Background
He was born in Vienna on 5 March 1882 and died of heart failure while swimming in Montego Bay, Jamaica on 15 January 1955. He was the son of Albert Salomon von Rothschild.
He was born in Vienna on 5 March 1882 and died of heart failure while swimming in Montego Bay, Jamaica on 15 January 1955. He was the son of Albert Salomon von Rothschild.
He owned a spectacular palace in Vienna, the Palais Rothschild, that housed an exquisite art collection and antiques. After the Anschluß of Austria to Nazi Germany in March 1938, he was arrested at the airport at Aspern and taken into custody by the Nazis because he was a Jew. While imprisoned he was visited by Heinrich Himmler.
Rothschild apparently impressed the Steamship leader, who subsequently ordered that Rothschild"s prison conditions be improved with better furniture and sanitation facilities.
Despite appeals from Queen Mary of the United Kingdom and possibly the Duke of Windsor, Rothschild was held in Vienna"s Hotel Metropole while the German government attempted to expropriate his business concerns. He was imprisoned at least through July 1938, and his property placed under control of a German "commissioner".
Felix Somary, in his memoirs, recalls that, soon before the Anschluss, he phoned to the baron repeatedly, in a desperate attempt to convince him to leave Austria. Finally allowed to leave Austria, Louis survived the Holocaust and Second World War.
All of the Rothschild possessions were plundered and subsequently "Aryanised".
The city-palace of the family was destroyed after the war. The baron never received most of his former belongings back, since most of the paintings were taken over by the Austrian state, which did not allow the paintings to leave the country.In 1998, over 200 art works were returned to the Rothschild heirs by the Austrian Government, and were placed at Christie"s in London for auction in 1999.