Henri Deutsch de la Meurthe

Henri Deutsch de la Meurthe (1846, Paris – 1919) was a successful French petroleum businessman (known as the "Oil King of Europe") and an avid supporter of early aviation. He sponsored a number of prizes to encourage the development of aviation technologies, including the Grand Prix d'Aviation and the Deutsch de la Meurthe prize.

The Deutsch de la Meurthe was a French family known for its wealth and patronage in technology and philanthropy, having helped develop the industrial oils industry in France. In 1845 Alexander Deutsch founded a company for the processing and marketing of vegetable oils in La Villette, then an independent commune of Paris. With the discovery of petroleum oil in Pennsylvania in 1859, Deutsch began to study and develop the use of petroleum oils in France. In 1877 Deutsch brought his two sons, Henri and Emile, into the family business, which bought a refinery in Rouen in 1881 and another in St. Loubès in Gironde in 1883. In 1889, in association with the Rothschild brothers, oil refining began in Spain. At this time Alexander added the "de la Meurthe" to the family name.

Henri recognized that the future of petroleum sales depended on the development of small internal-combustion engines, and so he promoted automobile development (he presented French President Marie François Sadi Carnot with an automobile) and also became interested in aviation. Together with Ernest Archdeacon he founded the Aéro-Club de France to promote the new technologies. In order to do this, he used some of his wealth to create a number of monetary prizes as incentives for aviators to achieve certain aviation milestones.

In 1906 Deutsch entered into a partnership with Wilbur Wright and Hart Berg to establish a company in France to supply a Wright aircraft to the French government. Deutsch financed the venture by buying the only block of shares to be sold in France, and used his influence with the French government. The effort fell through, however.

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