Amschel Mayer from Rothschild

Amschel Mayer from Rothschild

Amschel Mayer Freiherr von Rothschild (born June 12, 1773 in Frankfurt am Main ; † December 6, 1855 ibid) was a German banker from the Rothschild family . In 1817 he was ennobled by Emperor Franz II of Austria, and in 1822 he was elevated to the status of Austrian baron.

life and work

Amschel Mayer Rothschild was the eldest son of Mayer Amschel Rothschild , the founder of the banking house MA Rothschild & Sons , and his wife Gutle, geb. Schnaper . From a young age he worked in the family business. In 1810 his father took him in with his four brothers as partners in the bank.

After Mayer Amschel's death in 1812, the company consisted of the five Frankfurt brothers

• Amschel Mayer von Rothschild (1773–1855) - Frankfurt branch - management - remained childless
• Salomon Rothschild (1774–1855) - Vienna branch
• Nathan Mayer Rothschild (banker) - London branch
• Carl Mayer von Rothschild (1788–1855) Neapolitan branch - his sons later took over overall management
• James de Rothschild (1792–1868) - Paris branch

As the eldest son, Amschel Mayer became the new head of the family and took over the management of the bank, which from 1813 had its headquarters in a new, classicistic building on Fahrgasse . It was also the headquarters of the Rothschild banks in London , Paris , Vienna and Naples , which his brothers presided over. As the most cautious of the five sons of Mayer Amschel Rothschild, he was always concerned about the bank's liquidity , avoided risks as much as possible and preferred smaller deals.

Company letter from Rothschild Bank, Frankfurt, 1876

Rothschild concentrated on continuing the activity as court factor for various German princes. The relationship with the court of Hessen-Kassel that his father had built up with the help of Carl Friedrich Buderus played an important role in this. Amschel Mayer Rothschild was also the treasurer and financier of the German Bundestag in Frankfurt. Thanks to the good relationships with almost all German medium-sized and small states, M. A. Rothschild & Sons were able to oust the Bethmann Brothers banking house as the leading issuer of government bonds in the German-speaking area between 1820 and 1830 . Frankfurt became the most important stock exchange and center of the capital market in Germany. The Frankfurt-based Rothschildhaus, on the other hand, stayed out of the business with industrial bonds and shares, but was indirectly involved in such transactions by providing loans to other banks active in this area ( e.g. Sal. Oppenheim in Cologne). The only exception to this approach was in 1835 the lead participation in a consortium for the construction of the Taunus Railway .

Even if the assets of MA Rothschild & Sons continued to grow under Amschel Mayer Rothschild's leadership, the Frankfurt parent company still lost importance compared to the rapidly expanding Rothschild banks in London and Paris. Nevertheless, the latter officially only remained branches of M. A. Rothschild & Sons. As long as Gutle Rothschild, the mother of the five Rothschild brothers, was still alive, Frankfurt remained the main meeting place for the Rothschild family.

Amschel Mayer's marriage to Eva Hanau in 1796 remained childless. To secure the succession he adopted his nephew Mayer Carl von Rothschild , the son of Carl Mayer von Rothschild in Naples . Rothschild died on December 6, 1855. His grave is in the Old Jewish Cemetery on Rat-Beil-Strasse. The tomb was designed by Eduard Schmidt von der Launitz . Mayer Carl, who together with his brother Wilhelm Carl von Rothschild had been a partner in the bank since 1852, continued to run the Frankfurt parent company after Amschel Mayer's death; when Wilhelm Carl died in 1901, it was dissolved.

Judaism

Rothschild remained true to the traditions of Orthodox Judaism and was an explicit opponent of the Jewish reform movement . In 1843 he refused the appointment of the liberal rabbi Leopold Stein to Frankfurt and withdrew his promise to support the construction of a new main synagogue with 250,000 guilders. When the Free City of Frankfurt introduced a new bill of exchange regulation in 1844 that required Jewish bankers to accept bills of exchange on the Sabbath and other Jewish holidays , Rothschild publicly announced that he would not adhere to this provision.

Rothschild also tried to ensure legal equality for the more than 4,000 Frankfurt Jews, who made up about ten percent of the population. In the constitution supplementary act, the constitution of the Free City of Frankfurt issued in 1816, their civil rights were again curtailed - citing the will of the majority of the Christian citizens, especially the crafts and trade, who feared competition from the Jewish citizens. With the support of Prince Metternich and the Prussian Minister of State Hardenberg and other princes, Rothschild initiated several petitions from the Israelite Community to the Senate of the Free City regarding the equality of Frankfurt's Jews between 1816 and 1824 . In 1824, Jews were treated as Israelite citizens on an equal footing with Christians, but it was not until 1864 that Frankfurt became the second German state after the Grand Duchy of Baden (1862) to lift all restrictions on civil rights and put Jews on an equal footing with other citizens.

Charity

Unlike his father, whose charitable work was still part of the traditional Jewish tradition of the Zedaka , Amschel Mayer Rothschild established the extensive foundation activities of the Rothschild family . In 1849 he set up the Freiherrlich Amschel Meyer von Rothschild Foundation for the poor Israelites in the city of Frankfurt am Main , to which he bequeathed 1.2 million guilders in his will . This foundation was commissioned to preserve the Haus zum Grünen Schild , the ancestral home of the Rothschild family, and to use it for charitable purposes. Rothschild also promoted Frankfurt's Jewish life with numerous donations, for example for synagogues , hospitals and health insurance companies.

Güterstein Amschel Mayer von Rothschilds in Frankfurt's Rothschild Park

Construction activity

In 1816 Rothschild acquired a garden house at Bockenheimer Landstrasse 10, which he had Friedrich Rumpf convert into a classicist palace. The palace was destroyed in the Second World War, the associated landscape garden has been preserved to this day as a Rothschild park in a reduced size. The Rothschild town house at Zeil 34 later became the Rothschild old people's home (destroyed in 1944). Rothschild also owned Grüneburg , Stalburger Oede in Nordend and Kühhornshof since 1837 .

See also

• Descendants of Mayer Amschel Rothschild

literature

• Constantin von Wurzbach : Rothschild, Anselm Maier Freiherr von . In: Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich . 27th part. Kaiserlich-Königliche Hof- und Staatsdruckerei, Vienna 1874, pp. 123–126 ( digitized version ).
• Georg Heuberger (ed.): The Rothschilds. A European family. Thorbecke, Sigmaringen 1995, ISBN 3-7995-1201-2 .
• Georg Heuberger (ed.): The Rothschilds. Contributions to the history of a European family. Thorbecke, Sigmaringen 1995, ISBN 3-7995-1202-0 .
• Manfred Pohl:  Amschel Meyer Rothschild. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 22, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-428-11203-2 , p. 132 f. ( Digitized version ).

Web links

Commons : Amschel Mayer von Rothschild  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Rothschild, Mayer Amschel Freiherr von. Hessian biography. (As of March 18, 2020). In: Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen (LAGIS).
• Rothschild, Amschel Mayer (von) in the Frankfurter Personenlexikon

Individual evidence

1. ^ English website of the Rothschild Archives
2. ↑ Stadtgang Bockenheimer Landstraße ( memento of the original from June 6, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Historical Museum Frankfurt, page 6ff.