User:MinorProphet/Draft subpages/Hector Baltazzi

Hector Baltazzi was a successful amateur jockey and racehorse owner. He was born in Therapia (a northern district of Constantinople) on either 21 September 1851 or 1 May 1854 died in Vienna on 2 January 1916. He was the joint owner (with two of his brothers) of Kisber, winner of both the Derby and the Grand Prix de Paris in 1876. He was the natural father of the conductor Clemens Krauss.

See also de:Baltazzi

Parents
If only people could get things right. His father may have been Theodor, Emannuel's younger brother. I don't care, I just like to be accurate. Lots of pics of him and his horses.

His father was probably Theodore Baltazzi, (b. Izmir 1797 – d. 1856)??? (whose own mother was a Mavrogordato) whose family was perhaps originally Venetian but acquired Austrian nationality probably after the final Fall of the Republic of Venice in 1815.??? OR his father was Emmanuel Baltazzi, Theodore's older brother. Don't know, don't care except to get it right. His mother was Elizabeth Sarell 1823-1863 (Parents : Richard Sarell 1791-1844, vice-consul in Constantinople & secondly Euphrosine Rhasi (1799-1884), married 5 February 1842). He became a merchant in Smyrna and then Constantinople. With Jacques Alléon (1792-1876) Emmanuel co-founded the Banque de Constantinople, the first functioning commercial bank in the modern Ottoman Empire era after the Imperial Edict of Reorganization Edict of Gülhane followed by the Tanzimat. As banker to Sultan Abdülmecid I, his enterprise financed the new Galata Bridge (or Pera Bridge) of 1845 over the Golden Horn, and the tolls he collected added to his fortune. After Emmanuel's death Theodore, who may have been Hector's father, took over his business.

Emmanuel had four brothers and ten children. Of his brothers, Demetrio (1791–1875), "installe comptoir et Banque a Marseille, il sera en 1848 membre du Board des Gouverneurs du Comptoir National d’ Escompte.") and Théodore (1798-1860), was the father of Helene Vetsera whose daughter Marie was largely responsible for World War 1. Of his ten children, Aristide Baltazzi Bey (1831 – 1887) was Ottoman Minister of Finance; Démosthenes Baltazzi Bey (born a Izmir en 1836) was a pioneering Ottoman archaeologist; and Alexander and cz:Aristides Baltazzi went into the race-horse business with Hector.

Copious amounts of info here about Alexander, but not necessarily WP:RS.

Life
After the death of Theodore (1860) and Eliza (1864), the sons Alexander, Aristides and Hector (and I imagine Henri) move to live with their eldest sister Elizabeth in England. Elizabeth Baltazzi b. 1842 - Married 7 April 1862 to Albert Llewellyn Nugent, 3rd Baron Nugent (1841-1909) See Burnell-Nugent. The title Baron is Austrian and not of the UK. One of their sons was Brigadier Frank Burnell-Nugent. Aristides returned to Moravia, married a daughter (or widow?) of cz:Friedrich Stockau, took up horse breeding and politics.

He was educated at Rugby School while Frederick Temple was headmaster. He started riding horses at a young age, and became one of the finest gentlemen jockeys of his time, perhaps one of the best in 50 years.

Blimey, enormous racing obit with stats by Viktor Silberer in his own de:Allgemeine Sport-Zeitung.

Silberer compared him to gentlemen jockeys J. M. Richardson and Arthur Yates He rode in 568 races, and won 184, giving him a win almost exactly every third race.

One of the Baltazzis rode to the Brocklesby Hounds; on 30 October 1871 his mount, a cub-hunter named 'Twice A Week' fell into a drain near Redbourne, Lincolnshire, and had to be destroyed as it was thought that his hind leg was broken off at the fetlock. On further examination the following day it was discovered it was only dislocated.

He raced under the name of 'H. Bruce'. In 1872 he bought Rutland Cottage, Newmarket, now the Newmarket Cadogan Hotel.



The Baltazzi brothers had commercial connections with the Rothschild’s family. Palace House Stables was now owned by Leopold de Rothschild (nephew of Baron Mayer de Rothschild who died in 1874) who agreed the Baltazzi brothers could send a few horses to Joseph Hayhoe, his personal trainer in Newmarket. Stuff about Kisber in

The soprano Nellie Melba relates in her memoirs that when the Baltazzi brothers' Kisber, ridden by Charlie Maidment won the Derby in 1876, that evening Hector placed a pearl for each dinner guest in their soup plate.

Queen Victoria and her son, Prince Edward VII, invited them for tea at Windsor Castle. Soon the eccentric former Queen of Naples, Marie Sophie, introduced them to her more famous older sister, Empress Elisabeth of Austria (Sisi). He and his brothers (Sisi) on hunting and riding tours in Britain. Also, hobbed the nob with the Prince of Wales (Edward VII). Her son Rudolf accompanied her on one such tour.

Aristides and Hector would visit Sisi at her Hungarian Royal Palace in Gödöllö and accompanied her in Hungary, Bohemia and England. Their sister Helen married Albin Johannes Freiherr von Vetsera in Constantinople, becoming Baroness Helen Vetsera. In Vienna they lived at the de:Palais Salm-Vetsera.

Meanwhile his youngest brother Henry (Heinrich) Baltazzi (1858-1929) had a secret affair with Sisi’s favorite niece, Countess Marie Louise Larisch-Wallersee in Pardubice. They had two illegitimate children. Hector won the Great Pardubice Steeplechase on 'Victoria' in 1881, 1883 and on 'Woodman' in 1887.

Hoping to get closer to the imperial court, Helen also made friends with Marie Larisch, who frequently visited her at the Villa Vetsera on her trips to Vienna. There she also became the most intimate friend of Helen’s favorite daughter, de:Mary Vetsera. Marie thus started to be the matchmaker between Mary and Crown Prince Rudolf.

The Baltazzi brother's niece Marie would commit suicide with Rudolf in 1889, the cause of Hector's divorce and quitting Vienna.

Lengthy article about the royal connections here.

Some twelve years ago(?) (vor etwa zwolf Jahre) he was very ill in Brussels, having contracted meningitis, and was given up for dead by the doctors after a week; but he pulled through and spent much of the remaining years in Paris. He might well have stayed there, but the outbreak of war in 1914 forced his return to Vienna.

Death
He was found dead in a chair after a heart attack in the Jockey Club of Vienna, in the morning of 2 January 1916. He is buried in the Wiener Zentralfriedhof, Vienna.

Pic of grave.

Family


He married Countess Anna Ugarte (1855-1905) in 1875. She divorded him after his niece's suicide with the Crown Prince Rudolf. They had no children. At his death he had been separated from his wife for around 25 years.?Silberling?

He was the natural father of the opera conductor Clemens Krauss, the offspring of an affair in 1892 with Clementine Krauss, a 15 year-old danseuse of the Ballet at the Vienna State Opera. They never met.

Aristide died of a heart attack on 24 October 1914, Alexander of appendicitis on 24 November 1914.