Maurice Edmond Karl de Rothschild (19 May 1881 – 4 September 1957) was a French art collector, vineyard owner, financier and politician. He was born into the

Rothschild banking family of France The Rothschild banking family of France (french: Famille banquière Rothschild) is a French banking dynasty founded in 1812 in Paris (at the time in the First French Empire) by James Mayer de Rothschild (1792–1868). James was sent there fr ...

Early life

Maurice de Rothschild was born on 19 May 1881 in

Boulogne-Billancourt Boulogne-Billancourt (; often colloquially called simply Boulogne, until 1924 Boulogne-sur-Seine, ) is a wealthy and prestigious commune in the Parisian area, located from its centre. It is a subprefecture of the Hauts-de-Seine department and t ...

near

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. Si ...

. He was the second child of

Edmond James de Rothschild Baron Abraham Edmond Benjamin James de Rothschild (Hebrew: הברון אברהם אדמונד בנימין ג'יימס רוטשילד - ''HaBaron Avraham Edmond Binyamin Ya'akov Rotshield''; 19 August 1845 – 2 November 1934) was a French memb ...

(1845–1934) and Adelheid von Rothschild. He grew up at the Château Rothschild in

.Maurice de Rothschild biography at the Senate of France
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Career

Rothschild inherited a fortune from the childless Adolphe Carl von Rothschild (1823–1900) of the Naples branch of the family and moved to

Geneva Geneva ( ; french: Genève ) frp, Genèva ; german: link=no, Genf ; it, Ginevra ; rm, Genevra is the second-most populous city in Switzerland (after Zürich) and the most populous city of Romandy, the French-speaking part of Switzerland. Situa ...

Switzerland ). Swiss law does not designate a ''capital'' as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel ...

where he perpetuated the new Swiss branch of the family. Rothschild was elected in 1919 to the

Chamber of Deputies The chamber of deputies is the lower house in many bicameral legislatures and the sole house in some unicameral legislatures. Description Historically, French Chamber of Deputies was the lower house of the French Parliament during the Bourbon Res ...

, where he served until 1929. Between 1929 and 1945, he was a member of the

Senate A senate is a deliberative assembly, often the upper house or chamber of a bicameral legislature. The name comes from the ancient Roman Senate (Latin: ''Senatus''), so-called as an assembly of the senior (Latin: ''senex'' meaning "the el ...

for

Hautes-Alpes Hautes-Alpes (; oc, Auts Aups; en, Upper Alps) is a department in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region of Southeastern France. It is located in the heart of the French Alps, after which it is named. Hautes-Alpes had a population of 141,220 ...

. In June 1940, during the

Battle of France The Battle of France (french: bataille de France) (10 May – 25 June 1940), also known as the Western Campaign ('), the French Campaign (german: Frankreichfeldzug, ) and the Fall of France, was the German invasion of France during the Second Wor ...

, Rothschild and several family members received Portuguese visas from

Aristides de Sousa Mendes Aristides de Sousa Mendes do Amaral e Abranches () GCC, OL (July 19, 1885 – April 3, 1954) was a Portuguese consul during World War II. As the Portuguese consul-general in the French city of Bordeaux, he defied the orders of Antóni ...

, allowing them to flee France for Portugal. Maurice de Rothschild sailed from Lisbon to Scotland the following month.

Personal life and death

In 1909 Maurice de Rothschild married

Noémie de Rothschild Noémie (or Noemie) is a female name of French origin. Retrieved 21 June 2018 Uncommon variant spellings in French include Noémi and Noëmie (same pronunciation). It is the French variation of the biblical Hebrew name Naomi (), which means "good, ...

. Her mother was Marie Hermine Rodrigues Péreire (1860–1936), daughter of Eugène Péreire of the

Péreire banking family Émile Pereire (3 December 1800, Bordeaux - 5 January 1875, Paris) and his brother Isaac Pereire (25 November 1806, Bordeaux – 12 July 1880, Gretz-Armainvilliers) were major figures in the development of France's finance and infrastructure duri ...

whose

Crédit Mobilier The Crédit Mobilier (full name Société Générale du Crédit Mobilier, "general company for movable ollateral-backedcredit") was a French banking company created by the Pereire brothers, and one of the world’s most significant and influenti ...

were arch-competitors of the Rothschilds. Noémie Halphen and Maurice de Rothschild had one child, a son Edmond.

Legacy

Maurice de Rothschild is commemorated in the

scientific name In taxonomy, binomial nomenclature ("two-term naming system"), also called nomenclature ("two-name naming system") or binary nomenclature, is a formal system of naming species of living things by giving each a name composed of two parts, bo ...

of a species of Malagasy lizard, '' Paracontias rothschildi''. Maurice de Rothschild's African expedition 1904-1905, zoological in nature, was conveyed in a three-volume archive and published in 1922, entitled "''Voyage de M. le baron Maurice de Rothschild en Éthiopie et en Afrique orientale anglaise (1904-1905) : résultats scientifiques : animaux articulés'' ". It is housed at the Biological Diversity Heritage Library.

References

External links

* *
The Rothschild Archive
- an international center in

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

for research into the history of the

Rothschild family The Rothschild family ( , ) is a wealthy Ashkenazi Jewish family originally from Frankfurt that rose to prominence with Mayer Amschel Rothschild (1744–1812), a court factor to the German Landgraves of Hesse-Kassel in the Free City of Fr ...

. {{DEFAULTSORT:Rothschild, Maurice de 1881 births 1957 deaths People from Boulogne-Billancourt French financiers French bankers French philanthropists French art collectors Senators of Hautes-Alpes French Senators of the Third Republic 20th-century French Jews

Maurice Maurice may refer to: People * Saint Maurice (died 287), Roman legionary and Christian martyr * Maurice (emperor) or Flavius Mauricius Tiberius Augustus (539–602), Byzantine emperor *Maurice (bishop of London) (died 1107), Lord Chancellor and ...