Edmond Adolphe de Rothschild

The only son of Baron Maurice de Rothschild and Baroness Noémie de Rothschild (née Halphen), Edmond Adolphe was born into the Rothschild banking family of France. He was the grandson of Edmond James de Rothschild and great-grandson of the French branch's founder James Mayer de Rothschild.

Edmond de Rothschild's family was forced to move from France to Switzerland in July 1940, after Maurice de Rothschild, Edmond's father, was declared a noncitizen. Maurice was part of the 80 members of France's Upper House to oppose the pro-Nazi Vichy regime openly, voting against giving full powers to Maréchal Philippe Pétain.

Baron Edmond de Rothschild's first marriage was with the Bulgarian artist Veselinka Vladova Gueorguieva in 1958. They separated shortly afterwards and the union was dissolved. On June 26, 1963, the Baron married the French actress Nadine Nelly Jeannette Lhopitalier, also known by her stage name as Nadine Tallier, whom he had met in 1960. They had a son, Benjamin Edmond Maurice Adolphe Henri Isaac de Rothschild (1963-2021).

Edmond Adolphe de Rothschild gave furniture, tapestries, and paintings to the Château de Versailles. His gifts of the 18th-century French decorative arts pieces to the Israel Museum in Jerusalem now constitute the Rothschild Room at that institution. He bequeathed an important classical vase (Le Don de la Vigne) to the Musée d'Art et d'Histoire of Geneva through a donation carried out by his wife, Nadine de Rothschild, in 1998.

In France, Edmond de Rothschild supported the children's welfare association Œuvre pour la protection des enfants juifs (OPEJ), originally founded to aid children of Jewish victims of the Vichy-era deportations. He became its president in 1969, offering OPEJ the Château de Maubuisson north of Paris (Val d'Oise). Under his guidance, the OPEJ was opened to all children regardless of faith or family background in 1981. Nadine de Rothschild continued this work after her husband's death. The institution has been presided by members of his family ever since.

Edmond de Rothschild's grandfather, Baron Edmond James de Rothschild, had set up the acquisition of lands in Ottoman Palestine for Jewish development in the 1800s. In the 1950s, Edmond de Rothschild donated the family's property to the new Israeli State. In 1953, he gave 7,500 acres of the town of Caesarea to the newly created Caesarea Rothschild Foundation which was co-owned by the Israeli state. The Foundation was tasked with the redistribution of Caesarea's profits to education programs in Israel.