Behind the masterpieces, a war of inheritance. According to The Guardiana rivalry pits Nadine de Rothschild (93 years old), widow of Baron Edmond de Rothschild (1926-1997), against her daughter-in-law Ariane de Rothschild (60 years old), widow of Benjamin de Rothschild (1963-2021). The latter is the current president of the Edmond de Rothschild banking group. The subject of the dispute is a vast collection of antique furniture and paintings (Goya, Rembrandt, Fragonard, El Greco, Boucher among others) stored for decades at the Château de Pregny (Geneva). The concentration of works has earned the place the nickname “mini-Louvre”, an expression taken up by several foreign media.
The collection was mainly put together by Edmond de Rothschild, founder in 1953 of the banking group that bears his name. The absence of an accessible inventory and the strict control of access to the castle maintained the mystery for a long time. The Château de Pregny is a vast residence of more than 1,000 m2 surrounded by an estate of eight hectares. So far, there is no official estimate of the collection’s value. According to some sources it would amount to several hundred million euros.
When Edmond de Rothschild died, the question of the transmission of this collection was never clarified. His only son, Benjamin de Rothschild, became the main heir. He married Ariane de Rothschild, née Langner, in 1999. Still according to the Guardian, Benjamin de Rothschild would have liked to preserve the unity of the collection and maintain it within the Château de Pregny. Nadine de Rothschild, born Lhopitalier in 1932, however, tells a different version. She maintains that a substantial part of the works was explicitly bequeathed to her by her husband. She believes that she is morally justified in wanting to take the works out of their discretion in order to present them to the public. With this in mind, in 2021 she created the Edmond and Nadine de Rothschild Foundation, with the stated ambition of opening a “unique in the world” museum in Geneva.
This project encountered opposition from Ariane de Rothschild. President of the family banking group, she considers that any dispersion or individual appropriation would constitute a betrayal of her husband’s will. Her lawyers point out that Nadine de Rothschild made no official claim when Benjamin de Rothschild was alive. In 2021, the courts prohibited Nadine de Rothschild from accessing the Château de Pregny to carry out an inventory of property. The legal proceedings between Nadine de Rothschild and her daughter-in-law to determine the effective ownership of the works are still ongoing
