Pannonica de Koenigswarter (born 10 December 1913 – died 30 November 1988) was a British-born bebop jazz enthusiast and member of the prominent Rothschild international financial dynasty.
Personal
Kathleen Annie Pannonica Rothschild was the daughter of Charles Rothschild and the Hungarian baroness Rozsika Edle von Wertheimstein. She grew up in Waddesdon Manor, among other family houses. The name "Pannonica" (nicknamed "Nica") derives from Eastern Europe's Pannonian plain. Her friend, Thelonious Monk reported that she was named after a species of butterfly her father had discovered. She was a niece of Walter Rothschild, the 2nd Baron Rothschild, and her brother Victor Rothschild became the 3rd Baron Rothschild. (According to thepeerage.com, she was granted the rank of the daughter of a baron on 15 March 1938.[1]) Her elder sister Dame Miriam Rothschild was a distinguished scientist and zoologist.
In 1935 she married French diplomat Baron Jules de Koenigswarter, later a Free French hero. She worked for Charles de Gaulle during World War II. The couple separated in 1951 and she moved to New York City, renting a suite at the Hotel Stanhope on Fifth Avenue. They eventually divorced in 1956. In 1958, she purchased a house with a Manhattan skyline view, that was built for film director Josef von Sternberg at 63 Kingswood Road in Weehawken, NJ.
Jazz
In New York, she became a friend and patron of many prominent jazz musicians, hosting jam sessions in her hotel suite. She is sometimes referred to as the "bebop baroness" or "jazz baroness" because of her patronage of Thelonious Monk and Charlie Parker among others. Following Parker's death in her Stanhope rooms in 1955, Koenigswarter was asked to leave by the hotel management; she re-located to the Bolivar Hotel at 230 Central Park West, a building commemorated in Thelonious Monk's 1956 tune "Ba-lue Bolivar Ba-lues-are".
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