- The following obituary appeared in "The Telegraph" on 21 February 2003: Liliane de Rothschild, the Baroness Elie de Rothschild, who has died aged 86, was once said by her husband to be plus Rothschild que les Rothschilds; and it was true that she knew far more about his kinsmen than did he or most other members of the family, and that she was extremely knowledgeable about their extensive possessions, especially the works of art.
Clever, sensible, resilient and humorous, Liliane de Rothschild had a good eye for pictures and a flair for design. When, in 1967, the old premises of the family bank in Paris, de Rothschild Frères, at 19 rue Laffitte, were demolished to make way for a modern, concrete structure, it was she, in collaboration with Michel Boyer, who supervised the interior decoration.
She was also a guiding light in the decoration of the hotels and restaurants established by the French Rothschilds' enterprise PLM (an acronym deriving from two Rothschild railway companies which were merged in 1857, the Paris-Lyons and the Lyons-Méditerranée), of which Baron Elie was president. An example was the 812-room Hôtel Saint-Jacques, which opened in Paris in 1972.
When, in the late 1950s, she and her husband moved into 11 rue Masseran, a Paris hotel built for Prince Masserano by Brongniart in 1785, Liliane de Rothschild decorated its interiors with a most effective mixture of Rothschild portraits and objets d'art, French furniture by the greatest 18th-century cabinetmakers, Old Master paintings and the 20th-century works of art that she and Baron Elie collected.
She was born Liliane Elisabeth Victoire Fould-Springer on May 11 1916, the youngest of the four children of Baron Eugène Fould-Springer, descendant of Napoleon III's Finance Minister Achille Fould and a member of the European banking house Fould Oppenheim. Her mother Mitzi was only daughter and heiress of Baron Gustav Springer, the Austro-Hungarian industrial magnate.
Liliane's father had started out in life as plain Monsieur Eugène Fould, but, shortly after to his engagement to Mitzi Springer, at the conclusion of an audience one day with Emperor Franz Josef, the Emperor bade him farewell with the words: "Auf wiedersehen, Baron Fould-Springer."
According to her eldest sister Hélène ("Bubbles"), the name "Liliane" was chosen because her parents thought it pretty; "Elisabeth" was in honour of an aunt; and "Victoire" expressed the hope for victory over Germany in the Great War. The eldest of the children was Max, and the nearest in age to Liliane was Thérèse ("Poppy"), who would later marry Alan Pryce-Jones.
The Fould-Springer children were brought up between the Palais Abbatial de Royaumont, near Chantilly, and an apartment at 54 avenue d'Iéna in Paris. The young Aline de Gunzbourg, who was later to marry Isaiah Berlin, lived in the same Paris apartment block, and became a lifelong friend of Liliane.
The family would spend the summer in Vienna, moving in August to Hungary, where Baron Springer owned various properties; at one of these they went partridge shooting, at another the Baron kept his string of racehorses.
In 1940, Liliane Fould-Springer left Royaumont with Bubbles and her husband, the Spanish diplomat Don Eduardo Propper de Callejon, to stay at Château de Charras, near Angoulême, with Dr Albert Metzl, director of a yeast factory established and owned by Baron Gustav Springer at Maison Alfort.
From Charras they soon left for Spain, installing themselves at the Grand Hotel at Zaraus, the seaside town near the French border. There Liliane developed a large abscess on the end of her nose - which the local doctor thought might, if left untreated, affect her brain.
No suitable drugs being available at Zaraus, Bubbles Propper, using her Spanish diplomatic passport, drove over the border to Biarritz for the necessary medication. She returned with it, and Liliane began to recover.
When, later that year, Don Eduardo Propper was appointed First Secretary at the Spanish Embassy in Vichy, capital of the Unoccupied Zone of France, Bubbles rented a villa at nearby Cannes and took Liliane with her.
In 1942 Liliane married her childhood sweetheart Elie de Rothschild, younger son of Baron Robert de Rothschild, a partner of de Rothschild Frères. The marriage took place by proxy, since Baron Elie was at the time a PoW at Colditz Castle, from where he had written to Liliane with his proposal.
Liliane's mother (her father had by then died) was uneasy about her daughter taking the name Rothschild at a time when France was crawling with the Gestapo, but the marriage went ahead. Baron Elie gave his pledge at Colditz on October 7 1941; Liliane gave hers at Cannes Town Hall on April 7 1942, with a photograph of the groom on the table in front of her and an empty chair at her side.
After the war, Elie and his elder brother Alain and their wives shared the house at 23 avenue de Marigny, where the brothers had grown up. The house, set in several acres of gardens a few yards away from the Elysée Palace, had been built by their grandfather, Baron Gustave de Rothschild, in 1885. Meanwhile, Baron Elie ran Château Lafite-Rothschild, the premier cru Pauillac vineyard in the Médoc.
One post-war visitor to avenue de Marigny, Harold Acton, recalled how white-gloved footmen served the meals on "perfect Sévres with a separate vintage wine to accompany each course". Another frequent visitor, in the 1960s, was Cecil Beaton, who enjoyed the Rothschilds' hospitality while in Paris to work for French Vogue.
Baron Elie and his wife also kept a house in London, near the Royal Hospital in Chelsea, where latterly they spent much of their time.
In 1998, Liliane de Rothschild and her niece Elena Bonham-Carter (nee Propper de Callejon) published, privately, Bubbles Propper's memoirs, I Loved My Stay. Mme Propper had completed them, with the help of Fiona Shannon, three days before her death in June 1997.
Liliane de Rothschild is survived by her husband, and by a son and two daughters.
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1916 - 2003 (86 years)
Has 4 ancestors and 3 descendants in our family tree.
1906 - 1999 (93 years)
Marie Cécile "Mitzi" von Springer (ID:I17955)
