Pannonica de Koenigswarter

Baroness Kathleen Annie Pannonica "Nica" de Koenigswarter (née Rothschild; 10 December 1913 – 30 November 1988) was a British-born jazz patron, photographer and writer. A leading patron of bebop, she was a member of the Rothschild family.

Personal life

thumb|right|250px|Her childhood home, Waddesdon Manor

Kathleen Annie Pannonica Rothschild was born in December 1913, in London, the youngest daughter of Charles Rothschild and his wife, Hungarian baroness Rózsika Edle von Wertheimstein, daughter of Baron Alfred von Wertheimstein of Bihar County. She was born into a branch of the wealthiest family in the world at the time.

It was at the Touquet airport, where she learned to fly an airplane, that she met French diplomat Baron Jules de Koenigswarter, later a Free French hero. They married in 1935. In 1937, they bought and moved to the Château d'Abondant, a 17th-century château in north-west France they acquired from the family of American banker Henry Herman Harjes (who had acquired the château in 1920 from the Duchesse de Vallombrosa). After the war, her husband entered the French diplomatic service and they settled in Norway and then in Mexico City (where he was counselor of the French Embassy).

The couple, who had five children, separated in 1951, and she moved to New York City, renting a suite at The Stanhope Hotel. At the close of the war she was decorated as a lieutenant by the allied armies.

Jazz

In New York, de Koenigswarter became a friend and patron of leading jazz musicians, hosting jam sessions in her hotel suite, often driving them in her Bentley when they needed a lift to gigs, or "jazz baroness" Sonny Rollins added : "She realized that jazz needed any kind of help it could get, especially the musicians. She was monetarily helpful to a lot who were struggling. But more than that, she was with us. By being with the baroness, we could go places and feel like human beings. It certainly made us feel good. I don’t know how you could measure it. But it was a palpable thing. I think she was a heroic woman.”

Hampton Hawes recalled in his memoir Raise Up Off Me:

After Monk ended his public performances in the mid-1970s, he retired to de Koenigswarter's house in Weehawken, New Jersey, where he died in 1982.

Literature

De Koenigswarter (Nica) appears prominently in "El perseguidor", a one-hundred page story by Julio Cortázar in the book Las armas secretas (The Secret Weapons, 1959). "El perseguidor", ("The Pursuer"), is a homage to Charlie Parker.

In October 2006, the French company Buchet Chastel published de Koenigswarter's book Les musiciens de jazz et leurs trois vœux ("The jazz musicians and their three wishes"). Compiled between 1961 and 1966, it is a book of interviews with 300 musicians who told her what their "three wishes" would be, and is accompanied by her Polaroid photographs. The book was edited for publication by Nadine de Koenigswarter, whom Nica always introduced to people as her granddaughter but who was in fact her great-niece.

In October 2023, Buchet Chastel published de Koenigswarter's book L'Oeil de Nica ("The Eye Of Nica"). A photobook of her photographs capturing jazz musicians but also views of Manhattan, moments captured in jazz clubs and deep America shots. A visual testimony to the American and particularly New York 1950-1960s, enhanced by the singular colors of the Polaroid. The photographs are from different boxes that were recently repatriated to France. Buchet Chastel also reissued the French edition of Three Wishes: An Intimate Look at Jazz Greats.

Her photographs were exhibited in 2007 at the Rencontres d'Arles festival.

Media depictions

Film

Nica was played by Diane Salinger in the Clint Eastwood biographical film Bird (1988) about Charlie "Bird" Parker. In the Eastwood-produced documentary film Thelonious Monk: Straight, No Chaser (1988) she is seen in library footage and heard in an interview.

Hannah Rothschild, The Baroness: The Search for Nica the Rebellious Rothschild (2012)
David Kastin, Nica's Dream: The Life and Legend of the Jazz Baroness (2011)

Pannonica de Koenigswarter

Personal life

Jazz

Literature

Media depictions

Film

Published works

Further reading

References

Further reading

External links