Louis Nathaniel of Rothschild

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Louis Nathaniel Freiherr von Rothschild (born March 5, 1882 in Vienna ; † January 15, 1955 in Montego Bay , Jamaica ) was the last significant representative of the Viennese branch of the banking family .

Life

After the death of his father Albert Salomon Anselm von Rothschild in 1911, who had transferred sole management to him, he headed the private banking house SM v. Rothschild in Vienna and controlled the Creditanstalt , the largest bank in Austria , as the main shareholder .

After the Frankfurt line died out, he also took on responsibility for a large part of the international activities of the Rothschild family.

Given the dire economic situation of the smaller become Austria after 1918 and the overcrowding of the banking system and the Creditanstalt came with its important industrial group in first latent difficulties. The situation was further complicated by the fact that Chancellor Johann Schober ultimately Rothschild demanded in October 1929 that contained in a massive crisis Bodencreditanstalt to take over. Rothschild gave in, but as a result, at the height of the global economic crisis in the spring of 1931, the Creditanstalt collapsed, which had serious effects on the international financial system. Rothschild made a significant contribution, but the largest bank in Austria had to be restructured with state funds and in March 1938 was majority owned by the federal government.

On the day Austria was annexed, Rothschild was arrested by the SS at Aspern Airport. First he was in the basement of at Roßauer border police building imprisoned and later the Gestapo headquarters in the Hotel Metropole on Morzinplatz laid, where he 14 months in solitary confinement was sitting. The historian Roman Sandgruber assumes that this fate of Rothschild served the writer Stefan Zweig as a template for his last work, Schachnovelle . Rothschild was in the linearization negotiations of the Reich Hermann Göring for the sale of Vítkovice ironworks used as a hostage. He was only released on May 11, 1939 - after all Austrian family property had been surrendered.

In the Palais Albert Rothschild in the Prinz-Eugen-Strasse in Vienna "pulled Central Agency for Jewish Emigration in Vienna " of Adolf Eichmann one. In the palace of Louis Rothschild's brother Alphonse (1878–1942) in the neighboring Theresianumgasse, the secret service security service of the Reichsführer SS was housed.

The private bank SM v. Rothschild was initially managed on a provisional basis by the Austrian Credit Institute, and from July 1938 by the Munich-based bank Merck Finck & Co. In 1940 the bank SM v. Rothschild then as part of the Aryanization of Jewish property by the newly founded bank E. v. Nicolai, in which the Bank Merck Finck & Co held 71 percent and the Deutsche Industrie Bank from Düsseldorf with 19 percent.

The seat of the bank was sold to Schöller & Co. (later Schoellerbank ) after the war . The private palace was transferred to the Chamber of Labor . It was blown up in 1955 - on the day of Rothschild’s burial in Vienna’s central cemetery .

Rothschild emigrated to the United States and spent most of his life traveling. In 1946 he married Hildegard Johanna von Auersperg (1895–1981). The marriage remained childless. Rothschild died in 1955 on one of these trips in Jamaica.

In a total of eight restitution proceedings after the Second World War, Louis Rothschild and his family members received a few values ​​back from their previous property. Louis Rothschild was reimbursed a small part of the bank's assets, but he decided not to rebuild the SM von Rothschild banking house. The family's art collection, which was confiscated in 1938 and distributed across several museums across the country, remained in the possession of the Republic of Austria until 1999. Only after the Washington Declaration of 1998 and the resulting restitution law were 250 works of art, including 31 paintings, returned to the heirs. The family had to donate selected paintings to the republic for the export permit.

literature

  • Thomas Trenkler: The Rothschild case - Chronicle of an expropriation. Molden Verlag, Vienna 1999.
  • Peter Melichar : Reorganization in the banking sector. The Nazi measures and the problem of restitution (= publications of the Austrian Commission of Historians. 11). Vienna / Munich 2004, pp. 391–408. (Case study: SM v. Rothschild with further literature)
  • Roman Sandgruber: Rothschild. Glory and decline of the Viennese world house. Molden Verlag, Vienna 2018.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f Christa Zöchling: Myth Rothschild: The fairytale rise of a ghetto Jew. In: profil.at. profil news magazine , October 13, 2018, accessed on November 28, 2018 .
  2. ^ Raul Hilberg: The annihilation of the European Jews. Volume 1, Fischer Verlag 1982, ISBN 3-596-24417-X , p. 107 ff.
  3. ^ Rothschildpalais (4, Theresianumgasse) in the Vienna History Wiki of the City of Vienna
  4. ↑ Michael Dorrmann: The robbery of Louis von Rothschild. In: Inka Bertz, Michael Dorrmann (eds.): Looted art and restitution. Jewish property from 1933 to the present day. Published on behalf of the Jewish Museum Berlin and the Jewish Museum Frankfurt am Main, Frankfurt am Main 2008, ISBN 978-3-8353-0361-4 , p. 121 ff.
personal data
SURNAME Rothschild, Louis Nathaniel from
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Rothschild, Louis Nathaniel Freiherr von (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian banker
DATE OF BIRTH March 5, 1882
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH January 15, 1955
Place of death Montego Bay , Jamaica