Pannonica de Koenigswarter

Baroness Kathleen Annie Pannonica de Koenigswarter (née Rothschild; 10 December 1913 – 30 November 1988) was a British-born jazz patron and writer.

A leading patron of bebop, she was a member of the Rothschild family.

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.

Her paternal grandfather was Nathan Rothschild, 1st Baron Rothschild.

She grew up in Tring Park Mansion as well as Waddesdon Manor, among other family houses.

The name "Pannonica" (shortened to "Nica" as a nickname) 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, although her great-niece has found that the source of the name is a rare species of moth, Eublemma pannonica.

She was a niece of Walter Rothschild, the 2nd Baron Rothschild, and her brother Victor Rothschild became the 3rd Baron Rothschild.

Her elder sister was the zoologist and author Dame Miriam Rothschild.

In 1935, she married French diplomat Baron Jules de Koenigswarter, later a Free French hero.

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).

She worked for Charles de Gaulle during World War II.

During the 1950s, she was licensed as a manager by the American Federation of Musicians.

Her clients included Horace Silver, Hank Mobley, Sir Charles Thompson, and The Jazz Messengers.

Horace Silver said about her : "I recall playing a week with the Jazz Messengers at a jazz club in Youngstown, Ohio. The club owner refused to give Art Blakey any money because the band had started late several times and we hadn't drawn a crowd. There we were in Youngstown, Ohio, with a week's hotel bill to pay and none of us had any money. I could just picture myself being put in jail because I couldn't pay my hotel bill. But Art called the Baroness, and she wired us some money so we could pay our hotel bills and return to New York. She was a great lover of jazz music and a wonderful person. When we didn't have money to buy uniforms, she bought us three different uniforms. They were Ivy League suits with shirts and ties to match, and shoes to go along with them. We were looking good and sounding good."

Hampton Hawes recalled in his memoir Raise Up Off Me:

"Her place became a pad to drop in and hang out, any time, for any reason. She'd give money to anyone who was broke, bring bags of groceries to their families, help them get their cabaret cards, which you needed to work in New York. This bitch was so rich she had permanent tables reserved at all the clubs and a number you could call from anywhere in New York to get a private cab. If I was sick or fucked up I'd call the number and the cab would come and carry me direct to her pad. On my off nights she'd sometimes pick me up in her Bentley and we'd go around to the clubs. I suppose you would call Nica a patron of the arts, but she was more like a brother to the musicians who lived in New York or came through. There was no jive about her, and if you were for real you were accepted and were her friend."

The couple, who had five children, separated in 1951, and she left the family and moved to New York City, renting a suite at The Stanhope Hotel.

As a result of their separation, Koenigswarter was disinherited by her family, the Rothschilds.

She was introduced to Thelonious Monk by jazz pianist/composer Mary Lou Williams in Paris while attending the "Salon du Jazz 1954".

Following Parker's death in her Stanhope rooms in 1955, de 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 composition "Ba-lue Bolivar Ba-lues-are".

The couple eventually divorced in 1956.

She was a regular visitor to many of New York's jazz clubs, including the Five Spot Café, Village Vanguard, Birdland, and Small's. In 1957, she bought a new piano for the Five Spot because she thought the existing one was not good enough for Monk's performances there.

She also did the cover art for Bud Powell's album A Portrait of Thelonious.

In 1958, she purchased a house in Weehawken, New Jersey with a Manhattan skyline view, originally built for film director Josef von Sternberg.

She even took criminal responsibility when she and Monk were charged with marijuana possession by Delaware police in 1958, spending a few nights in jail.

De Koenigswarter was sentenced to three years in prison.

After a two-year legal battle that was financed by her family, the case was dismissed in a court of appeals on a technicality.

She championed his work in the United States, writing the liner notes for his 1962 Columbia album Criss-Cross.

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.

Koenigswarter died of heart failure in 1988, aged 74, at the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center, in New York City.

She had five children, two grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren.

She joined the Free French Army to fight against Nazi Germany during World War II.

She had refused to participate in the North African Campaign, but she joined clandestinely to fight alongside her husband.

The war imposed a suspension of her marital and family duties but she managed to send her children from France to America, secretly moving across continents.

She served as a decoder, ambulance driver, and radio host for the Free French.

At the close of the war she was decorated as a lieutenant by the allied armies.

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, as well as sometimes helping them to pay rent, buy groceries, and making hospital visits.

Although not a musician herself, she is sometimes referred to as the "bebop baroness" or "jazz baroness" because of her patronage of Thelonious Monk and Charlie Parker among others.