De Wendel family
Following the nationalization of the French steel industry in 1978, the family formed a successful investment company (Wendel Investissement).
Their son Jean-Georges Wendel was born on 18 October 1605 in Koblenz, married Marguerite de Hammerstein and became colonel of a regiment of Cravattes (Croatians) under the Emperor Ferdinand III.
His son Christian Wendel was born on 23 April 1636 in Koblenz, and became a lieutenant in the army of Charles IV, Duke of Lorraine.
In 1656 he married Dorothea Agnes Jacob, and in 1660 remarried, to Claire Saurfeld who brought him property in Lorraine (the fief of Longlaville).
In 1781 Ignace and the English steelmaker William Wilkinson founded the Le Creusot company, which was taken by the Schneider family in 1836.
His third son, who would revive the family fortunes, was François de Wendel, born in Charleville on 19 February 1778.
[1] Following the death of Charles de Wendel in 1784, his widow kept the enterprise going during the early years of the revolution until she was imprisoned and her grandson was guillotined.
When Napoleon offered an amnesty to émigrés in 1803, François de Wendel, son of lgnace, returned from exile.
François's daughter Marguerite Joséphine (1804–51) married Baron Théodore Charles Constant de Gargan (1791-1853).
His eldest son Victor François, known as Franclet (1807–50) married Marie Charlotte Octavie Pauline de Roziere (1810–90).
[1] Charles and his brother-in-law Theodore de Gargan greatly expanded operations at Hayange and Moyeuvre in the 1840s and 1850s.
During this period, Henri de Wendel (1844–1906) acquired the process invented by the British engineers Thomas and Gichrist to produce steel.
In 1946, coal mines were nationalised; the last historical great master of forges, François II de Wendel, died in 1949.
The company, still directed by the family, suffered, in 1978, the great turmoil that weakened European steel-making and the entire de Wendel empire was nationalised without indemnity.
[3] Whatever remained of the empire was then converted into a successful investment company under Ernest-Antoine Seillière, who later became chairman of MEDEF, the French association of business employers.
