biography
| name: |
Rothschild, Meyer (Amschel)
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pronunciation:
, Eng [rothschiyld], Ger
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1743–1812)
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| biography:
| Financier, the founder of a Jewish banking dynasty, the House of Rothschild, born in Frankfurt, WC Germany. The family name comes from the ‘red shield’ (Ger roter schild) hung on the wall of an ancestor's dwelling. Having studied as a rabbi, he became the financial adviser to the Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel, Wilhain IX. The house transmitted money from the English government to Wellington in Spain, paid the British subsidies to Continental princes, and negotiated loans for Denmark (1804–12). His five sons continued the firm, establishing branches in other countries, and negotiated many of the great government loans of the 19th-c. His grandson, Lionel (1808–79) , became the first Jew to sit in the British House of Commons (1848). He lent the British government £4 million in 1875 to buy the Suez Canal shares. His son Nathan (1840–1915) in his turn was the first British Jewish peer; it was to his son, Lionel Walter (1868–1937), the second baron and distinguished scientist and scholar, that the Balfour Declaration for the founding of a Jewish homeland in the British mandated territory of Palestine was addressed in 1917. |
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