Rózsika Rothschild


Rózsika Rothschild was born as Rózsika Edle von Wertheimstein on 15 October 1870 in Nagyvárad, Hungary. She was a tennis player and the wife of the banker and entomologist Charles Rothschild. She died in London on 30 June 1940.

Life

She grew up as one of seven children of an officer of the Austro-Hungarian army, Alfred Edler von Wertheimstein. The Wertheimstein family was the first Jewish family in Europe to be ennobled without having previously converted to Christianity. The multi-lingual Rózsika was regarded as very interested in politics. Around the turn of the century she was a very well known tennis player and national Hungarian champion. However, tennis was then almost exclusively operated by the nobility.
She was married in Vienna on February 6, 1907 to Charles Rothschild, son of Nathan Mayer Rothschild, 1st Baron Rothschild from the English branch of the Rothschild family, whom she had met during a butterfly excursion in the Carpathians. The couple lived on his estate in Tring, Hertfordshire. After the early death of her husband in 1923, she had to raise her four children alone.