Rothschild Family Tree

Mayer Amschel Rothschild and the Frankfurt house

Mayer Amschel Rothschild was born in 1744 in the Judengasse, the walled Jewish street of Frankfurt, where Jews were confined by law. He began as a dealer in rare coins and became the court agent and banker of Prince William of Hesse-Kassel, one of the richest rulers in Germany. He married Gutle Schnapper in 1770; of their nineteen children, ten survived, five sons and five daughters. Mayer’s rule was that the business should stay in the hands of his sons and their male descendants, working together.

The five arrows: Mayer Amschel’s five sons

During and after the Napoleonic Wars the sons spread across Europe, and their cooperation, sending money, gold and news between cities faster than anyone else, made the family bank the largest in the world in the 19th century.

• Amschel Mayer (1773–1855) stayed in Frankfurt to run the original bank.
• Salomon Mayer (1774–1855) founded the Vienna branch and was made a baron by the Austrian emperor.
• Nathan Mayer (1777–1836) founded N M Rothschild & Sons in London, which financed Britain’s war against Napoleon.
• Carl Mayer (1788–1855) founded the branch in Naples.
• James Mayer (1792–1868) founded de Rothschild Frères in Paris and financed French railways.

Why the Rothschilds married their cousins

To keep the fortune inside the family, Rothschilds very often married each other. Most of the marriages made by Mayer’s grandchildren were between cousins or between uncles and nieces. The chart shows two examples: James married his niece Betty, Salomon’s daughter, and Nathan’s son Lionel married his cousin Charlotte, Carl’s daughter. In a pedigree chart of their descendants the same ancestors appear several times, which is why our charts label repeated people instead of drawing them silently twice.

The English branch: from Nathan to the Barons Rothschild

Nathan’s son Lionel was elected to Parliament for the City of London in 1847 but could not take his seat, because MPs had to swear an oath “on the true faith of a Christian”. He was re-elected repeatedly until the law changed in 1858, when he became the first practising Jew to sit in the House of Commons. In 1875 he lent the British government the money to buy the Suez Canal shares.

Lionel’s son Nathan (“Natty”) became the first Baron Rothschild and the first Jewish peer. The title has passed through Walter, the zoologist to whom the 1917 Balfour Declaration was addressed, his nephew Victor, Victor’s son Jacob, who died in 2024, and now Jacob’s son Nathaniel, the 5th Baron.

The French branch and Rothschild & Co today

In Paris, James was succeeded by his son Alphonse, then by Édouard and Guy de Rothschild. The French bank was nationalised by the government in 1981; Guy’s son David rebuilt the business, and in 2012 the French and English houses were brought together. Today Rothschild & Co, a financial advisory group, is led by David’s son Alexandre, the seventh generation. Other branches are known for wine: Château Lafite Rothschild and Château Mouton Rothschild in Bordeaux both belong to descendants of Mayer Amschel.

Facts versus myths

Because of their wealth, the Rothschilds have long been the target of antisemitic conspiracy theories that claim the family secretly controls governments or world events. These claims are false. The family’s real history, a story of persecution in the Frankfurt ghetto, cooperation between brothers, intermarriage, philanthropy and decline as other banks grew larger, is told in sources such as the Rothschild Archive in London, listed below.