Clementine Henriette (Clemmie) von Rothschild (1845-1865)
Clementine Henriette von Rothschild, born 14 June 1845, is remembered as a 'saintly girl' deeply devoted to her faith. She was the third of seven daughters of Mayer Carl (1820-1886) of Frankfurt and Louise (1820-1894), the youngest daughter of Nathan Mayer Rothschild, founder of the London House. She lived in her parents’ town house by the river Main, the Rothschild Palais, 14-15, Untermainkai, and their country residence of the Villa Günthersburg, with its extensive parkland. Only 15 months younger than her closest sister Emma (1844-1935), she was described by her aunt Charlotte as “the most beautiful of Aunt Louise’s daughters, and perhaps the warmest and most tender, full of talent and grace.” She died in Baden-Baden on 18 October 1865, aged only 20, after a long illness.
Clemmie wrote a small book ‘Letters to a Christian Friend on the Fundamental Truth of Judaism’, a religious-philosophical text that was published posthumously in 1867 and in a further edition in 1883. In letter essays to her, probable, Christian friend Ellen, she dealt with her Judaism and the Jewish-Christian dialogue as ‘Esther Izates’. Clemmie followed the liberal Judaism of her parents. She and her sisters were taught by the reform rabbi Dr. Leopold Stein. Her uncle Wilhelm Carl (1828-1901), her father's brother, and his wife Hannah Mathilde (1832-1924), on the other hand, represented conservative Judaism; their rabbi Dr. Samson Raphael Hirsch founded the neo-orthodox Israelite religious community.
The Rothschild family established and supported numerous medical, cultural and social foundations in their hometown of Frankfurt. Few of them survived the crises of the 1930s and 1940s but some traces remain. The most prominent of these is the Clementine Children’s Hospital, established in 1875 by Louise, in memory of her daughter. The foundation, initially known as the Clementine-Mädchen-Spital, was established to provide free medical care for girls of all denominations between the ages of 5 and 15. It survived the period of inflation thanks to further donations by members of the family, in particular Emma, Lady Rothschild, and Clementine’s other sisters, but had to be taken over by the German women’s section of the Red Cross. The hospital was destroyed by bombing in 1943. In 1974 it was merged with the Dr Christ’sche Stiftung, but it retains its own identity, known today as the Clementine Kinderhospital
