the world of private banking

CHAPTER 2
The Rothschild Archive
Victor Gray with Melanie Aspey
In order to explain the history of the body of material which today makes up the
Rothschild Archive, I must begin with an elementary early history of the Rothschild
family. Mayer Amschel Rothschild, a member of the Frankfurt Jewish community,
was a merchant dealing in general goods, including textiles but with a specialism in
historical coins sold by mail order, which brought him to the attention of a number
of important collectors. In 1798, his third son, Nathan Mayer, as part of a strategy
for expansion, moved to England to buy much sought-after English textiles at the
best terms for supply into mainland Europe. He stayed in Manchester until 1809
when he made a final move to London and concentrated on an aspect of trading
activity which he had been gradually developing – that of mercantile credit.
Meanwhile, back at home, his four brothers had been playing a full part in their
father’s business, both in the Frankfurt office and by travelling in increasingly
wide circles on the firm’s business, developing and feeding a broadening range of
contacts and agents. This circle was put to a corporate test in 1814 when Nathan
was commissioned by the British government to assemble substantial quantities of
gold from around Europe to feed Wellington’s army and to pay the subsidies due to
Britain’s allies. The conspicuous success of their corporate activity meant that they
were well poised after the war to take up an important and eventually central role
in the field of bond issues on behalf of European and other governments.
As a result of this development, by the early 1820s, not only was Nathan a
key figure in London banking, but James had established himself in Paris as de
Rothschild Frères, Salomon was spending much time in Vienna, where his presence
developed into the firm of S.M. Rothschild, Carl took off for Naples, setting up
C.M. de Rothschild e figli, and Amschel developed his father’s home business in
Frankfurt, M.A. Rothschild und Söhne. Of these branches, the Naples bank closed
in 1863 after Carl’s death and the fall of the monarchy, the Frankfurt bank closed
in 1901 for want of a male Rothschild heir, its business being transferred to the
Disconto-Gesellschaft. The Viennese bank was seized by the Nazis in 1938 and
aryanized. The Paris bank persisted, until it was nationalized in 1981 and then,
eventually, allowed to recreate itself as Rothschild & Cie Banque. The London
bank still flourishes.
The archival history of these five institutions is chequered, to say the least.
Nothing survives – to the best of our knowledge – from the Naples bank, which
was always, like Vienna, regarded as a branch office to Frankfurt. It is known
that on its closure, whatever survived of interest went back to Frankfurt, to suffer
in time the fate which was to await the corpus of archives of M.A. Rothschild