Baron Guy de Rothschild

Baron Guy de Rothschild, patriarch of a French banking empire with a taste for society balls and a passion for thoroughbred race horses, died this week, his family announced Thursday. He was 98. Rothschild, who saw the family's bank taken over first during the Nazi occupation of France and 40 years later by a Socialist government, died Tuesday in Paris, his family said in an announcement in the daily newspaper Le Figaro. The cause of death was not given. Edouard Alphonse Paul Guy de Rothschild was born May 21, 1909, in Paris' upscale 8th district into the House of Rothschild, the son of Baron Edouard de Rothschild and Baroness Germain Halphen, one branch of a complex family tree that includes financiers of European royalty in France, Britain and elsewhere. The family wine business in Bordeaux, featuring the Chateau Lafite Rothschild label, is world renowned. Despite wealth and acclaim, Rothschild faced down calamities. He saw the family banking business crumble in Nazi-occupied France during World War II. France's collaborationist Vichy government stripped Rothschild's family of its French nationality -- and its assets. Rothschild fled to the United States and later to London, where he joined Gen. Charles de Gaulle's Resistance movement, the Free French Forces. After the war, Rothschild rebuilt his family's French banking empire from scratch, hiring school teacher Georges Pompidou -- who later became president of France -- to help him and went on to chair de Rothschild Freres from 1967 until 1979. A second blow fell with the rise to power in 1981 of Socialist President Francois Mitterrand. His government, embarking on a major nationalization program, put the bank in the hands of the state. Disgusted, Rothschild left France, briefly moving to New York, but not before writing a stinging commentary in the prestigious newspaper Le Monde in which he accused the Socialists of falling victim to French anti-Semitism. His son David later followed his father's example and began reconstructing the family banking network, which in 1987 became Rothschild & Cie Bank. Thoroughbred horses were a passion for Rothschild, whom Agriculture Minister Christine Lagarde called "an emblematic figure in the world of horse racing" who developed the sector and brought recognition to French turf. Rothschild headed the Thoroughbred Breeders Union from 1975 to 1982, and his horses, raised at the family's Normandy stables, took some of the most prestigious prizes in France. Guy de Rothschild founded and presided over the United Jewish Welfare Fund, France's primary Jewish philanthropic agency, from 1950 to 1982. Twice married, each time to distant cousins, Rothschild launched into a new personal era with his second wife, Marie-Helene. The couple refurbished the family Chateau de Ferrieres outside Paris and threw theme balls for the nobility, artists and intelligentsia of Europe. With his wife, who died in 1990, Guy de Rothschild became a star of France's elite social scene. In his 1985 autobiography, "The Whims of Fortune," Rothschild reveals the tough part of a growing up as a Rothschild. "The Baron grew up with an inferiority complex, not because he felt guilty about being rich but because he had to prove himself worthy of being a Rothschild," wrote Theodore Zeldin, the noted British author of a series of books on France, in a review of the memoir published in The New York Times. Rothschild is survived by sons David and Edouard and a sister, Jacqueline Piatigorsky, a one-time American chess champion and wife of famed cellist Gregor Piatigorsky. His other sister Bethsabee died in 1999. A funeral service was planned in Paris' main synagogue on June 21.