Wendel family

The de Wendel Family is an industrialist family from Lorraine, France. In the 19th and 20th centuries the family gained might both industrial and political. As a result, they also attracted controversy as an icon of French capitalism. Following the nationalisation of the French steel industry in 1978, they formed a successful investment company (Wendel Investissement).

The first record of the family is of Jean Wendel, who lived at Bruges at the end of the 16th century. He married Marie de Wanderve. They left Bruges for Koblenz. Their son Jean-George 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. They had six daughters and three sons. The sons were Francois Wendel, who died on 23 February 1742 without heirs, Jean-Martin Wendel (1665-1737), who founded the industrial fortune of the family, and Jean-Baptiste Wendel, an advocate at the Parliament of Metz in 1721.

Jean-Martin Wendel was born on 22 February 1665 in Longlaville, a domain that was part of his mother's dowry. He married Anne-Marie Meyer around 1700. On 26 March 1704 he paid 9,621 livres for the La Comte (La Rodolphe) factories at Hayange. Exploiting local supplies of iron and wood, Wendel and his son Charles built Hayange into the largest iron enterprise in Lorraine in the eighteenth century. He bought the landed estate of Hayange from the King of France, with the rights of middle and low justices. On 17 November 1711 he bought the position of King's Counselor in the Chancellery of the Parliament of Metz. He was ennobled by Leopold, Duke of Lorraine, by letters patent dated 17 February 1727 in Lunéville in confirmation of a title of nobility which could not otherwise be proved since the titles had been "lost in the misfortune of war". He died on 25 June 1737.

...
Wikipedia