Gustave de Rothschild

Origins and early life

Baron Gustave Samuel James de Rothschild was born in Paris on 17 February 1829, second of the four sons of James de Rothschild and Betty von Rothschild, and died in the eighth arrondissement on 28 November 1911.

Work and career

A banker and man of business like his brothers, he was also consul general of Austria-Hungary in Paris. His distinguishing work, however, was in the community: he was president of the Israelite Consistory of Paris from 1858 to 1910, fifty-two years, which is to say that he presided over French Jewish institutional life from the Second Empire through the birth of the Third Republic, the arrival of the refugees from the Russian pogroms and the whole of the Dreyfus Affair.

He practised Judaism and never made any secret of it in a milieu where discretion was the rule. With his brother Edmond he financed archaeological excavations in Turkey and gave the finds to the Louvre; he collected paintings and founded the Haras de Méautry stud in Normandy, which the family still holds. He married Cécile Anspach in 1859 and they had six children, among them Robert de Rothschild, who would succeed to the same communal responsibilities, and Zoé.