Rothschild Banking Family of Naples - Closure of The Naples Branch

Closure of The Naples Branch

However, the interests of all Rothschild banking families across Europe were adversely impacted in a very major way by three historical events:

1. the Revolutions of 1848;
2. the Great Depression of the 1930s;
3. Nazism of the late 1930s through World War II.

The end of the Naples branch began when revolution broke out and Giuseppe Garibaldi captured Naples on September 7, 1860 and set up a provisional government. Because of the family's close political connections with Austria and France, Adolf von Rothschild was caught in a delicate position. He chose to take temporary sanctuary in Gaeta with the Bourbon king Francis II of the Two Sicilies but the Rothschild houses in London, Paris, and Vienna were not prepared to financially support the deposed king. With the ensuing unification of Italy, and the mounting tension between Adolf and the rest of the family, after forty-two years in business the Naples house closed in 1863.

Mathilde Hannah von Rothschild (1832–1924) of the Austrian branch of the family, who married Wilhelm Carl von Rothschild of Naples/Frankfurt, founded and endowed the Rothschild Library at Frankfurt am Main as a public institution. In 1901, at the time of the closure of the Rothschilds' Frankfurt office, family discussions took place concerning the disposition of the records of the Naples house. Alphonse James de Rothschild opposed the idea of preserving the documents in the Rothschild Library in Frankfurt and eventually it was agreed that all the Naples office records be destroyed.

All branches of the Rothschild banking family are famous for their art collections and a number for their palatial estates. Because the Naples branch was run by just two family members, father Carl Mayer von Rothschild and son Adolf, the only great property they occupied there was the Villa Pignatelli at San Giorgio a Cremano with a spectacular view of Mount Vesuvius, acquired in 1841.