The House of Rothschild, Volume 1

by Niall Ferguson

  The death of a partner was, of course, no longer a remote possibility. Not only was Mayer Amschel now an old man—he was sixty-six or sixty-seven when the 1810 agreement was signed—he was also a sick man. He had been seriously ill two years before, possibly with a rectal abscess arising from chronic haemorrhoids, and, although an operation was successfully performed, his health never fully recovered. It was a common complaint in the Judengasse, whether because of the sedentary lives its inhabitants perforce led, or because of a genetic defect which intermarriage—also imposed by the Stättigkeit—had spread through the street’s 500 families. On September 16, 1812, he was taken ill; he died just three days later. But even as he lay on his deathbed, Mayer Amschel hastily revised his will, as if wishing to reinforce the message conveyed to his sons in the 1810 agreement. The new will pre-empted the agreement’s provisions by withdrawing just 190,000 gulden from the firm as his notional share of the capital—obviously a substantial understatement. And it repeated emphatically the rule excluding the female line from the business:

  I hereby decree and therefore wish that my daughters and sons-in-law and their heirs have no share in the capital of the firm “Mayer Amschel Rothschild & Sons” and even less that they are able or are permitted to make a claim against it for whatever reason. Rather, the said firm shall exclusively belong to and be owned by my sons. None of my daughters and their heirs therefore has any right or claim on the said firm and I would never be able to forgive a child of mine who, against this my paternal will, allowed themselves to disturb my sons in the peaceful possession of their business.

  If his daughters did do so, they would forfeit all but their minimal statutory claims as heirs under the Napoleonic code. The distinction between sons and daughters could scarcely have been more strongly expressed.10

  That Mayer Amschel’s testament was so strictly adhered to, not just by his immediate heirs but by his descendants for generations to come, confirms the impression given by those letters to his sons which have survived. Within his immediate family circle, he was a commanding and perhaps also intimidating figure. Interestingly, this is not how he was remembered by the rest of the world. To Gentiles who had dealings with him, he had tended to conform to the intelligent but deferential stereotype of the court Jew. It should be stressed that modern portrayals of Mayer Amschel—especially the screen performances by George Arliss and Erich Ponto—probably exaggerated the “Jewishness” of his appearance and manner, the former sporting a long beard and fez-like hat, the latter ringlets and a skullcap. On the other hand, the most commonly reproduced nineteenth-century lithograph—of a rather square-jawed clean-shaven man in a neat wig—was the product of an artist’s imagination. One contemporary who met him in her youth remembered “a rather big man, who wore a round unpowdered wig and a small goatee beard.” Another remembered him wearing the kind of hat and clothes which would have been worn by a Gentile merchant of the same generation, albeit slightly threadbare.

  This tallies with Mayer Amschel’s somewhat ambiguous reputation within the Judengasse as relatively orthodox in matters of religion, but progressively more and more liberal in matters of education and politics. Mayer Amschel was not one of those maskilim who were inspired by the Jewish Enlightenment, nor did his attitudes anticipate the later Reform movement to modernise Judaism as a religion; but nor was he a staunch conservative. Cohen’s unauthorised memoir (published shortly after his death) portrayed him as the personification of a kind of middle way between the new and the old—“proof that the dogmas of the Jewish religion, even according to the teachings of the Talmud, contain nothing which conflicts with the laws of morality.” Rothschild had been “a zealous believer in the Talmud and chose it alone as the guiding principle of all his actions”; indeed, according to Cohen, his attitude towards religious conservatism had been “a little exaggerated.” He and his brother Moses (who administered the community’s poor-relief fund for some years) were active members of the Jewish community. But Mayer Amschel was also a “good citizen”—a significant phrase, as we shall see.

  This is evident in Mayer Amschel’s attitude towards charity. As noted above, he and his brothers were conscientious in paying their tenth to the poor of the community. Ludwig Börne remembered the crowd of beggars who used to lie in wait for Mayer Amschel as he walked through the street, and the patience with which he distributed alms. Yet he was less conventional in not confining his charity to the Jewish community. Cohen recalled an occasion when a street-urchin had shouted “Jew!” at him. Mayer Amschel

  calmly reached into his purse and gave the needy youth some money with the request that he might often repeat what he had said. No one could have been happier to oblige. He took what he was offered and cried at the top of his voice: “Jew! Jew!” Several other youths came up and mockingly joined in. Rothschild listened with evident pleasure, pronouncing the Hebrew blessing: “Praise be to Him, who gave the laws to His people of Israel!”

  In his will too he bequeathed 100 gulden to “three praiseworthy, charitable Christian foundations.” Even his charitable work within the Jewish community became increasingly secular in its orientation. In 1804 he played a leading role in establishing a new school for poorer Jewish children—the Philanthropin—the curriculum of which had a thoroughly secular flavour. This seems to have reflected the influence of his book-keeper Geisenheimer and of the tutor he employed for his own children, Michael Hess, a follower of Moses Mendelssohn who later became the school’s headmaster. It may also have been inspired by his younger sons, at least one of whom (Salomon) was a member of the same masonic lodge as Geisenheimer.11 The important point is that Mayer Amschel continued to favour a communal basis for education at a time when an increasing number of Jewish families were sending their children to Gentile schools outside the ghetto. Ludwig Börne was one of those who rebelled against the relatively conservative atmosphere of the Frankfurt ghetto, ultimately converting to Christianity rather than endure discrimination. But, as Heine later recalled, he could not help admiring the unaffected piety of the Rothschild household. Passing the old family home in the Judengasse in 1827, he noticed nostalgically that Mayer Amschel’s widow Gutle had decorated its windows with white curtains and candles in celebration of the great feast of joy (Chanukkah):

  How gaily the candles sparkle—those candles which she has lit with her own hands in order to celebrate the day of victory on which Judas Mac cabeus and his brothers liberated their fatherland as heroically as did in our own day King Frederick William, the Emperor Alexander and the Emperor Francis II! When the good lady looks at these little lights, her eyes fill with tears, and she remembers with melancholy joy her younger days when Mayer Amschel Rothschild, of blessed memory, still celebrated the Feast of Lights with her, and when her sons were still little boys who placed candles on the floor and leapt over them with childlike pleasure, as is the custom in Israel.

  It was Mayer Amschel’s work to win full civil and political rights for the Frankfurt Jews, however, which best expressed his loyalty towards Judaism.We know that his political activism predated the French Revolution because he had been one of the seven signatories of the protest to the Senate of 1787 (quoted in chapter 1) about increased restrictions on travel outside the ghetto on Sundays and holy days. However, it was only with the advent of a French-backed regime that the possibility arose of more substantial improvements in the lot of the Jews. Things would have moved faster if Frankfurt had been under the direct jurisdiction of Napoleon’s brother Jérôme who, as King of Westphalia, favoured a policy of complete emancipation. By contrast, Dalberg was cautious, partly because he could not risk alienating the local Gentile establishment, partly because he himself feared that a liberated Jewish community might “balance Christian injustice, as soon as they breathed some air, with Jewish impudence.” The new Stättigkeit which he issued in 1808 seemed, if anything, a step backwards, as it reasserted the ban on Jews living outside the (still dilapidated) Judengasse, reimposed the poll tax and confirmed the
traditional restrictions on numbers of families and marriages.

  It was at this point that Mayer Amschel was able to use his financial leverage over Dalberg to force the pace of change—the first time a Rothschild acted in such a way for what he explicitly called “our nation,” and not the last. Dalberg, as we have seen, was biddable: if a sufficiently large capital sum could be paid to compensate his duchy for the loss of tax revenue which Jewish emancipation would entail, he was prepared to give his consent. After preliminary discussions conducted via Dalberg’s Jewish police commissioner Itzstein, the sum of 440,000 gulden was agreed on—twenty times the sum paid each year by the Jews for their “protection”—of which Mayer Amschel raised 290,000 on behalf of the community by discounting bonds. In December 1811, after further negotiations with the Frankfurt Senate, Mayer Amschel was able to inform his son, with understated satisfaction: “You are now a citizen.” Two weeks later the decree on the “civil-legal equality of the Jewish community” came into force.

  To be a citizen of his native state, but to remain unequivocally a member of “our nation,” meaning the traditional Jewish religious community: this was Mayer Amschel’s aim. For the critical distinction between the Rothschilds and many other successful Jewish families of this period was that, while they fervently desired social, civil and political equality with their Gentile counterparts, they refused to abandon Judaism as their religion in order to achieve it. Their own ambition was therefore from the outset inseparable from the political campaign for Jewish emancipation not only in Frankfurt, but throughout Europe.

  In this, as in so much else, Mayer Amschel’s influence on his descendants was profound and enduring. Four days after their father’s death, his sons sent out a circular to their most valued clients to reassure them that there would be no change in the conduct of the family business: “His memory will never fade among us, his surviving partners . . . Our blessed father remains unforgettable to us.” Such pious sentiments are not always translated into practice once the first pain of bereavement has passed; but the sons of Mayer Amschel meant what they said. Time and again in the years after his death, they harked back to their father’s words—to his business aphorisms, to his views on Jewish emancipation and, above all, to his paternal commandments to them, his male descendants. In many ways, these numerous allusions to Mayer Amschel—unremarked by previous historians—reveal more about his character than any other source.

  A typical example is Amschel’s request for better stock market information from Nathan in October 1814: “Father used to say: ‘A banker has to calculate, there is no merit in making transactions in the dark.’ ” He made a similar point in 1817: their father had told them “that Jewish fortunes as a rule don’t keep longer than two generations for two reasons. One because the housekeeping and other expenses are not being considered, second because of Jewish stupidity.” While these echoed Mayer Amschel’s criticism of Nathan’s somewhat casual approach to accounting, other maxims related more to the firm’s relations with governments. One point was obvious enough, given the benefits Mayer Amschel had derived from his relationship with William of Hesse-Kassel: “I [learned?] from our blessed father,” Salomon told Nathan in 1818, “who always said, ‘The evil eye of the court brings fewer advantages [than the title of consul or court banker].’ ” But, as Amschel remembered, it was not enough just to acquire minor titles like “court agent”: “Nowadays everybody calls himself ‘Excellency.’ I remember, however, what our father used to say, ‘With money you become an Excellency.’ ” The key was to establish some kind of financial leverage. As Amschel put it, “It is better to deal with a government in difficulties than with one that has luck on its side. We heard this from our father.”

  Nor was it only the elder brothers who reminisced in this fashion. In March 1817 James remembered a tip which he would often put into practice in his relations with rival firms: “Father used to say, ‘If you can’t make yourself loved, make yourself feared.’ ” As late as 1840 Carl could still be heard recalling how “his Father had often taught him, when he had occasion to apply to an inferior or a man who had little power to assist him in carrying an object he had in view, he spoke with the person as if the whole depended entirely on him, though perhaps he knew he had but the smallest possible influence in the business.” Of all these pieces of business advice, the one most frequently cited was probably Salomon’s favourite, on the importance of cultivating politicians. He cited this in a letter to Nathan in October 1815: “You know, dear Nathan, what father used to say about sticking to a man in government.” It came up again a few days later: “But you remember father’s principle that you have to be ready to try everything to get in with such a great government figure.” And Mayer Amschel had left them in no doubt as to how such politicians could best be wooed: “Our late father taught us that if a high-placed person enters into a [financial] partnership with a Jew, he belongs to the Jew” (“gehört er dem Juden”).

  The brothers’ consciousness of their Jewishness and of their responsibilities to the rest of the Jewish community also owed much to their father’s influence. Intriguingly, both Salomon and Carl seem to have regarded carrying on their father’s work for Jewish emancipation in an almost instrumental way. As Carl put it in May 1817, “It is the best thing on earth to be of service to the Jews. Our father did so and we see how well we are paid back.” Salomon made the same connection between good works and good fortune a few months later when he wrote to Nathan reminding him to put pressure on the British government on behalf of European Jewry: “If we want our children to be one day really happy, we have to do all that is in our power to bring to a good end all the work which . . . father of blessed memory . . . began in the interest of our people.” And he repeated the point early the next year:

  If everything depends, as it does, on God, if we want, as we do, to be fortunate, then, dear Nathan, [the interests of the entire Jewish people] must be as important to you as the most important business deal once was. How can we show more respect for our blessed father, than by supporting that work which he laboured at for years[?]

  But of all their father’s advice, his last commandment—to maintain fraternal unity—had the greatest and most enduring impact. Salomon once attributed “all our luck to the benediction which our father gave us an hour before he passed away.” Amschel remembered that benediction too: “I remember what our father, peace be with him, told me on his deathbed: ‘Amschel, keep your brothers together and you will become the richest people in Germany.’ This has almost come true.” That advice was often invoked when the brothers quarrelled—as they frequently did in the turbulent years immediately after Mayer Amschel’s death. “Our blessed father ordered us to live in peace,” Salomon reminded Nathan, following an especially bitter attack by the latter on Carl. He had to say it again just a week later: “My good brother, dear Nathan, our blessed father ordered us to live in peace, otherwise we shall lose our courage. Let us have peace.” More than twenty years later the same principle was elaborately enshrined in a new partnership agreement, drawn up following the death of Nathan himself:

  We wish to offer a proof of our reverence for the holiest memory of our father, whose virtuous conduct in all of life’s relations is a noble example to us all. Through pious acceptance of the higher wishes of God, through faith in God’s help, through conscientious honesty and indefatigable industry, this noble and philanthropic man laid the foundation of our good fortune, and when, almost forty years ago, he took his sons into partnership with him in his business, he told them that acting in unison would be a sure means of achieving success in their work, and always recommended fraternal concord to them as a source of divine blessing.

  In accordance with his venerable wishes, and following the prompt ings of our own hearts, we therefore wish today, through this renewed agreement, to reinforce our mutual dependence and hope, in this new league of brotherly love, to guarantee the success of the future activities of our House. May our children and descenda
nts in the future be guided by the same aim, so that with the constant maintenance of unity the House of Rothschild may blossom and grow into full ripeness . . . ; and may they remain as mindful as we of the hallowed precept of our noble ancestor and present to posterity the godly image of united love and work.

  The same theme of paternally ordained brotherly unity was developed still further in an annexe to the agreement, which solemnly hoped that “in the future [as in the past] the blessing of our blessed father and grandfather upon our House and our family” would be fulfilled. He had promised them “the protection of the Almighty; the success of our undertakings; the prosperity of our family and the continuing honour and respect of our reputation and name,” but only if they “always preserved concord, love and faith” with one another.