Guy de Rothschild

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Guy de Rothschild
Pictured in 1964
Born(1909-05-21)21 May 1909
Paris, France
Died12 June 2007(2007-06-12) (aged 98)
Paris, France
EducationLycée Condorcet
Lycée Louis-le-Grand
Occupation(s)Soldier, financier, philanthropist, racehorse owner/breeder
Height1.73 m (5 ft 8 in)
Board member of
Spouses
Alix Hermine Schey de Koromla
(m. 1937; div. 1956)
(m. 1957; died 1996)
ChildrenWith Schey de Koromla:

With van Zuylen van Nyevelt:

Stepdaughters:

  • Lili Krahmer
  • Bettina Krahmer
Parent(s)
Croix de Guerre

Baron Guy Édouard Alphonse Paul de Rothschild (pronounced

International Best Dressed List Hall of Fame in 1985.[1]

Early life and education

Baron Guy de Rothschild was born in Paris, the son of Baron Édouard de Rothschild (1868–1949) and his wife, the former Germaine Alice Halphen (1884–1975). He has three siblings. Guy's elder brother, Édouard Alphonse Émile Lionel (1906–1911), died at the age of four of appendicitis;[2] he also had two younger sisters, Jacqueline and Bethsabée. Half of his great-grandparents were Rothschilds. He was a great-great grandson of the German patriarch of the Rothschild family Mayer Amschel Rothschild (1743–1812), who founded the family's banking in the 18th century in Frankfurt, Germany.

He grew up at his parents' townhouse on the corner of the

Baron Mayer de Rothschild
of the English branch of the Rothschild family.

He was educated at the Lycée Condorcet and Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris, and by private tutors. He undertook military service with the cavalry at Saumur, and played golf for France. He won the Grand Prix de Sud-Ouest in 1948.

Personal life

Guy de Rothschild married twice:

  • In 1937, he married a distant cousin, Baroness Alix Hermine Jeanette Schey de Koromla (1911–1982). Alix was the former wife of Kurt Krahmer and the younger daughter of Baron Philipp Schey von Koromla. They had one child, David René de Rothschild (born 1942). Rothschild also raised his wife's daughters from her prior marriage to Krahmer, Lili and Bettina. They divorced in 1956.
  • In 1957, he married
    Roman Catholic. They had one child, Baron Édouard de Rothschild
    (born 1957).

After his second marriage, Guy de Rothschild renovated the Château de Ferrières, using it to put on lavish balls in the early 1970s, before donating it to the University of Paris in 1975. The same year, he bought the Hôtel Lambert on the Île Saint-Louis in Paris, the top floors of which became his Paris residence.

Service in World War II

In 1940, as a result of the

Croix de Guerre for his actions on the beaches at Dunkirk, from where he was evacuated to England. He immediately returned to France, landing at Brest, and taking charge of the family's office at La Bourboule, near Clermont-Ferrand
.

Under the

Free French Forces and boarded the cargo ship, Pacific Grove, to travel back to Europe. His ship was torpedoed and sunk in March 1943, and he was rescued after spending 12 hours in the waters of the Atlantic Ocean. In England, he joined the staff of General Koenig at Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force
near Portsmouth.

Banking and business

Guy de Rothschild studied law at university then joined

Northern Railway Company
.

At the end of World War II, Guy de Rothschild returned to the bank's offices at rue Laffitte in Paris in 1944. On his father's death in 1949, Guy de Rothschild took formal control of the business. Years later, Rothschild was on the cover of the 20 December 1963 issue of Time magazine in a story that said he took "over the family's French bank during the disorder of war and defeat, changed its character from stewardship of the family fortune to expansive modern banking."

Following in the footsteps of his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather, Guy de Rothschild served as a director of the

Château Lafite-Rothschild
but did not run it.

Sir Evelyn de Rothschild
was appointed a director of Banque Rothschild, Paris.

Imetal S.A.

In France, Rothschild developed the country's largest private uranium mining company, the Compagnie Française des Minerais d'Uranium. In 1961, Guy de Rothschild took over as Chairman of

Société Le Nickel (SLN) in New Caledonia. In 1969, SLN acquired Peñarroya, a Chilean based company which mined and processed lead, zinc and copper. Two years later SLN took over La Compagnie de Mokta, which specialized in iron, manganese, sand, gravel and uranium
. Rothschild restructured the family's various mining interests, including Peñarroya which became part of SLN.

Nationalization

In the early 1970s the government of France began nationalizing a number of industries and after declaring nickel to be a vital market commodity, SLN's assets were nationalized in 1974 and placed under a new company, Société Metallurgique. The result left the Rothschild's SLN as a holding company with a fifty percent interest in Société Metallurgique.

When the Rothschild's bank was nationalized in 1982 by the socialist government of

Rothschild & Cie Banque
.

Thoroughbred racing

Guy de Rothschild was a renowned breeder of

race horses, the most famous perhaps was Exbury
.

Guy de Rothschild chaired the association of racehorse breeders in France from 1975 to 1982.

Among the major races Guy de Rothschild's horses won were:[4]

Art collector

The French Rothschild family had long been collectors of art beginning with

Nazis confiscated it from his father and sent it to Germany. In 1945 the painting was returned to the Rothschild family and acquired by the Louvre
in 1983.

Philanthropy

In 1950, Guy de Rothschild became the first president of the Fonds Social Juif Unifié (FSJU) (United Jewish Welfare Fund), a federation of about 200 Jewish social, educational, and cultural associations. He headed the FSJU until 1982 at which time his son, David, assumed its leadership. The FSJU played a large part in restructuring the French Jewish community following World War II. After marrying Marie-Hélène van Zuylen de Nyevelt de Haar, a Roman Catholic, in 1957 Guy felt compelled to resign the Presidency of the Jewish Consistory, the organization created in 1905 to represent French Jewry.[5]

In 1975, Rothschild and his wife donated the Château de Ferrières to the University of Paris.

Death

Widowed in 1996, Guy de Rothschild died in 2007.[6]

Works

See also

References

  1. ^ Vanity Fair Archived 1 June 2012 at the Wayback Machine
  2. ^ The Whims of Fortune: The Memoirs of Guy de Rothschild
  3. ^ "Les Rothschild, rois des banquiers". L'Express. 19 December 2007.
  4. ^ "All the races". www.france-galop.com. Archived from the original on 18 February 2012.
  5. ^ "Guy Edouard Alphonse Paul de Rothschild (1909–2007) | Rothschild Family".
  6. ^ Lewis, Paul (14 June 2007). "Baron Guy de Rothschild, Leader of French Arm of Bank Dynasty, Dies at 98". The New York Times. Retrieved 30 July 2008.

Further reading

External links