I was curious about Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild, who was born in Paris, educated in Vienna, and had plopped this outrageous French château in the middle of the English countryside. In his memoirs, he spoke of the origins of his surname in the Jewish ghetto of Frankfurt, whence his great-grandfather sent his five sons to the European capitals to create an international banking dynasty. “I should say that my ancestors derived their name from the red shield—in German, Rothschild—which hung over the door of their house in Frankfort,” he wrote. “This shield served the office of a sign at a time
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