From the Jewish Library: ‘The Baroness’

The Baroness: the Search for Nica, the Rebellious Rothschild by Hannah Rothschild

By Sheila Orysiek

SAN DIEGO —  Born with a fabled name and fortune doesn’t always give one a broad choice in life.  For the women of the legendary Rothschild family it often meant living in a gilded cage.   Prevented by the will of the founder, Anschel Mayer Rothschild,  from participating in the various business enterprises with which the family was involved, most of them fulfilled family expectations as wives, mothers, society hostesses and charity organizers.  But there were a few – a very few – who chose a totally different path.

Baroness Kathleen Annie Pannonika Rothschild de Koenigswarter was the granddaughter of Nathan Mayer – the first Lord Rothschild and the sister of Victor, the Third Baron Rothschild.  She grew up living in the fairy tale beauty of Waddesdon Manor, in the English countryside – the most splendid of the several Rothschild manors.

Born in 1913, she faced in her lifetime two world wars, narrowly escaping with her children from the clutches of the Nazis in France.  After hearing a recording of some jazz music by Thelonious Monk, she divorced her French diplomat husband, Baron Jules de Koenigswarter and left her five children to search for the environment from which this music came.  She immersed herself in the seedy, dangerous, drug infested jazz world of Harlem and the Bowery in New York City eventually giving her time and support to the addicted musicians – especially Thelonious Monk.

The sight of the Baroness driving through the Bowery in her Bentley, casually wearing her furs and three strands of perfect pearls, gave the musicians the cachet they adored.  She provided food, money, shelter and utter devotion.  Her identification with this milieu was total even to the point of being willing to falsely assume Monk’s guilt for a drug offense and taking the consequences of spending time in prison.

But a Rothschild is always a Rothschild and though the family was horrified, she was never abandoned.  They came to her aid with money and legal representation.   Her home in New Jersey, with a beautiful view of the Manhattan skyline, was filled with the detritus of several hundred cats; a symptom of her dual life.

Written by her grand niece, Baroness Hannah de Rothschild,  this biography offers another view of the family and its descendants.

*
Sheila Orysiek is a freelance writer based in San Diego who specializes in coverage of the arts