert much into English history, but when Queen Anne died childless, the throne passed to whom? It passed to a distant relative in Hanover. And George, Electorate of Hanover, became George I of England. So the Hanoverian lands are now part of the English crown. So like in England, the atmosphere was much more relaxed. And we don’t know whether Mayer went back to the ghetto in Frankfurt over the next seven years, there’s absolutely no evidence.

It’s the time of the seven years war. Frankfurt was occupied by French troops, and administered by a French military government, but he’s not there. Now, in Hanover, he gains incredible experience in foreign trade, and he learned how to issue bills of exchange. He also gained experience of a passion that he began to develop in the ghetto, rare and antique coins, and historic metals. The bank, the Oppenheim bank, had a wonderful collection of coins, and he also broadened his knowledge of Persian coins, of Roman coins, and Greek and Byzantine coins, and also, of more modern ones. So he is developing a passion and an expertise. And by the time he was 15, he was a specialist with a rare knowledge, and already, a catalogue of coins had been published. And we know that Mayer acquired it. He also encountered a young Hanoverian noble, a man called General von Estorff. who was also a huge collector of coins, and took a liking to Mayer, and commissioned him to locate and buy coins for him. And later on, this is going to be an important relationship. He obviously was a charmer. And also, from the Oppenheim who had been caught Jews for many generations, he would’ve learnt how to deal with the aristocracy. And he’s very, very, very clever. In 1763, his apprenticeship ended and his resident permit. So he had some savings and he returns back to the ghetto in Frankfurt with incredible experience.

And because Frankfurt, despite all the problems of the ghetto, it is still the important, the largest trading centre in Germany. And his family was there, and he had inherited ¼ of his father’s old tiny house. His older brother, Moses, had married and was living there along with his younger invalid brother, Kalman, and some other relatives. So it’s incredibly overcrowded. Moses ran the pawnbroker shop. Kalman traded in secondhand goods, and the third brother was a money changer. Mayer went in partnership with them and added to the business trade in rare coins, metals, and other curios, jewels, engravings, antiquities. Now, the coins aren’t going to make him rich, but they’re going to make him the most incredible network of contacts. The house is so overcrowded, and he still has the situation, having returned from Hanover, which was much more liberal, they’re still locked in at night. But it’s through Estorff, can we see the next slide? He comes into contact, sorry, can we go on? To this man, Wilhelm of Hesse-Kassel. Crown Prince Wilhelm was the future Landgrave of Hesse. He was heir, not just his father’s title, but also his vast fortune. Where did the money come from? Now, our American friends on network will all know about the Hessian regiments who fought for George III in the American War of Independence. He had brilliant soldiers, and these are the Landgrave of Hesse, would actually rent out his soldiers in all sorts of wars. His cousin was George III. He was married to a daughter of the king of Denmark. He was an absolute prince. He ruled over his independent little country of Jena, which was a few miles east of Frankfurt.

He had his own coin collection. I’m talking about the crown prince. And legend has it that Rothschild was first introduced to him through Estorff when he was actually playing chess. And evidently, the story goes that Rothschild whispered a tip in his ear. And as a result of that, a kind of relationship developed, but it’s early days. We also know that Wilhelm did dabble in the ideas of the Enlightenment and kind of tolerated Jews. And as a response to this, he’s given a distinction. And I’m going to read, “We, Wilhelm, by the grace of God, Landgrave and Crown Prince of Hesse, Grand Duke of Fulda, Duke of Hersfeld, Count of Katzenelnbogen, Diez, and reigning Count of Hanau, most graciously bestow the title of court factor upon the protected Jew, Mayer Amschel Rothschild, from Frankfurt.” So he can now hang this on the Red Shield. At 25, he is the first in the family to have such a distinction. It didn’t give him the right to leave the Judengasse. 14 years would pass before he finally achieved that privilege in 1785, and so it didn’t release him from any humiliating principles, but he must have been a very thick-skinned man, and he also knew his own worth. He’s 25. He’s allowed to marry, and he marries 17 year old, Gutle Schnapper. She brought a dowry of 2,400 gulden. It was a good sum. She was the daughter of Wolf Schnapper, who was a bill broker of money, a money changer, and himself a court factor to the little principality of Saxony. So he’s made a very good marriage.

He moves into this extraordinarily overcrowded house. He spends much of his time travelling to neighbouring cities. What does he do? He’s selling coins and other curios. And between trading and fairs, he runs a mail order business. In 1771, he published the first of several coin catalogues. And for the next 20 years, he sends it to potential customers all over the German world. It’s an obsession with many of these princes and dukes, and aristocrats. Some of his clients, the King of Bavaria, the Duke of Weimar, and of course, his main benefactor. The catalogue was very detailed. This is mail order. This is a huge development, and he’s at the forefront, and every coin carefully described. Frankfurt’s commercial register listed Rothschild as the city’s only Jewish dealer in antique metals and objects of display. The clients would receive the coins by mail. And if they didn’t want them, they returned at Rothschild’s expense. And he would write personal letters. He always attached them. He had a huge flare. He also had a brilliant knowledge of human nature. He observed his people. He knew what they wanted from him, and he was brilliant at it. And also, he read all the newspapers. And from contacts abroad, he acquired as much knowledge as he could, of political events, of economic events. He realised the importance of information. And as a result, and then he branches into banking. He makes enough money from the coin business, he branches into banking.

On the first anniversary of his marriage, the first of his children, Schonche is born. He’s going to have 10 children, as I’ve already told you, five sons, five daughters. He prospers during these years. He had an incredibly thrifty wife. His brother, Kalman, who was who was ill, died, and he became the sole owner of the business. Gutle ran the exchange shop and the discounted bills. She was really his helpmeet. To remember, she’s going to live to be 91, and never leaves the ghetto. He also sold English wool, cottons, coffee, sugar, rabbit skins. He enlarged his business by handling capital exchange and transfers, letters of credit. Huge opportunity in 1776 when Wilhelm sold his soldiers to George III. This gave Wilhelm a huge personal fortune. And the payment came in bills of exchange, and he needed his brokers from the ghetto, Rothschild is just one of them at this stage, to change his bills, selling them at a discount. He’s befriended by a young official at court, a man called Buderus. We haven’t got any pictures of Buderus, all we have is a kind of silhouette. But he and Rothschild became firm friends. And he likes the charming Jew, as he calls him. Rothschild’s ties with the prince. He also, through Buderus, he gets more and more information, and the knowledge becomes important to, he gets this from other contacts. And of course, a Jew who’s a supplier of coins, a banker, very low rates, and a coin dealer is very useful to the ruler. It’s also a time, and by 1783, he’s granted a gate pass that allowed a few privileged Jews to leave the ghetto at night, Sundays, and on Christian holidays. That is the most that the father of those incredible boys ever obtained.

And he got it because he was urgently needed in Hanover in connection with marketing bills of exchange. He’s becoming more and more affluent. He buys a larger house in the ghetto, 14 feet wide and 38 feet long. Just think about how small that is. It’s one of the best in the Judengasse. And in this house, Gutle had already given birth to six children. She gives birth to another four in the house, including the baby Jacob Mayer, who’s born in 1792. But the situation of the Jews does not improve. Hegel was working in Frankfurt as a tutor, and he said, “The tragedy of the Jewish people was no Greek tragedy because it aroused neither terror or pity.” Interestingly though, we talk about the Enlightenment. The elders, the ghetto elders wouldn’t allow copies of Moses Mendelssohn’s translation of the Bible and the commentaries. They’re encyclical. He was a heretic for scoffing at the words of our sages. We know that 47 Jews did buy it, but Rothschild wasn’t one of them. He was a pious Orthodox Jew. He’s now a relatively rich man with a lot of savings. And the house he bought in the Judengasse was twice as much as Gutle’s father had paid. Now, that’s a picture of Wilhelm’s palace. It gives you a notion of the difference between the house that Rothschild lived in and the palace of Wilhelm.

It was called, it was in the best part of the ghetto. It was called now the House of the Green Shield. It was built in 1615. It was standing before the last war, and it was described by many people, and I’m going to read you the description. “Every step one took in it revealed the painful congestion in which the Jews were compelled to exist. Everything in the house was very narrow, and each particle of space was carefully turned to account.” And in the house was also Amschel’s counting house. And the house also had a secret cellar. Now, he is travelling a great deal. His passes renewed every year, but he has a lot of hassle. And in 1787, he joins with six other court agents in a protest letter. It’s the first time Rothschild’s signature was ever on any petition. And it gives you a notion of all the new ideas because of the French Revolution. And this is the petition. “As a human being, every Jew has the same right as all others, and a joint claim for protection by his sovereign. Unfortunately, the lower citizens are so bound by prejudices their fathers as to make believe that the Jew is not a human being like themselves.” The petition is successful, but it also gives you a notion of how backward Frankfurt was. And in 1789, a Russian traveller noted, “Jews looked like prisoners in their selves.” In Prussia, emancipation was proceeding, but never in Frankfurt. Isidor Kracauer, who was the historian of the Frankfurt ghetto, said, “They never demanded the removal of their chains. They were satisfied if the chains didn’t cut too deep.” And in the end, a revolution in Frankfurt would come when the French take over the city. Now, in 1785, the old Landgrave died, and Wilhelm, Rothschild’s patron, is now the king. He’s inherited a huge fortune.

Although his lands were one of the most backward principalities, he didn’t spend money on his lands or his people. He was said to be the richest man in Europe. As I said, it’s the money from the sale of soldiers to foreign powers. And he’s also, he has a huge amount of money invested in English government bonds. And his old friend, Rothschild’s old friend, Buderus, is now the chief revenue officer. And this close relationship and a shared love of coins and chess, he gave Rothschild a lot of the things to deal with. And we know that he also offered Wilhelm fine jewels and coins at very, very low prices. And it took time, but gradually, Wilhelm takes Rothschild very seriously. And his business is also growing. Why? Because now, he’s two oldest sons, Salomon and Amschel, join him in the business. He’s now a made, I suppose the real treasure of the Rothschilds were these brilliant sons. And he increases his business. He’s a major wholesaler, large stocks of wool. You can just imagine Gutle presiding over it all with her five sons, her five daughters, cotton cloth, flour. And of course, because of the French Revolution, the price of flour was higher than Middle Ages, so he’s making a lot of money. And also, huge prices for all commodities. So he’s doing very, very well. And then Wilhelm decides to join the coalition against France, provided England give him a subsidy of 100,000 pounds. And now, and that you can imagine how busy that made Rothschild, discounting the bills in connecting with this. Also, Rothschild, at this stage, decides to branch out into transportation.

The sons are throwing themselves into the business. And it’s at this stage, I’ll come onto that in a minute. Can we go back to the mansion? And it’s at this stage that the young, the third son, Nathan, age 13, joins the business. They secure a contract to supply the Austrian army with wheat, pack horses and equipment, and also, to distribute the soldier’s wages. Gives you a notion of just how it’s expanding, considerable couple who transfers. Now, Amschel and Salomon are also travelling a lot. And in October, 1795, his eldest daughter, Schonche, married Benedikt Moses Worms, son of another court agent in the Judengasse. Amschel still attended the synagogue almost every day. We know that Talmudic scholars came to his home. Men from the three Frankfurt yeshivas dined with him on a Friday night. He worked incredibly long hours. The business is so thriving that he hires a bookkeeper and a young woman to handle his German and English correspondence. 1796, Napoleon defeats the Austrians, the French Army besieged Frankfurt. The Judengasse is burnt down. And despite the will of the town council, the Jews are allowed outside. And when the French demand a huge war contribution, Rothschild is now the 10th richest man in the Judengasse. The richest man is a banker called Michael Speyer. In 1796, his eldest son married Eva Hanau. the daughter of another court agent. The Rothschilds are now making some very seriously safe placed marriages.

And Buderus, Mayer’s friend, was now Wilhelm’s paymaster general. And Amschel, through him, negotiated the loan to the city of Frankfurt. And with Nathan, you’ve got four brilliant brains in the business. And we also think that by this stage, Amschel is becoming a little less orthodox. Nathan, it seems, was the ableist of the sons. He was imaginative, he was industrious, he was energetic, and very, very independent. And the trade still is business, not banking. And more and more of it is English imports. Nathan was in charge of this. He dealt with English commercial travellers. And in 1798, he had a confrontation with a very arrogant salesman. And he felt, and also, he talks about this later on at a dinner party in England, that’s recorded. He said, and he felt very constrained by his dominant father and two elder brothers. And according to the story he told 40 years later, isn’t it sensible for him to go to England and cut out the middleman? So he sets off in 1798, this third son of Mayer from the ghetto, he sets off with 20,000 pounds, which was nearly half of Rothschild’s assets. He took a bookkeeper with him who could speak English. Nathan couldn’t speak English. And he is going, this is the beginning of the establishment of the first branch of Rothschild. Now, in England, he’s going to become more and more accessible, but so is Mayer back in Frankfurt. By 1807, Mayer has a near monopoly. And by 1810, his fortune has tripled. And his collection of arts and coins are one of the finest in Germany. And in January, 1800, the Hansburg emperor, Francis II, appointed Rothschild his Imperial Crown agent, and his son, Salomon, married Caroline Stern, the daughter of a very wealthy wine merchant. So more and more going on. And Nathan is doing brilliantly in England. After a few months of apprenticeship with Levy Barent Cohen, who was meant to be the richest Jew in England, he settled in Manchester.

England was a much milder climate for Jews. This is a quote from Voltaire. “Going to the London Stock Exchange, a place more dignified than many a royal court, there you’ll find representatives of every nation quietly assembled to promote human welfare. They’re the Jew, the Muhammad, and the Christian deal with each other as though they were of the same religion. They call no man infidel unless he be bankrupt.” And of course, of the 124 members of the English stock exchange, 12 were Jewish. Nathan is immensely successful in Manchester. He triples his capital. He’s a young, he’s known as a young merchant prince. He’s a strict adherent to Judaism. And within a few years, a sizable part of the continental trade is in his hands. He supplies the family the English goods at extremely reasonable prices. He’s cuts out the middleman, textiles, and also colonial goods. Think Liverpool, think Manchester, think of all the imports that are coming in. He traded in indigo tea, dried fruit, sugar, coffee. He also builds up a business of his own in England. List of clients in France, Sweden, Switzerland, even in Russia. In 1806, he marries Hannah, who is one of the daughters of Levy Barent Cohen with whom he’d app apprenticed. She brings to him a dowry of 10,000 pounds. And of course, her sister, Judith marries Moses Montefiore.

This is really the beginning of what they call the cousinhood. Montefiore and Rothschild are brothers-in-law. Nathan comes to live in London. He, and of course, he opens a bank. And that, of course, is another story. And I’m pleased to tell you that on Monday, I’m going with my good friend, Sandra Myers to the Rothschild Archives, where I believe the archivist has agreed to talk to us about the other Rothschild. So very excited about that. Going back to the Rothschild in Frankfurt, the youngest brother Jacob, 13 years old, be Mitzvah, he’s now working in the business. Amschel is now working more and more with the Landgrave. Now, 1806, war with Prussia in France. Wilhelm supports Prussia. Wilhelm’s fortune is now under threat. And what he does is, can we see the next slide please? Now, Moritz Oppenheim was one of the first Jewish portrait painters, and I put him in here because he later on is commissioned to paint many of the Rothschild portraits. Can we go on please? Here, you see the portrait of Gutle. There’s a wonderful story, there are many stories about the Rothschilds, but the story I like is when Gutle was in her 80s. These neighbours came to her, “There’s going to be war.” And Gutle said, “No, there won’t be. My sons won’t let that be.” Can we go on please? To the next picture. Here, you see, this is a portrayal of Wilhelm because what has happened is, he’s at war with Prussia. His fortune is under threat. Rothschild, he entrusts his fortune to Rothschild. He actually deposited a million gulden annually. The capital grew, and this is one of the great basis of the Rothschild fortune. The interest he built on that by looking after Wilhelm’s fortune. Because now, and then of course, what happens is, he has Nathan in England.

Think Napoleonic Wars. When Jacob is older, the two brightest were probably Nathan and Jacob. What happens is the eldest son stays in the ghetto. Another one goes to Vienna, another one goes to Naples. Jacob is sent to France. And together, the family beginning really with the huge fortune, this fortune. But later on, the sale of commodities, the Rothschild Bank in London, the Rothschild Bank in Paris. And also, the story of the five arrows. It is a legend. Look, Mayer dies in 1812. And I should mark the year before he died, in 1811, the Grand Duke of Frankfurt, Anton von Dalberg, enacted a decree that all Jews should have enjoyed civil rights. And in 1811, that’s when Jacob was sent to Paris, and that meant he could finance Wellington’s, and that meant that Nathan is financing with Jacob. Although Jacob’s in Paris, they’re financing Wellington’s army. And when Amschel died, his sons are well on the way to becoming the incredible Rothschilds. And his sons’ family fortunes, the legend is they are the five arrows of banking. Now, the story is actually, it’s actually from an Oppenheim painting, and it’s based on a Plutarch story of Cerealis, this Roman figure. On his deathbed, he says to his sons, “One can be broken, but if all five of you are together, you can never be broken.” And that’s the legend of the five arrows of the Rothschilds, which later on were incorporated, because later on, they’re all going to be ennobled, and it’s in Nathan’s family crest. It’s also in the Vienna family crest. And these five sons are going to create the dynasties.

And really, and don’t forget, it’s Nathan’s son, Lionel, who’s going to lend the Israeli the money for the Suez canal. It’s Jacob’s son who is going to provide the French loans after 1871. So they do become one of the most important families in the world, the legend of the Rothschilds. And I sometimes think, when I think of Mayer in the ghetto, and those boys grew up in the ghetto, and they knew what it was. And they all, and the story, of course, all the generation, that first generation, they nearly all married each other’s daughters, cousins. They kept the money in the family. The boys, according to Mayer’s will, no son-in-law could go into the business. But certainly, in the first generation, they tended to marry each other or very, very wealthy, other wealthy Jewish families. Like for example, in England, the cousinhood was created. But of course, later on, they were going to be out marriages. One of Nathan’s daughter, of course, married into the English aristocracy.

But isn’t it interesting leaving the ghetto of Frankfurt? Some of the greatest houses in the world, certainly in Europe, are created by the Rothschilds. All one has to do is think of as Waddesdon. Some of the great collections is an extraordinary, extraordinary family. And we will be returning to them many times, I think. And as I said, we’re very excited that the archivist will be addressing this. Evidently, she is so knowledgeable about the Rothschild family. But one of our students, Della Worms, I’m very grateful to her because she sent me an email before, and evidently, she and the husband, Fred Worms, who I remember with great fondness, they went to the anniversary of one of the anniversaries of Rothschild’s death. That must have been the 200th anniversary, I think 2012. And Fred looked at the name Rothschild on the tombstone, and there was a Yod between the Resh in the top. It would’ve been pronounced in the Yiddish, it was written in Yiddish on the gravestone, and it was the right shield. So from right shield on the gravestone of the father to the fabulous Rothschilds that we know and love. So thank you all very much. And let’s, and there you see the five brothers. And that is the, thank you, Lauren. There is the tombstone in Frankfurt. So let’s see if we have any questions.

Q&A and Comments:

This is a lovely comment from Josie. “Join the BBT club, Trudy, from my grandkids. Got to go. You’re BBT, born before technology.” I love it.

Nicholas Spring, and he’s a friend of mine, he has a request. “I have a family query for a genealogist. Please contact.” Now, I know that we’ve got quite a few brilliant genealogists. Can someone please help Nicholas by sending their email into Lauren, who can then send it on to me. Thank you very much.

Q: “Do Jews pay taxes? They don’t serve in the army.”

A: No, but they did pay taxes. Noah, they paid taxes as a community. That’s what’s so interesting. The community decides. I think that’s got a lot to do with Jewish communal responsibility. That lasts to this day.

“Prohibiting marriage until age 25 wouldn’t necessarily keep the population down.” “In a funny way, the anti-Jew dies and not acknowledging the morality of Jews despite their poverty.” That’s a very interesting notion.

Q: “How assimilated are the Rothschilds?”

A: That is a very, very good question. I, actually, in my very strange, strange career, I used to teach Jewish history as a Sixth Form option at Eaton. And Nathan Rothschild was one of my students. He was not Halachically Jewish. But he said to me, “One day, I will have to address the community.” After all, the Balfour Declaration was, really, was given to Lord Rothschild. And he said, “I must study.” And of course, he took an AO level in modern Jewish history. And being a Rothschild, he got an A. So that’s a long convoluted question with, and I’m not going to give you a glib answer. I’m going to wait for the archivist. Yes.

Sandra’s saying yes. Thank you, Sandra. Yes, of course, today, many of them have married out. The first generation held, the first generation of men all held the lure of the outside world. But Sandra knows far more about that than I do. And I know that she’s going to interview the archivist.

Q: John, “According to Alexander Dietz, there are a number of Jewish families who ran lotteries. The hauptkollektor and the family were usually quite wealthy. I still don’t know how the funds collected were used by the factors city-state. Is anything known about their destination?”

A: Let me try and check that out for you, John.

Peter, “My grandfather in Austrian genealogical research, which shall now have on genealogical software, traced one line of the family back to 1640, and mark no Schlesinger were financial factors to call the sick the Holy Roman emperor. There is a Schutzbrief granting them safe pattern through the empire for 10 years. Another name on the genealogy is Hynek Heiner, grandson of a Schlesinger daughter.” Oh, it’s so fascinating. If you have the time to explore your family tree, and luckily, we have some brilliant genealogists on this chat. It’s very, very important. In my own family, I’ve only recently found out that my great-great-grandfather came from Prussia. It’s very funny because on my mother’s side, they are Sephardi. She’s half-Sephardi from Spain via Amsterdam, and she always lauded over my Ashkenazi father. And now that we’ve found out that, in fact, he wasn’t Polish, he was Prussian. Yeah. Who knows? It’s funny.

Q: “Did all 10 children survive to adulthood?”

A: Yes, they did. Thank you, Carla.

This is Sandra. “Nathan came to live in London with Levy Barent Cohen, whose daughter, Hannah, he eventually married. From London, Nathan went to Manchester where he sell up a factory, became a cotton merchant. And that’s where the term merchant banker originated.” Thank you very much for that, Mrs. Myers. Yeah, merchant banker. Yep. Love it. Thank you. Should have been able to work that out, shouldn’t I?

Sorry, please repeat. It wasn’t the Kaiser. It was, the picture was painted by Moritz Oppenheimer, who was really one of the first Jews to paint portraits, an interesting man. I will talk about him again when I’m talking generally about Germany. But, and the Rothschilds later commissioned him to make family portraits. It was the Landgrave of Hesse, Wilhelm. He was not the Kaiser. Aha! Best biography on Rothschild. Oh, oh, oh. It’s the huge one by Niall Ferguson, who was an archivist at Rothschild’s. It’s huge. There are many, many books on the Rothschilds, but I suppose it’s got to be Niall Ferguson. He’s a brilliant historian, by the way. I believe he now lives in America.

Laffite, “My sister-in-law’s late mother was a Rothschild.” Shalom. Thank you, Rita.

Yes. Jewish marriages in the Frankfurt ghetto, limited to 12 a year. Yes, of course. And that was true of the Jewish community in Berlin as well. “Keep the numbers down. We need these people. They’re useful to us, but we don’t want too many of them.”

Yes, Judith, I’m going to stick with, I think I’m going to have to stick with the general biography by, that I’ve already recommended. There are lots and lots and lots of books on the Rothschild family. In fact, Sandra, if as you are listening, maybe that’s something you and I could do on Monday, come up with a bigger list. But at the moment, Niall Ferguson writes, he writes beautifully. He’s a wonderful historian, but he writes like a journalist, which means he’s very, very readable.

Debbie, “Lovely historical review from War of US Independence, Franco-Prussian War, Napoleon. Staggering contrast between early French opening to Jews and World War II horrors.” Yeah.

Oh, this is from Lily. “I live in a condo building called the Rothschild in Montreal. I’m very proud to live here.” Thank you, Lily.

Oh, Sandra’s saying, “Paul Johnson’s bio is awfully good.” But she would go with me that Niall Ferguson is the best. I mean, he would have access to the archives. And as I said, he’s a brilliant historian. Anyway, they’re an interesting family. And I think, you know, what makes them run? What made them so successful? Brilliant minds. I think they must have been so sure of their own superiority as well. There are so many funny stories about Nathan. Jacob went to Paris, and changed his name to James. He was much more sophisticated. Nathan was evidently very rude. There are so many stories. Some very important Englishman came in and some duke, and Rothschild didn’t even look up. And the Englishman said, this aristocrat, “Do you know who I am?” So Rothschild just said to him, “Take a chair.” And the duke said, “Do you know who I am?” So Rothschild said, “Take two chairs.” And there was a time when the Bank of England refused to accept an Rothschild promissory note. So Nathan sent all his tellers to the Bank of England. They withdrew so much currency in gold that there was going to be a run on the bank. So as a result, the bank apologised. So they automatically now accept Rothschild promissory notes. And of course, Nathan was a stockbroker. He would lay against his pillar. And because everyone knew about the wonderful Rothschild intelligence network, they had pigeon post, they used. And just think, James in France, Nathan in England. The Rothschilds had news of the Battle of Waterloo. Communications.

Anyway, I will leave it there. I wish you all good evening, and take care of, everyone. Lots of love.