Richest family in the world

Who is the richest family in the world? Recently we wrote a post “Bill Gates Is Once Again the Richest Person in the World”, but is the Gates family the richest family in the world? That is the question we’ll try to answer in this article. So, who is the richest family in the world? While it is an amazingly difficult question to get perfect answers to, it did disclose that the richest private entity in the 19th century was in fact not a person – however a family. Descendants of Mayer A. Rothschild, the rich and famous Rothschild family, is still around in the present day and is believed to be worth more than a trillion dollars, thought to be the richest family in the world and the largest private providential in world history. So, who exactly are the Rothschild’s and how did they build up this marvelous fortune?

The patriarch of Rothschild fortune, Mayer Amschel Rothschild, was born in a Jewish ghetto in 1744 in 1744 in Frankfurt, Germany. When his father died, Mayer was very young; however he took over his family currency-exchange business. The work made Mayer to learn a lot about different types of currency, money and coins and, in next to no time, he turned into an expert in old and rare coins. To enhance the business, he became a dealer of rare coins.

It so happened that the Crown Prince of Hesse was a passionate rare coin collector. When he heard of Mayer’s mammoth collection, he came to him and they made quite a lot of deals. The deals went so well that in coming few years, when the Crown Prince became William IX, the Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel, he decided to hire Mayer Rothschild to be “Hoffaktor” of his substantial fortune.

Mayer’s financial influence continued to rise internationally throughout the French Revolution (1789 to 1799) when he virtually handled all financial aspects of the war.

By 1800, Rothschild became the richest family in the world. He had 5 sons, each one of them took up the family business. When they were old enough, they were tactically located across Europe, bringing their expertise, wealth and family links with them. Historians have contemplated that this is how the Rothschilds were able to maintain their wealth whilst many other famous families lost their wealth throughout these turbulent era in Europe.

Mayer Rothschild passed away, in 1812; he assured the continued fortune of the family beforehand for centuries to come by cautiously arranging nuptials for his sons, intentionally to cousins, keeping all the wealth within the family to make sure the riches never left.

From beginning to the end of the 19th century, the richest family in the world i.e. the Rothschild’s wealth kept on growing. As the 19th century turned into 20^th century, the Rothschilds were still richest family in the world and also the leading bankers in the world. Nathan Rothschild, famously known as Lord Rothschild, started issuing loans to countries afar from Europe, most remarkably the US.

Beyond banking, they are also renowned in the world of art and wine collecting. The Rothschild family still exists today and is still preposterously rich. They no longer focus much on banking, rather they seem to be focusing on asset management, wine, real estate, charity work and social activism.