The tradition of beautifully-crafted illustrated Jewish prayer books originated in southern Germany in the mid-13th century, with fewer than 20 such examples known to have survived through to the present day.
The Rothschild mahzor is one of just three to have stayed in private ownership. One of the others, the Luzzatto High Holiday Mahzor, sold for $8.3 million at a Sotheby’s auction in 2021.
It was originally completed in 1415 by a Jewish scribe, whose painstaking craftsmanship filled the pages with creatures set in Gothic archways and curling scrollwork.
The liturgical customs indicate that it was assembled in Vienna, and its high quality suggests it was created for communal rather than private use.
The Jewish community was expelled from Vienna not even a decade after the book’s completion, and it only entered Rothschild hands more than four centuries later when Salomon Mayer Rothschild purchased it in Nuremberg.
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The Rothschild Vienna Mahzor, 1415, folio (Image: Ardon Bar Hama)[Missing Credit]
He paid 151 gold coins for the book on 5 August 1842, to be given as a gift to his son Anselm Salomon Rothschild.
An appended title page comprising the family’s baronial coat of arms and a detailed inscription in Hebrew from Salomon Mayer indicates the transfer of ownership.
The manuscript was passed down to Anselm Salomon’s son, Nathaniel Mayer Rothschild, and then inherited by Nathaniel Mayer’s nephew Alphonse Rothschild in 1905, when the childless Nathaniel Mayer passed away.
It remained in Alphonse’s art and cultural collection until shortly after the Nazi annexation of Austria in March 1938.
Just two days after the invasion, the Nazis seized the Rothschild Palais and its contents in Vienna, and stripped Alphonse of his legal ownership after just four days, distributing the art collection between various facilities.
The mahzor ended up in the Austrian National Library, where it was only recognised after legislation was passed in 1998 concerning the restitution of Nazi-looted art, and scholars from the Centre for Jewish Art identified the family crest on the title page.
On the restitution of the manuscript, the descendants of Alphonse Rothschild and his wife Clarice said: “While the wrongs of the past can never be undone, the restitution of this mahzor carries deep meaning for our family as it stands as both an acknowledgement of history and a small measure of closure to a pain that has echoed through generations.”
A mahzor typically contains the cycle of prayers for the entire Jewish liturgical year; this one, being so ornate, is only for use during the High Holy Days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.
Prior to the auction, the book will be on display in Sotheby’s’ new global headquarters, the Breuer building in New York, from 11-16 December.
It will then travel to Los Angeles for display from 12-16 January, and return to New York during Sotheby’s Masters Week, which runs from 30 January to 3 February, before the auction two days later.
