Amschel Mayer Rothschild (12 June 1773, Frankfurt am Main – 6 December 1855, Frankfurt am Main) was a German Jewish banker of the Rothschild family financial dynasty.
He was the second child and eldest son of Mayer Amschel Rothschild (1744–1812), the founder of the dynasty, and Gutlé Rothschild née Schnapper (1753–1849).
On the death of Mayer Amschel in 1812, Amschel Mayer succeeded as head of the bank at Frankfurt-am-Main, his brothers having been dispatched to set up banking houses in Paris, London, Naples and Vienna.
As Amschel Mayer died childless, the sons of his brothers (Anselm, son of Salomon, and Mayer Carl and Wilhelm Carl, sons of Carl) assumed responsibility for the business from 1855.
He was ennobled as Amschel Mayer von Rothschild in 1817 and became a baron in 1822.
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“I had a long day’s work, starting at eight in the morning and ending after nine at night, but in those days [we] ... did not think of our day in terms of hours. We liked our work, we were proud to do it well, and I am afraid that we were very, very happy.”
—Louie Mayer (b. c. 1914)
“Here was a little of everything in a small compass to satisfy the wants and the ambition of the woods,... but there seemed to me, as usual, a preponderance of children’s toys,—dogs to bark, and cats to mew, and trumpets to blow, where natives there hardly are yet. As if a child born into the Maine woods, among the pine cones and cedar berries, could not do without such a sugar-man or skipping-jack as the young Rothschild has.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)