Charles Rothschild - Marriage

Marriage

In 1907 Charles Rothschild married Rozsika Edle von Wertheimstein (1870 – 30 June 1940), a Hungarian baroness and descendent of an originally Jewish family, who were one of the wealthiest families in Europe and had made their fortune over a century before the Rothschilds. She was born in 1870 at Nagyvarad, Hungary (now the Romanian city of Oradea), the daughter of a retired army officer, Baron Alfred Edler von Wertheimstein.

Rozsika was one of seven children. She was a very beautiful woman with dark brown eyes. Each eye had a purple ring to it, and they could flicker strangely. She was a voracious reader. Every day she had a Hungarian newspaper, a German newspaper, an English newspaper, and quite often a French one, too, and she read all the political articles in these papers. Rozsika had been a champion lawn tennis player in Hungary.

After their marriage on 6 February 1907, they lived at Tring and in London. Charles, who worked in the family’s banking business, was a dedicated naturalist in his spare time: the young couple had met on a butterfly-collecting trip in the Carpathian Mountains. In the evening, the Rothschilds might go together to a concert or a dinner party, but Charles really preferred to sort out his butterflies. Charles's suicide in 1923 when he was 46 years old was a severe shock to his wife and four children. Rozsika von Wertheimstein died on 30 June 1940.

Children

They had four children:

• Miriam Louisa Rothschild (1908–2005), a zoologist
• Elizabeth Charlotte Rothschild (1909–1988), known as "Liberty"
• Nathaniel Mayer Victor Rothschild (1910–1990), known as "Victor"
• Kathleen Annie Pannonica Rothschild (1913–1988), known as "Nica", (later Baroness Nica de Koenigswarter), a bebop jazz enthusiast and patroness of Thelonious Monk and Charlie Parker