Mayer Amschel Rothschild, the founder of the Rothschild fortune, at the time of his death in 1812, created a trust of his estate, by will, for the elevation of the Jewish race and the establishment of a Jewish World Empire. The cardinal principles of the trust were secrecy, that the estate should be kept intact as a unit, that the heirs and their heirs should have only a communal interest in it, and that the estate as a whole should be governed by the eldest son of the eldest son unless a majority of the heirs determined otherwise.