The Rothschild thriller
The Jewish Museum of Vienna retraces the troubled events of the powerful banking family: from collecting to the clash with the regime of love
Among the most prominent families in Vienna between the 19th and 20th centuries, the Rothschilds were members of the Jewish upper middle class, which brought wealth, culture and art to the city. They came to Vienna in the 1920s as bankers and entrepreneurs, and their rise continued until the advent of Hitler.
Almost nothing in the city recalls that dynasty, overwhelmed by National Socialism: the large mansion in Prinz-Eugen-Strasse was confiscated in 1938 and became the headquarters, among other things, of the Central Office for the Emigration of Jews. Sold by the Rothschilds after the war, it was razed to the ground in 1954-55; the building that took its place houses public offices.
Until 5 June, the Jewish Museum hosts «The Viennese Rothschilds. A thriller », setting up documents, furniture, paintings and photographs on the Viennese branch of the powerful family (branched out in European capitals), on relations with politics and society and on the clash with the relative regime.
“If you delve into the history of the Rothschilds in Vienna from 800 to today, explain the curators Gabriele Kohlbauer-Fritz and Tom Juncker, It is a thriller at times, culminating in Louis Rothschild’s one-year detention in 1938, a time that allowed the National Socialists to blackmail their family and strip them for the future Führer Museum. After the war they were subjected to strong pressure to leave in the public collections important works that had been confiscated during the Nazism, in exchange for the restitution of others. In the 1990s they were the beneficiaries of a late return of works from public collections. In 1999 they were among the first to use the mea culpa of the Kunsthistorisches Museum: the memory of the shipping agents in front of the museum is still alive to load about 500 objects, 224 of which were then sold in a record auction“.