Palais Rothschild

Palais Rothschild is the name of several palaces in Vienna, built and owned by the Jewish Austrian noble family of Rothschild.

Palais (Nathaniel) Rothschild

The palace was commissioned by the brother of Albert Rothschild, Baron Nathaniel Meyer Rothschild. French architect Jean Girette designed and built the French Neo-baroque style^{1 palace from 1871-78.}

The palace was two stories tall and surrounded by a lush garden decorated with fountains and sculptures. The whole ensemble was built to represent the wealth of the Rothschild family. For the housewarming, the Baron organised a huge ball. An orchestra played on antique instruments, which belonged to the Baron’s priceless musical instruments collection. The immense art-collection of the Rothschild’s was also housed here. Baron Rothschild was known for his substantial philanthropic and charity activities.

After the Anschluß of Austria to Nazi Germany in 1938, the family was forced to flee and the estate was confiscated by the Nazis. The Gestapo moved in and used the palace for interrogations. The building itself was heavily damaged during bombing raids in 1944. The returning owners found a smouldering ruin. The ruins were ripped down, and some of the material was used for reconstruction around the city, apparently including the Stephansdom. The estate was eventually sold to the Austrian Chamber of Labour by the sole heiress, Baroness Clarice de Rothschild, in 1950. The labour chamber had the rest of the ruins destroyed and erected a simple modern building for its trainees.

Palais (Albert) Rothschild

The palace was commissioned by Baron Albert Rothschild and designed and built by the French architect Hippolith Destailleur from 1879 to 1884. The building itself was—unusually, for Vienna—designed in the French Neo-Renaissance “hôtel particulier” style^{2. The layout was U-shaped, the palace was up to three stories high and clearly set back from the street with a courtyard, the estate fenced off with a high iron grill. Apparently as a child Albert Rothschild had witnessed how a mob tried to storm his grandfather Salomon Mayer Rothschild’s house in 1848, which would explain the palace’s distance from public view. Attached to the palace was a garden, which bordered to the Plößlgasse.}

The entrance hall was marked by an enormous representative marble staircase, the walls were decorated with priceless gobelins, mirrors and paintings. The ballroom and the various salons had ceilings painted by Jean de Witt and Tiepolo, and were richly stuccoed with gold-leaf, with heavy crystal chandeliers hanging. The ornate parquet floor was made out of expensive woods. The furniture was in the Louis-Seize style. A special was a large orchestrion, which was build into an niche between the ballroom and a salon. This instrument, along with a smaller orchestrion, was able to completely replace a musical band. The Baron used the palace not only as his private residence, but as an important banker used his place for representative purposes as well. An unusual element of the building was the private observatory, which was located in the middle projection part (Mittelrisalit), reachable over a small wooden staircase from the second floor.

After the Anschluß of Austria to Nazi Germany, the Rothschild family was forced to flee and went into exile in England. Almost immediately the Nazis turned their attention to the Rothschild collection, the largest and most valuable Jewish-owned art collection in Austria. The treasures of Baron Louis de Rothschild, composed of paintings, statues, furnitures, books, armour and coins, were all seized and removed from his house at Theresianumgasse, prior to the Gestapo commandeering the building as its headquarters in the city.

Adolf Eichmann moved into the palace and set up the infamous “Zentralstelle für jüdische Auswanderung”. This was an office that was supposed to “organise” the emigration of Jews, by blackmailing and terrorising them to buy their freedom with all the money and possessions they still had left. Often, Jewish citizens would still be refused emigration permission, even if they paid all ransom demands. Baron Rothschild was subsequently forced to sign a document giving his agreement to their removal, plus the appropriation of all Rothschild assets in Austria, in return for his brother's release from the concentration camp at Dachau and safe passage for them both out of Austria. Elsewhere in Vienna other collections were removed and taken to a collection point where they were examined. In all 163 confiscations, with a total value of 93 billion Reichmarks (RM), took place. From this booty 269 paintings of high value were picked out, of which 122 were later selected to be considered by Hitler for inclusion in his planned museum in Linz.

With the dawning of the “Endlösung” and the destruction of the Austrian Jewry, the Gestapo office for emigration ceased to function. Eichmann himself was transferred to organise the deportation and murder of Jews into concentration camps. In the palace itself a postal and telegram office was set up. It was slightly damaged during the war, though still standing and functional. When the owner Baron Louis Nathaniel de Rothschild returned after the war, he found a palace in a state of total neglect, its interior largely plundered by the Nazis.

In the following years, he tried to receive compensation for his losses and for the ruined Rothschild bank from the Austrian government. The stance of the government at that time was that Austria was a victim of the war and therefore not responsible. Many bureaucratic hurdles and red tape made it almost impossible for any surviving Jewish Austrians to receive their former property back or to receive any proper compensation. The Baron only received a small amount of compensation for his losses and finally gave up in face of the government’s stiff resistance. He gave the palace, the gardens and the estate to the government, with the condition that a pension’s fund be created with the value for former employees of the Rothschild’s. The pensions had to be just as high as those of the government’s civil servants.

The government had no use for the palace and decided to rip it down. Anything left of value such as the chandeliers, woodworks and fireplaces were sold off to the auction house Dorotheum at a minimal price, well below their actual value. The stairs and pillars of marble were sold to an Italian, however the rest of the stone-work was simply destroyed. The ornate iron fence and grills of the windows were sold as scrap. The richly gilded stucco was ripped down: there were some efforts to at least win the gold back, but this proved to be uneconomic. The large orchestrion was partly destroyed, though parts of it can be seen in the Collection of Ancient Musical Instruments of the Kunsthistorisches Museum. The smaller orchestrion was also lost.

A second palace was also commissioned by Albert Rothschild on the same street as the first, at Prinz-Eugen-Straße 26. This Palais Rothschild was designed and built in 1894 by the theatre architects Ferdinand Fellner and Hermann Helmer. The building is up to four stories high and designed in a neo-classic style. Like all Jewish property, the palace was thoroughly plundered by the Nazis during the occupation of Austria. The building survived without any exterior damage and today the Brazilian embassy is renting it.

The Rothschild Collection

Erzherzog Leopold Wilhelm in seiner Galerie in Brüssel by Teniers, formerly in the Rothschild Collection, today KHM

The extensive art collection of the Rothschild owned by Baron Louis and Alphonse de Rothschild had to effectively be given away by the heirs to the Republic of Austria. Complicated laws and bureaucratic red tape made a full restitution almost impossible. The heirs were forced by the state to sell away their belongings since they were in effect bankrupt. Since Austria regarded itself as a victim of Nazism, and not one of the perpetrators, Austrian Jewish victims could barely appeal to the courts on their status. Most of the time, the judges sitting in the courts were former Nazis themselves, who received their positions back after the end of the war. Much of the former Rothschild art collection was either taken to the Kunsthistorisches Museum (KHM) or the Austrian Gallery in the Belvedere palace. Only starting in the late 1990's, and also due to outside pressure from the United States, did a more thorough examination of its role and behaviour during the Second World War take place in Austria. After long and tedious negotiations did the Austrian government agree in 1999 to return or pay for the roughly 250 Rothschild art treasures looted by the Nazis and absorbed into the state museums. The restitution of the works was still pending as of 2004. Works of the Rothschild collection kept at the KHM include :

• Aelbert Cuyp, Landschaft mit Hirt und Herde
• Frans Hals, Tielemann Roostermann
• Frans Hals, Bildnis eines Mannes
• Frans Hals, Bildnis einer Frau
• Hans de Jode, Maultiertreiber
• Gabriel Metsu, Mädchen und Offizier
• Isack van Ostade, Halt vor dem Wirtshaus
• Hyacinthe Rigaud, Graf Philipp Ludwig Wenzel Sinzendorf
• David Teniers the Younger, Erzherzog Leopold Wilhelm in seiner Galerie Brüssel
• Jan Wynants, Landschaft mit Jägern

In the Österreichische Galerie Belvedere:

• John Quincy Adams, Portrait Kitty Rothschild
• Heinrich Angelt, Bildnis einer Dame

Notes

^{1 Address was at Theresianumgasse 16-18, in the IV. district Wieden.}

^{2 Address was at Prinz-Eugen-Straße 20-22, in the IV. district Wieden.}

See also

• History of Jews in Austria

References

• Dieter Klein, Martin Kupf, Robert Schediwy (Ed.) Stadtbildverluste Wien - Ein Rückblick auf fünf Jahrzehnte. LIT Verlag, Vienna 2005. ISBN 3-8258-7754-x
• Peter Harclerode, Brendan Pittaway. Lost Masters. Welcome Rain Publishers, 2000. ISBN 1-5664-9165-7