Louis Rothschild

Louis Nathaniel de Rothschild (German: Ludwig Nathaniel Freiherr von Rothschild) was an Austrian baron from the famous Rothschild family. 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 Anselm 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 distinguished member of the Jewish oligarchy. He was released only after lengthy negotiations between the family and the Nazis and upon payment of $21,000,000, believed to have been the largest ransom payment in history for any individual.

While imprisoned he was visited by Heinrich Himmler. Rothschild apparently impressed the SS 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. The day before the Anschluss, Louis's brother Alphons and his wife were visiting him in Switzerland, wanting to go back into Austria; he persuaded them to remain there, and to get his children Francesca de Rothschild and Heidi de Rothschild away from Austria to Netherlands.

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.

In 1946 he married the countess Hildegard Johanna von Auersperg (1895–1981) and lived in East Barnard, Vermont (United States) and England. He died childless in 1955.