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Table of contents I. ARE THEY STILL THERE? 1. A Procession at Pauillac 3 2. Chutzpah and Orchids 8 3. A Golden Silence 10 II. JEW STREET 1. Little Orphan Mayer 15 2. A Dreamer in the Ghetto 17 3. Mayer's Serenity 21 4. A Dynasty Aborning 24 III. FIVE FLYING CARPETS 1. The Boys Erupt 28 2. Something Rotten in Denmark 33 IV. ROTHSCHILD VERSUS NAPOLEON 1. Round One: Contraband 37 2. Round Two: A Million-Pound Idea 42 3. Round Three: The Giant Gold Smuggle 45 4. Round Four: The Scoop of Scoops 48 http://www.light1998.com/Rothschilds-Book/Table_of_contents.htm (1 of 3) [11/8/2000 2:11:08 PM] Table of contents 5. Round Five: Conquering the Victors 50 V. THE MISHPOCHE MAGNIFICENT 1. By No Other Name as Great 56 2. The Escutcheon 59 3. The Five Demon Brothers 63 (a) MR. NATHAN 63 (b) BEAU JAMES 70 (c) KING SALOMON 78 (d) CARL, THE MEZZUZAH BARON 89 (e) AMSCHEL OF THE FLOWERS 93 VI. RUNNING EUROPE 1. The Peacemongers 101 2. Short-Term and Long 107 3. The Railway Madness 109 (a) AUSTRIA 109 (b) FRANCE 116 4. Il Est Mort 118 5. The Grandest Larceny Ever 123 6. Monsters' Duel 126 VII. THE MlSHPOCHE JUNIOR 1. lnside Society 142 (a) ANSELM 142 (b) LIONEL AND BROTHERS 144 (c) COUNTRY SQUIRES 152 2. Kings of the Jews 157 3. Storming Parliament 163 4. Three Suns at Noon 170 (a) NATTY 172 (b) SWEET LEO 177 http://www.light1998.com/Rothschilds-Book/Table_of_contents.htm (2 of 3) [11/8/2000 2:11:08 PM] Table of contents (c) THE INCOMPARABLE ALFRED 179 5. At Marlborough House 185 6. Naughty Bismarck 192 7. The Plushiest Pilgrim 197 8. Hoffahig 209 VIII. NO MORE PLUMED HATS 1. Two Kingdoms Resign 216 2. The Golden Momentum 219 3. The Great House and the Great War 227 (a) PEACEMONGERS AGAIN 227 (b) THE WAR 236 4. Aftermath 240 IX. HITLER VERSUS ROTHSCHILD 1. The Depression and Baron Louis 248 2. Windsor at Enzesfeld 253 3. The Ides of March 255 4. Hermann Goring Says Hello 259 5. Heinrich Himmler Says Hello 261 6. A Dynasty Enlists 265 7. The Palace as Souvenir 269 X. A DYNASTY TURNS JET 1. Decline and Rise 274 2. The Mishpoche of the Sixties 282 3. The Ladies 288 4. The Hush at New Court 294 Epilogue 1992 283 Index 327 Afterward 1998 319 Genealogical Charts 333 Bibliography 325 http://www.light1998.com/Rothschilds-Book/Table_of_contents.htm (3 of 3) [11/8/2000 2:11:08 PM] Are They Still There? I. 1. A Procession at Paulliac ON Saturday afternoon, March 4, 1961, an expectant crowd shifted its feet on the cobbles of a small village in southwestern France. Windows brimmed with faces, bristled with binoculars. Shortly after two P.M. a crimson-sashed band sent a fanfare across adjoining vineyards. A specially imported battalion of gendarmes took up positions along the curb. And slowly the fairytale came into view. It was headed by a master of ceremonies with ivory staff, black garb and silk stockings and by two tiny pages in breeches. Behind them glided, at slow ceremonial pace, the presidential fleet of limousines usually reserved by the mayor of nearby Bordeaux for General de Gaulle. A splendor of orchids smothered the first car from figurehead to tail lights. It bore a princess on her wedding day. She was gowned in white satin (signed by that august overseer of contemporary idylls, Monsieur Balenciaga), crowned with a diadem of white mink and diamond stars. Her hand held a spray of apple blossoms flown in that morning from Turkey. The bridegroom at her side was---with gratifying appositeness---a very handsome, very talented, very poor young man. 3 The guests riding behind them had been brought from Paris by a private contingent of Pullman cars added to the Sud Express. And since weddings must have picture-takers, this one had Cecil Beaton, on leave from his post at Buckingham Palace as her Majesty's official photographer. Here he attended to his duties in top hat, striped trousers and morning coat. Still, any occasion can glitter for a hundred thousand dollars. It's not mere shininess that makes a fairytale, but the glow of familiarity; the magic comes not from telling, but from telling once again. It was being told once again in the village of Pauillac on March 4, 1961. This was a Rothschild wedding. Baron Philippe of Chateau Mouton Rothschild was giving in marriage his daughter Philippine. Each tint making up the iridescence of the occasion had a tradition handed down by nanny, butler, dowager---by all the archivists with and without livery. Even as the procession still filed down the street, the service entrance of Chateau Mouton admitted a wedding cake nearly seven feet tall. In pure spun sugar it celebrated the five Rothschild arrows: the family escutcheon conceived a hundred and forty years before, amid Frankfurt pogroms, in the face of cross fire from Austria's College of Heraldry. And when the wedding limousines stopped before the great gates of the chateau, a troop of estate workers helped the gendarmes form a cordon; they all wore armbands of yellow and blue---the famous colors that had marked Rothschild couriers as they raced through disaster and triumph from Napoleon to World War I. 4 http://www.light1998.com/Rothschilds-Book/Are_They_Still_There.htm (1 of 6) [11/8/2000 2:11:28 PM] Are They Still There? No modern name breathes a more storied eminence. No nonroyal family has held so much power so consistently, so peculiarly. Today many members of the clan cannot disguise a lordliness which has become exotic, if not down-right exasperating, in our age. It would be insufficient to sum up the family as "still very wealthy." The Rothschild fortunes in England and in France are as ineffable as ever. To the world at large, "Rothschild" means proverbial and rather dead money. But to the very rich, to those who actually know the clan or would like to, "Rothschild" conjures something very alive, something enviably, ridiculously, unattainably exaggerated; something like a gilt coach drawn by twelve white steeds. In the private railroad cars that whisked the clan to the wedding, the Byzantine implications of the name were confirmed by a Byzantine amenity. Alexandre, the Dior of the world's coiffeurs, admits to his Paris establishment only Tout-Paris (as highest society in France is called) or certified Olympians such as Jacqueline Kennedy and Princess Margaret. Aboard the Pullmans scuttling to Bordeaux, Alexandre and selected stars of his staff waited, combs ready. Their presence was a prewedding favor from the host. Any Rothschild guest could have her tresses perfected by the master himself while white-gloved butlers offered her champagne and caviar. Alexandre well knows the splendor of the family. His own appointment book, a daily Almanach de Gotha, gives a clue. In that book, as in the imagination of the haut monde, a designation like Comtesse Pierre" is meaningless if a surname isn't added. But "Baronne Elie" or "Baronne Philippe" can only mean "de Rothschild." They are the true successors to the Bourbons in France," an editor of the French Vogue sighed early this year. There are no others where the first name is enough." 5 In fact, the celebrants at Pauillac and the people over at Buckingham Palace seem to be the only families left with great functioning kingdoms at their disposal. And for generations the people at Buckingham Palace have recognized the kinship: Queen Victoria often dined and slept in Rothschild houses; the Duke of Windsor fled to a Rothschild (an Austrian one) directly after his abdication. Where kings have vanished, presidents must suffice: the only time President Coty of France dined officially at a private residence was with Baron Philippe, the bride's father, at his Parisian duplex in 1952. Like any child born at such an altitude, the bride inherited, in addition to everything else, history. It has been said that on the day of its birth the average Rothschild baby is 150 million dollars rich and 150 years old. The figures may be imprecise, but the idea is accurate. Over the past century and a half, a Rothschild personality has crystallized itself with such definition that no new bearer of the name can entirely escape it. The young Rothschilds today (there are over a dozen under the age of twenty-one) may discuss Sartre or dig cool jazz, but their lives are still part of an old genealogical design. This is due to inbreeding on a royal scale. It is also due to a formidable sense of the ancestral---a Jewish as well as an aristocratic characteristic. Even the most shocking aspect of the event at Pauillac rested on family precedent. The village priest had solemnized Philippine's union with a Catholic (delivering a somewhat embarrassed sermon on the Old Testament and the virtues of the Jews). Actually he was only refreshing a venerable Rothschild scandal. From the very first this vehemently Jewish dynasty has permitted its daughters---not its sons---to marry Christians. Also traditional was the confusion of the guest register at Chateau Mouton. Seventy-odd Rothschilds signed it. 6 http://www.light1998.com/Rothschilds-Book/Are_They_Still_There.htm (2 of 6) [11/8/2000 2:11:28 PM] Are They Still There? And many of them, through many generations, have the same given names. By this the house emphasizes its unity and continuity, re-creates its ancestors and infuriates its biographers.