Nora Rothschild
1906 - 2000

Nora Rothschild was born on December 19, 1906, in Frankfurt am Main. Her parents were lawyer Dr. Felix Rothschild (1868-1962) and Lily Rothschild, née Rice (1883-1962), daughter of jeweler and musician Nathan Henry Rice. Nora's older sister Lotte was born in 1904. The family lived at Klettenbergstr. 26 in Frankfurt's Nordend district. Nora Rothschild was Catholic, while her Jewish father refused to be baptized. Because of her Jewish ancestry, she was persecuted during the Nazi dictatorship.

From 1913 to 1918, Nora Rothschild attended the Lyzeum Schmidt (now Anna Schmidt School). In 1926, she graduated from high school at the Schillerschule. She then studied law in Freiburg, Berlin, Heidelberg, and Frankfurt am Main. There, at the end of 1930, she also passed her first state law examination (Referendarexamen), followed by her preparatory service as a judicial clerk at the Frankfurt Higher Regional Court from 1931 to 1933. She last worked in the legal department after previously completing her training at the local court, the regional court, and the public prosecutor's office. In fact, she worked at the law firm "Benkard, Spier, Maier," where Frankfurt section members Max Hermann Maier and Gustav Spier worked as lawyers. According to her own account, Max Hermann Maier did not allow her to go to court after Adolf Hitler came to power in order to protect her from attacks. She was only allowed to perform office work at the law firm.

Nora Rothschild was unable to complete her legal training. As a "full Jew" under Nazi racial laws, she was dismissed from the judicial service by order of the Prussian Minister of Justice on August 19, 1933, on the basis of the "Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service." Since she now had no opportunity to continue her education and no prospect of vocational training in another field, she emigrated to the United States in August 1934. After her arrival, she lived with a family of friends in Wakefield, Massachusetts, until the end of October 1934. In a short résumé, she wrote that she was able to earn "a little pocket money" through "occasional odd jobs."

The following years in the USA were very eventful for Nora Rothschild. She lived in Boston for a short time and moved to New York in April 1935, where she found employment as an untrained social worker. From September 1935 to June 1936, she attended the National Catholic School of Social Service in Washington, D.C., to complete her training as a social worker, which she successfully completed. She then worked as a social worker at Catholic institutions in Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania), New Haven (Connecticut), and Buffalo (New York) until September 1940.
In addition to her work as a social worker at Catholic Charities in Buffalo, she began studying law at the local university in September 1940. From the fall of 1942, she worked as a law clerk for a lawyer, which counted as further training. Six months later, she was hired as a lawyer by the Legal Aid Society in Rochester, New York. She remained there until October 1945.

After Nora Rothschild gave up her job as a lawyer at the Legal Aid Society in October 1945, she began working exclusively as a social worker at the Catholic Home Bureau in New York. Gradually, she was assigned more and more legal work, until her job essentially became that of a legal advisor. After leaving the Catholic Home Bureau on September 15, 1948, she devoted herself to social work with the Christian order Sisters of the Divine Spirit in Erie, Pennsylvania. From this point on, Nora Rothschild's further life can only be traced very fragmentarily.
What is certain is that she returned to Germany on August 31, 1965. She lived in Freiburg im Breisgau, one of her places of study, until April 28, 1966. From April 30, 1966, she was registered in Giessen. Here she took a part-time job with the local Caritas association. According to her own statement, she remained in Germany until 1979. She then returned to the USA and most recently lived at St. Mary's Home in Erie. This home was founded and run by the Roman Catholic Congregation of the Sisters of St. Joseph. Nora Rothschild died on October 7, 2000, and was buried in the cemetery in Erie, Pennsylvania.

Nora Rothschild joined the Frankfurt am Main section of the German Alpine Club in 1932. Her father had been a member of the Frankfurt section since 1893. We do not yet know anything about Nora Rothschild's activities in the Alpine Club. It is currently impossible to determine whether she left the Alpine Club or was expelled. With the amendment to the statutes passed in 1934 (see: "Aryan clause"), she was no longer allowed to remain in the club as a so-called "non-Aryan" because she had not become a member of the section before 1914 – unlike her father. If Nora Rothschild did not resign in 1933, she was probably expelled in 1934 at the latest.