Guy De Rothschild (1909–2007)

Baron Guy de Rothschild was born in Paris, the son of Baron Édouard de Rothschild of the famous banking dynasty and his wife Germaine Alice Halphen.

His sisters were Jacqueline Piatigorsky and Bethsabée de Rothschild. He was educated at the Lycée Condorcet and Lycée Louis-le-Grand and by private tutors. After attending law school, Baron Guy began working at De Rothschild Frères, the family bank, in 1931. In 1939, at the outbreak of World War II, he was called up to serve as a cavalry officer. He won the Croix de Guerre for his service in northern France before joining the British retreat from Dunkirk. He returned immediately to France and was demobilized after the French army was defeated by Nazi Germany in World War II. He then took charge of the family’s office at La Bourbale, near Clermont-Ferrand.

Under the Vichy government, the family was forced to sell its possessions. He managed to persuade the buyers to grant options under which he would later be able to buy the family's interests back. In 1941, Baron Guy and his wife left France for New York City, where his parents had already relocated. He joined General Charles de Gaulle’s Free French Forces and in March 1943, boarded the cargo ship Pacific Grove to travel back to Europe. The ship was torpedoed and sunk by the Germans in the North Atlantic; Baron Guy was rescued after spending 12 hours in the sea. In England, he joined the staff of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force.

After Paris was liberated in 1944, Baron Guy reconstructed the family’s banking and business empire. The bank diversified from investment management to the deposit-taking Banque de Rothschild, with branches throughout France. He served as its president from 1968 to 1978.

Baron Guy was also celebrated for the family wine business, Château Lafite Rothschild, as well as for breeding thoroughbred racehorses. He was also a well-known and respected Jewish philanthropist. He restored the Château de Ferrières, the vast family country home where he had been raised, and gained new prominence holding extravagant costume balls and dinners. In 1975, he donated the Château de Ferrières to the University of Paris. He wrote a novel, Le fantôme de Léa (1998). and two volumes of memoirs, Contre bonne fortune (The Whims of Fortune, 1983) and Mon ombre siamoise (My Siamese Shadow, 1993).