Blue & Yellow reunion with founding father Rothschild
Back to the roots of 125 years of Blue & Yellow: First Vienna Football Club 1894, the oldest football club in Austria, has met with a descendant of Baron Nathaniel Mayer Anselm Rothschild, one of the founding fathers of the club.
A Blue & Yellow delegation spearheaded by managing director Thomas Loy, sporting director Markus Katzer and club historian Alexander Juraske paid a courtesy visit to Geoffrey R. Hoguet on Wednesday morning. Hoguet is the great grandson of the brother of Nathaniel Mayer Anselm Rothschild, one of the founding fathers of First Vienna. As well as a t-shirt bearing the number 1894 (the year in which the cult club from Döbling was founded) and the name Rothschild on the back, Loy and Katzer presented the guest from New York with a pennant, the club bible Blau-Gelb ist mein Herz (My heart is Blue & Yellow) and a lifelong membership.
The history of the oldest football club in Austria is inextricably linked with the name Rothschild. First Vienna Football Club 1894 was officially founded on 22 August 1894. Nathaniel Mayer Anselm Rothschild and Julius Schuster, the general director of the Rothschild Bank, assumed the patronage of the club, which was founded in the restaurant “Zur schönen Aussicht”, known today as “Pfarrwirt”, in the 19th district of Vienna.
The Blue & Yellow family is the starting point for the historical development of Austrian football. “We’re proud of this,” said managing director Thomas Loy delightedly as he reflected on the extraordinary encounter. “Without Rothschild there would be no First Vienna.” Sporting director Markus Katzer agrees: “Given the background of our history, it is something rather special to get back in contact with the Rothschild family. We’d be delighted to welcome them to a First Vienna game at the Hohe Warte Stadium.”
The meeting with Baron Nathaniel Mayer Anselm Rothschild’s descendant was a matter close to the heart of First Vienna, with the tradition-steeped club from Döbling celebrating their 125th anniversary. During this landmark year, the six-time Austrian champions and 1931 Mitropa Cup winners have celebrated with numerous events marking their incredible history and heritage, which is of utmost importance to the club. Besides tradition, integration and peaceful coexistence; the values are based on the guidelines and the motto of the club’s founding: "United we stand for victory".
At the end of the 19th century the Jewish financier, collector, philanthropist and travel writer Baron Nathaniel Mayer Anselm Rothschild owned a magnificent complex of garden houses on what is nowadays Hohe Warte in the 19th district. Franz Joli, the son of Rothschild’s garden inspector, returned in the mid-1890s from a several-year study trip to the British Isles and institutionalised the game of football among the gardeners. The gardens of the Hohe Warte were where the Joli brothers challenged William Beale and James Black, two British gardeners, to a game. "By the third day, the whole gardening staff was already obsessed," reported Max Joli, Franz's brother. "Like a pack of hounds, they ran after the football every day after work until nightfall.”
