Mrs. Rothschild’s Love

Everyone knows about the Rothschilds, possibly the most famous Jewish family ever. Among Jews, the name has become synonymous with ‘wealthy philanthropist’. In her historical novel, based on extensive research, Sara Aharoni writes about the founding father of this financial dynasty, Mayer Amschel Rothschild, who was active in Germany in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. And it is his wife, Gutle, who is the narrator-heroine of the book. She keeps a secret diary in which she bares her emotions, thoughts and secret desires. Gutle and her beloved Mayer Amschel were both born in the Judengasse, the Jewish ghetto of Frankfurt-am-Main and they married when she was 17 years old. Mayer was a bold, creative man with acute senses, who fought against the prohibitions and restrictions imposed on the Jews and strove to achieve equal rights for them. At the same time, he was enormously successful in his family-based banking business, which came to play a central role in Europe’s commercial life. Mayer and Gutle passed on their values of diligence and devotion to their children, who settled in the great capitals of Europe, established a network of financial institutions and became one of the richest families in the world.

Despite their wealth, their closeness to rulers and the emancipation granted to the Jews, Mayer and Gutle never left the ghetto. Gutle’s great love for her husband, the ten children she bore and raised, her choice to live modestly, the tragedies she experienced and the moments of joy – all of these are masterfully woven together in a sweeping and emotion-filled novel. Aharoni’s book illuminates an engrossing period in the annals of European Jewry, set against the background of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars.