The Lord Rothschild | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Member of Parliament forAylesbury | |
| In office 6 January 1899 – 10 January 1910 | |
| Preceded by | Ferdinand de Rothschild |
| Succeeded by | Lionel de Rothschild |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Lionel Walter Rothschild 8 February 1868 London, England |
| Died | 27 August 1937(1937-08-27) (aged 69) Tring,Hertfordshire, England |
| Party | Liberal Unionist Conservative (after 1912) |
| Relatives | Rothschild family |
| Education | University of Bonn Magdalene College, Cambridge |
| Occupation |
|
| Military service | |
| Allegiance |  United Kingdom |
| Branch/service | Territorial Army |
| Rank | Major |
Lionel Walter Rothschild, 2nd Baron Rothschild, Baron de Rothschild[3] (8 February 1868 – 27 August 1937), was a British banker, politician,zoologist, and soldier, who was a member of theRothschild family. As aZionist leader, he was presented with theBalfour Declaration, which pledged British support for a Jewish national home inPalestine. Rothschild was the president of theBoard of Deputies of British Jews from 1925 to 1926.
Walter Rothschild was born in London as the eldest son and heir of Emma Louise von Rothschild andNathan Rothschild, 1st Baron Rothschild, an immensely wealthy financier of the international Rothschild financial dynasty and the firstJewishpeer in England.[4]
The eldest of three children, Walter was deemed to have delicate health and was educated at home. As a young man, he travelled in Europe, attending theUniversity of Bonn for a year before enteringMagdalene College, Cambridge. In 1889, leaving Cambridge after two years, he was required to go into the family banking business to study finance.
At the age of seven, he declared that he would run a zoological museum and, as a child, he collected insects, butterflies, and other animals. Among his pets at the family home inTring Park werekangaroos and exotic birds. As a boy, Rothschild was once dragged off his horse and assaulted by workmen while on a hunting ride near Tring, an experience he attributed toantisemitism.[5]
At 21, he reluctantly went to work at the family bank,N M Rothschild & Sons, in London. He worked there from 1889 to 1908. He evidently lacked any interest or ability in the financial profession, but it was not until 1908, at the age of 40, that he was finally allowed to give it up. However, his parents established a zoological museum as a compensation and footed the bill for expeditions all over the world to seek out animals.
Rothschild was 6 ft 3 in (1.91 m) tall, suffered from a speech impediment, and was very shy,[6] but he had his photograph taken riding on agiant tortoise and drove a carriage harnessed to fourzebras toBuckingham Palace to prove that zebras could be tamed.
Though he never married, Rothschild had two mistresses, one of whom bore him a daughter, Olga Alice Muriel Rothschild, who would marryRichard Yarde-Buller, 4th Baron Churston, and be Baroness Churston.[6]: 98
Rothschild studied zoology at Magdalene College, Cambridge.[7] MeetingAlbert Günther sparked his interest in thetaxonomy of birds and butterflies.
Although Rothschild himself travelled and collected in Europe and North Africa for many years, his work and health concerns limited his range, and beginning while at Cambridge he employed others (explorers, professional collectors, and residents) to collect for him in remote and little-known parts of the world. He also hired taxidermists, a librarian, and, most importantly, professional scientists to work with him to curate and write up the resulting collections:Ernst Hartert, for birds, from 1892 until his retirement at the age of 70 in 1930 andKarl Jordan for entomology, from 1893 until Rothschild's death in 1937.
At its largest, Rothschild's collection included 300,000 bird skins, 200,000 birds' eggs, 2,250,000 butterflies, and 30,000 beetles, as well as thousands of specimens of mammals, reptiles, and fishes. They formed the largest zoological collection ever amassed by a private individual.
TheRothschild giraffe (Giraffa camelopardalis rothschildi), a subspecies with fiveossicones instead of two, was named after him. Another 153 insects, 58 birds, 17 mammals, three fish, three spiders, two reptiles, one millipede, and one worm also carry his name.
Rothschild opened his private museum in 1892. It housed one of the largestnatural history collections in the world and was open to the public. In 1932, he was forced to sell the vast majority of his bird collection to theAmerican Museum of Natural History after he had been blackmailed by a former mistress.[8][9][10]
In 1933, he was one of eleven people[a] involved in the appeal that led to the foundation of theBritish Trust for Ornithology (BTO), an organization for the study of birds in the British Isles.[11]
On his death in 1937, his museum and all of its contents were given in his will to theBritish Museum (of which theNatural History Museum, London, was then a part), the greatest accession that the institution has ever received.[12] TheWalter Rothschild Zoological Museum atTring is now a division of the Natural History Museum.[13]
Following a visit to Hungary in 1902, Rothschild brought six live edible dormice (Glis glis) back toTring. Some of them escaped and started breeding successfully in the wild. They have now become a localized pest over an area of approximately 200 square miles in a triangle between Luton, Aylesbury, and Beaconsfield, and there are estimated to be at least 10,000 of them. Even though considered aninvasive species, they are protected under theWildlife and Countryside Act 1981.[14]
Rothschild was awarded an honorary doctorate by theUniversity of Giessen in 1898, was elected a Trustee of the British Museum in 1899, and was elected a Fellow of theRoyal Society in 1911.[1][2]
Walter Rothschild was aLiberal Unionist PartyMember of Parliament forAylesbury from1899 until he retired from politics at theJanuary 1910 general election.[12]
Despite his health, Rothschild served part-time as an officer in aTerritorial Army unit, theRoyal Buckinghamshire Yeomanry, where he was acaptain from July 1902[15] until he was promoted tomajor in 1903, before retiring in 1909.[16]
As an activeZionist and a close friend ofChaim Weizmann, he worked to formulate the draft declaration for a Jewish homeland inBritish Mandate-Palestine. On 2 November 1917, he received a letter from theBritish foreign secretary,Arthur Balfour, addressed to his London home at 148Piccadilly. In the letter, the British government declared its support for the establishment in Palestine of "a national home for the Jewish people". The letter became known as theBalfour Declaration.
Walter inherited the British peerage titleBaron Rothschild from his fatherNathan Rothschild, 1st Baron Rothschild, in 1915. He died in 1937 at Tring Park,Hertfordshire, aged 69, and was buried inWillesden Jewish Cemetery, London. He had no legitimate children, and his younger brotherCharles had predeceased him, so the title was inherited by his nephewVictor.
Furthermore, he also inherited the title "Baron de Rothschild" (Freiherr von Rothschild) of theAustrian nobility, which was an authorized title in the United Kingdom by Warrant of 27 April 1932.[17]
In 1838,Queen Victoria had authorized the use of this Austrian title in the United Kingdom.[3]
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Rothschild is the author of around 765 publications. Of these, 27 were co-authored withErnst Hartert and 16 with Karl Jordan. He published 278 articles in theBulletin of the British Ornithologists' Club and 318 articles in theNovitates Zoologicae,[19] a journal which he established in 1894 with himself, Hartert, and Jordan as editors.[20]
His publications include:
| Parliament of the United Kingdom | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | Member of Parliament forAylesbury 1899 – Jan 1910 | Succeeded by |
| Peerage of the United Kingdom | ||
| Preceded by | Baron Rothschild 1915–1937 | Succeeded by |
| Austrian nobility | ||
| Preceded by | Baron de Rothschild 1915–1937 | Succeeded by |
