Minna Caroline (Minka) von Rothschild (1857-1903)
Minna Caroline von Rothschild known as 'Minka', was born in Frankfurt on 18 November 1857, the daughter of Wilhelm Carl (1828-1901) and Hannah Mathilde (1832-1924). On 27 February 1878 she married a member of another renowned family of the city, the banker Maximilian Benedikt Heyum Goldschmidt (1843-1940).
The couple made their home in Frankfurt. After the death of his father-in-law Willy Carl, Maximilian Goldschmidt and his wife appended the Rothschild name to their own, and Emperor William I gave him the title of Baron de Goldschmidt-Rothschild. Minka and Maximilian had five children: Albert Maximilian (1879-1941), Rudolph Maximilian (1881-1962), Lili Jeannette (1883-1925), Lucy Georgine (1891-1977) and Erich (1894-1987).
Albert married Miriam Alexandrine de Rothschild (1884-1965), (his mother Minka’s second cousin, the daughter of her sister Adelheid (1853-1935), who had married Edmond de Rothschild (1845-1934)) in 1910. Rudolph Maximilian married Betty Lambert (1894–1969), daughter of Baron Léon Lambert (1851-1919) and Zoé Lucie Betty de Rothschild (1863-1916). Lili Jeanette married Baron Philipp ('Pips') Schey von Koromla (1881-1957) in 1906; their daughter Alix Hermine Jeannette Schey von Koromla (1911–1982), became the first wife of Baron Guy de Rothschild (1909-2007) in 1937. Lucy married Edgar Spiegl, Edler von Thurnsee (1876-1931). Erich married Katharina Henckel von Donnersmarck (1902-1964).
Minka died aged just 46 on 1 May 1903.
Philanthropy in Frankfurt
Minka’s father Wilhelm Carl was wealthy, pious and charitable. He was a member of the Israelite Religious Society of Frankfurt and donated considerable sums for the construction of the orthodox synagogue on Schützenstrasse. Her mother Hannah Mathilde, known simply as ‘The Baroness’ was one of Frankfurt’s biggest philanthropists, and together with her husband, she founded a home for the elderly, a hospital for poor Jews and an orphanage, and supported the University of Frankfurt with large donations. Minka, with her sister, Adelheid was executrix of her father's estate and together the two sisters made certain that his wishes regarding his foundations in Frankfurt were carried out. Maximilian established a charitable foundation in Minka’s name after her death, just two years after her father's.
Collections of the Goldschmidt-Rothschilds
Maximilian von Goldschmidt-Rothschild, among his many business achievements, was a co-partner with his brother Adolphe of the Frankfurt bank founded by his father, Benedikt Hayem Goldschmidt as well as being a partner with his sons of the Berlin bank A. Falkenberger (later Goldschmidt-Rothschild & Co.). At one point, he was considered the richest person in the German Empire. Yet like many of his Rothschild in-laws, his true passion, and perhaps his most lasting legacy, was his collecting.
While the collections of the von Goldschmidt-Rothschilds contained paintings by Rembrandt, Hals and other Dutch masters, it is the decorative arts, Limoges enamels, Italian maiolica, Meissen and Vienna porcelain and, above all, silver, that was the nucleus of the collection, which Max continued to add to and expand in the 30 years after his wife’s death. On the occasion of Max’s 80th birthday in 1923, the celebrated art historian and art critic Dr. Adolph Donath wrote of the Baron’s Kunstkammer collection that ‘…only at Waddesdon, the British Museum, the Wallace Collection, Schloss Rosenborg [the Royal Danish collections] and the Green Vaults in Dresden can be found pieces of similar quality.’ Donath further noted that Baron Maximilian’s collection of silver animals was ‘unvergleichlich’ – unrivaled or without equal.
Immediately following the Nazi-sanctioned Novemberpogrome, better known as Kristallnacht, Maximilian was forced to ‘sell’ his entire collection to the City of Frankfurt. The collection was purchased for just over 2.5 million Reichsmarks and, adding insult to injury, the funds were paid into a frozen account inaccessible to the family. A large part of the purchase price for the art collection went directly to the respective responsible tax offices, partly for the Judenvermögensabgab [the Jewish tax] to be paid by Maximilian himself and partly for the Judenvermögensabgabe as well as the Reichsfluchtsteuer [Reich Flight Tax] imposed on his son Albert.
After the war, the heirs of Baron Maximilian requested the return of the collection, the 1938 forced sale was eventually voided and much of the collection was returned to his heirs by February of 1949. Some of these restituted pieces were then sold at auction a year later in New York on March 10-11, 1950 – as described in a New York Times article “Art Nazis ‘Bought’ Will be Sold Here”.
One of the finest treasures in the collection was a silvered bronze, enamelled silver and glit-bronze elephant automation clock, made in Augsburg, c.1600-1610. It is not known if this piece had belonged to Minka’s parents, Wilhelm and Hannah Mathilde, but it is more probable that it was purchased by Maximilian himself over his many decades of collecting. The ‘Elephant Clock’ left the collections of the Frankfurt Museum in an exchange in 1943, when Carl Müller-Ruzika, a Frankfurt dealer, traded to the Frankfurt Museum a Louis XV Bronze Wall Clock for the Goldschmidt-Rothschild clock. The Elephant Clock disappeared into the art market of the war and post-war period, and by the late 1940s was purchased by Dr. Baroness Irmgard von Lemmers-Danforth, a noted collector in the Hessian city of Wetzlar who amassed an outstanding collection of decorative arts which were all eventually gifted to the Wetzlar Städtische Museen. The Elephant Clock was in the collections of the Städtische Museen from 1963 until 2021 when it was restituted to the heirs of Maximilian von Goldschmidt-Rothschild, eighty-three years after it was seized from his collection, and sold at Christie’s in October 2021.
For further information about the collections of Max von Goldschmidt-Rothschild, see The Collection of Maximilian von Goldschmidt-Rothschild', ed Matthias Wagner K and Katharina Weiler, Museum Angewandtekunst (Walter & Franz König, 2023).
