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Baron Ferdinand von Rothschild

Baron Ferdinand von Rothschild

Male 1839 - 1898  (59 years)    Has 16 ancestors and one descendant in this family tree.

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  • Name Ferdinand von Rothschild 
    Prefix Baron 
    Birth 1839 
    Gender Male 
    Death 1898 
    Siblings 7 Siblings 
    Person ID I303182  Geneagraphie
    Last Modified 21 Sep 2001 

    Father Baron Anselm von Rothschild,   b. 1803   d. 1874 (Age 71 years) 
    Mother Baroness Charlotte von Rothschild,   b. 1807   d. 1859 (Age 52 years) 
    Marriage 1826 
    Family ID F121627  Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

    Family Baroness Evelina von Rothschild,   b. 1839   d. 1866 (Age 27 years) 
    Marriage 1865 
    Children 
     1. NN von Rothschild,   b. 1866   d. 1866 (Age 0 years)
    Family ID F121626  Group Sheet  |  Family Chart
    Last Modified 20 Sep 2001 

  • Notes 
    • when Natty left the Commons for the Lords, taking over The Family's parliamentary fief by becoming the new M.P. for Aylesbury; English in his charities---he founded the Evelina de Rothschild Hospital for Sick Children in London and the Evelina de Rothschild School in Jerusalem.

      Anglicized lord of the palazzo at Waddesdon and member of the Marlborough House gang. Ferdy's two brothers administered the Family fortunes along the Danube. Both covered Vienna with their philanthropies. They founded, among many other things, a General Hospital, an orphanage, an Institute for the Blind, an Institute for the Deaf Mute, a neurological clinic and hospital, and a botanical garden.
      Both brothers raised Rothschildian palaces.

      In Vienna, the height of the spring season was the Derby held on the first Sunday in June (here, as in England, the mishpoche won it three times), the social highlight of the day being the Rothschild tea given after the race. But the greatest show was the Family progress along the Hauptallee, the long tree-lined avenue connecting city and race course. A mechanical wonder figured in the procession: the Rothschild electric auto. All of Austria-Hungary hardly knew its like. Gliding along silently in the Family colors of blue and yellow, it was a final landmark of Alt Wien. But on the Hauptallee it always suffered a jovial indignity. Frank, one of the most famous Fiakers (horsecabbies) in town, would overtake it; youthful Rothschilds leaned out of the galloping cab, hooting at the slow galvanic monster.
      Fiaker Frank rates an explanation. He was the living badge of nabobery. Old Vienna's other immortal horsecabbie, Fiaker Bratfisch, was Crown Prince Rudolf's. Both the Habsburg and Rothschild families had fleets of their own vehicles, but, in addition, each hired a special independent taxi for its exclusive use and for the whole season. The Crown Prince always had Bratfisch ready to take him to tender appointments best concealed from the regular servants manning Habsburg carriages.* The mishpoche, acting with less amatory enterprise but with equal lavishness, engaged Frank because of his celebrated speed.
      In Fiakers and in some other respects Rothschild and Habsburg ran parallel. But to many it seemed impossible that the two should ever meet. Rothschild doing business with a cabinet minister, or even Rothschild entertaining a duke---well, all right, it couldn't be helped. But Rothschild breaking bread with Habsburg, Europe's greatest imperial symbol---Himmel!

      * It was Bratfisch who discovered the bodies of Rudolf and his mistress after they killed themselves at Mayerling.

      In 1887 Himmel! happened. Emperor Francis Joseph "by a special act of grace" forgave the Rothschilds for not being descended from four lines of high-grade nobility and for being unbaptized. They were declared Hoffahig, or courtworthy. The dispensation admitted them to levees, receptions and private gatherings attended or given by the imperial family. Henceforth the mishpoche moved among a circle boasting a longer continuity of rule, and a far haughtier inaccessibility, than the courtier society surrounding Queen Victoria or the Prussian Kaiser. Francis Joseph himself was correct---no more, no less---to the people he had just appointed his friends. Every
      Rothschild funeral or wedding received an All-Highest personal telegram. To one Family party the Emperor lent the Court Opera ballet and permitted it to dance through the torchlit Rothschild gardens in the Theresianumgasse--- a singular imperial favor. Yet the sovereign's private exchanges with Rothschilds seldom went beyond comment on the weather or common health problems. A story, perhaps apocryphal, suggests reasons for this attitude. Once, when his Majesty had involved Baron
      Albert in longer conversation than usual, the haut monde swiftly teemed with the rumor that the monarchy was in need of a new loan. Perhaps his Majesty felt that such intimacies were too damaging to Habsburg credit. His wife Elizabeth, Austria's strangest, loveliest and most intellectual empress, didn't have to bother with such considerations. She liked the female members of the clan, with their many esthetic interests. A close friendship began between her and Albert's sister Julie, a cosmopolitan Rothschild, sumptuously typical of the fin-de-siecle mishpoche.

      Other sisters of Albert and Ferdy had other friends with scepters.



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