Édouard Gruner
| Édouard Gruner | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
16 June 1849 Poitiers, France |
| Died | 21 July 1933 (aged 84) Breux-Jouy, Essonne, France |
| Nationality | French |
| Occupation | Civil engineer |
Édouard Emmanuel Gruner (16 June 1849 – 21 July 1933) was a French civil engineer and industrialist. He trained as a mining engineer, and soon became a senior administrator or president of various steel and mining enterprises. He headed the central committee of coal mining companies from 1907, and was first president of the Protestant Federation of France. He was active in the social Protestant movement, believing that employers had responsibility for the welfare of workers, and should not just delegate this to the state.
Édouard Emmanuel Gruner was born in Poitiers, Vienne, on 16 January 1849. He was from an old Protestant bourgeois family from Bern. He was the only son of Emmanuel-Louis Gruner (1809–83) and Emma Milson. His father was a civil engineer who was assistant director of the École des mines and vice president of the Conseil des mines. He attended the École Polytechnique from 1869. As a sub-lieutenant of artillery, he defended Paris in 1871 during the Franco-Prussian War. He entered the École des Mines in November 1871, and graduated in 1873. He wrote on iron metallurgy after an internship in Styria-Carinthia. He married Mathilde Engelbach (d. 1923). They had two sons, Henri and Louis.
Throgh family connections Gruner was appointed assistant director of the Compagnie Châtillon-Commentry plant at Châtillon-sur-Seine in 1874, and then in 1876 director of a factory at Neuves-Maisons. He directed the Cie Châtillon-Commentry plant at Beaucaire, Bouches-du-Rhone from 1879 to 1885. He was made a consulting engineer with De Dietrich, undertaking missions in Germany, Austrie, Russia, Spain and Algeria.
At the start of 1887 there were discussions on setting up a permanent mining employers' committee, with Gruner as secretary. He spent several months in Germany that year studying how employers' organization worked there. In 1889 Gruner was named secretary general of the Comité central des houillères, a newly formed interest group of coal mining companies. Also in 1889 Gruner founded the Comité permanent du Congrès des accidents du travail at the 1889 Universal Exhibition. This group promoted regulation of accident insurance at an industry level and included Oscar Linder (1829–1917), Maurice Bellom (1865–1919), Léon Say (1826–96) and Jules Simon (1814–96). It was one of the earliest precursors of the Musée social.
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