Koechlin family
The first traces of the family can be found in 1440, when Johann Koechlin moved from Stein am Rhein to Zurich, both in Switzerland.
[1] In 1745, Samuel Koechlin (1719–1776), together with Jean-Henri Dollfus and Jean-Jacques Schmaltzer, started a cloth printing firm in Mulhouse.
Turning in 1826 to the building of machinery for the textile industry, Koechlin became knowledgeable in the fabrication of steam machines and started making railroad equipment.
They stayed one of the six large French locomotive constructors until the merger with Elsässische Maschinenbau-Gesellschaft Grafenstaden in 1872, when the company became Société Alsacienne de Constructions Mécaniques.
[14] He published a pamphlet against some French officials governing Alsace, which was reprinted in a number of newspapers.
[15][16] Alfred Koechlin-Steinbach (1825–1872), son of Daniel Koechlin-Schouch and uncle of the composer Charles Koechlin, was a deputy for Haut-Rhin for a short while in 1871.
Captain in the French Army, he became a Knight in the Legion of Honour and received the Médaille commémorative de la guerre 1870–1871.
He also became a Knight in the Legion of Honour and received the Croix de guerre with Silver Star.
He served in the French army as well, and became a Commander of the Legion of Honour, received the Croix de Guerre with Bronze Star and other war medals.
One of his descendants is Kalki Koechlin, an award-winning French actress based in India.
Koechlin has established herself as one of the most popular actresses of India, through her performances in the critically and commercially successful films, including Dev.D (2009), Shanghai (2012), Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara (2011), Shaitan (2012), That Girl in Yellow Boots (2011), Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani (2013), Ek Thi Daayan (2013), Margarita with a Straw (2015) and Waiting (2016).
He owned works by Eugène Delacroix, Vincent van Gogh, Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Auguste Renoir, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot and Édouard Manet, next to large collections of Oriental, Islamic, and medieval art, and was a benefactor of the Louvre Museum, a.o.
Apart from his connections with artists like Auguste Rodin, he was a longtime friend of the art dealer Samuel Bing and American historian Royall Tyler and also befriended other Americans like Edith Wharton and French writers like Marcel Proust.
He wrote among other works 3 volumes about French Gothic ivories (1924) and a memoir, Souvenirs d'un vieil amateur d'art de l'Extrême-Orient in 1930.
[19] But he also donated works of art to many other French musea, like the Guimet Museum and the Musée d'Orsay.
