Word: amschel
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...Frankfurt ghetto where the fortune started, the paterfamilias, onetime coin dealer Mayer Amschel Rothschild, left a last commandment to his five sons: Maintain absolute unity. In later years the brothers quarreled often but obeyed their father. They wrote to one another voluminously in the privacy of almost indecipherable Judendeutsch (German written in Hebrew characters) and bailed one another out. Hard times for James in Paris brought Nathan's London to the rescue, and so on--meaning that the Rothschilds, a power unto themselves, could usually float above the fates of individual nations and regimes...
...Rothschilds' heritage of drive and power traces back 200 years to the Frankfurt ghetto. Merchant Meyer Amschel Rothschild, a small man with a large dream hidden behind his beard and caftan, built up such a lively trade in cloth, commodities and old coins that he was able to branch into the more promising pastime of moneychanging. As he prospered, Meyer moved to the ghetto's five-story "House with the Green Shield" (he had been born in the humbler "Red Shield House" that gave the family its name-Rot Schild) and sent his bumptious sons...
...withdrew his support of the Bourbons; he was lucky to get out just before the revolution of 1830 toppled them. Because of Russia's pogroms, the Rothschilds refused to grant loans to the czars. In many ways governments began to feel respect for, or fear of, the Rothschilds. Amschel became treasurer of the German Confederation, and Jakob the Austrian consul in Paris. Nathan's son Lionel was elected to the British House of Commons four times, but four times Parliament refused to seat him because he would not swear a Christian oath. Parliament finally gave in, and Lionel...
Coins to Deals. The beginnings are sufficiently classic: Mayer Amschel Rothschild was a secondhand-shopkeeper, locked at night inside the Frankfurt ghetto. Appropriately enough, Mayer began to specialize in coins, and rose by way of highborn coin collectors. From selling coins, the family went on to lending money; the sons left home, and went from trading in commodities to dealing in finance. In those days, when news traveled no faster than the stagecoach or sailing ship, the five brothers realized that a speedy communications system could mean money, organized their own version of a private pony express and courier service...
Died. Baron Maurice ("Momo") de Rothschild, 76, great-grandson of Mayer Amschel Rothschild, founder of the fabled European banking dynasty; after long illness; in Geneva. Momo was only an incidental banker, whose real interests were art collecting, fast horses and gaudy pajamas. A splashy spender, he was elected (1924) Deputy to the French National Assembly, had his seat booted when a bribery charge stuck, softened the bump by winning a senatorial race...