Edgar Rothschild 1924 – 2012

Edgar Rothschild 1924-2012

Edgar Rothschild was born in Hanover on 11th August 1924 to Walter Rothschild and Charlotte, nee Fiedler. His father had been the Landgerichtsrat or regional court judge in Hanover, until 1933 when the Nazi Party took control of Germany. At this, he moved his family to Baden-Baden, where the family had relatives. The town was also conveniently located close to the French boarder, making any future escape from Nazi Germany somewhat easier.

However Walter had to real intention of making such an escape. In an obituary written in the AJR Journal, he is said to have remarked that, “when the Judges leave there will be no justice here anymore.”

Edgar came to England in 1939 on a student visa, enrolling at Seaford College. He then worked in a factory in London for a while, before the onslaught on the Blitz forced him to move to Bradford, that great industrial city of the North, which would ironically become a sanctuary from the hell of burning London. Edgar stayed at the home of his former school teacher from Baden-Baden,

Dr Artur Flehinger who had himself arrived in Bradford through a Quaker initiative, finding a position at Bradford Grammar School.

He would join the R.A,F. as a meteorologist in India and Europe, and upon discharge after the War had ended, he would settle in Bradford, with its German Jewish community. In 1952, he would marry a local girl, Esther Bergson-Brown, and they would go on to have three children, Walter, Joyce and Sylvia. They married in Bradford Hebrew Congregation’s Spring Gardens Orthodox Synagogue, built 1906, although he had been a member of the Bowland Street, Bradford Reform Synagogue since 1948. He would work as a draughts man at English Electric’s Phoenix works at Thornbury, before turning to a career as a Mathematics teacher.