Charles de Wendel (13 December 1809 – 15 April 1870) was a French steel manufacturer in Lorraine and a deputy in the French legislative assembly.
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Origins
The de Wendel family can be traced back to Jean Wendel of Bruges, who married Marie de Wanderve around 1600.
His descendants in the male line mostly pursued military careers.
Jean's descendant Jean-Martin Wendel (1665–1737) purchased the factories of Le Comte in Hayange, Lorraine, in 1704.
This was the foundation of the family's industrial operations.
The purchase of the mastership of a forge carried with it a noble title, and Martin Wendel became Martin de Wendel, seigneur d'Hayange.
He was followed by eight generations of steelmakers.
The Wendels lost their forge and foundry at Hayange during the French Revolution.
The banker Florentin Seillière (1744–1825) helped them buy it back in 1804, and in 1811 helped them buy the nearby Moyeuvre forge.
Early years
Alexis Charles de Wendel was born on 13 December 1809 in Metz, Moselle.
He was the second son of François de Wendel (1778–1825) and Françoise Joséphine de Fischer de Dicourt (1784–1872).
His father was deputy from 1815–16 and from 1818–25, and master of the Hayange foundry.
After his father died in 1825, his mother took over management of the family business.
Charles' older brother, Victor-François, was not interested in running the family business and moved from Hayange to estates on the Seille river.
Charles was sixteen when his father died.
He entered the École Polytechnique in 1828, and after graduating went to England to study mining and metallurgy.
Charles returned to France in 1834.
On 29 May 1843 Charles de Wendel married Jeanne Marie de Pechpeyrou-Comminges de Guitaut.
Industrialist
Charles de Wendel had to share control of the enterprise with his mother and his brother-in-law, Baron Théodore de Gargan, which he resented, and blamed on the insistence of the Napoleonic Code on the equal rights of heirs.
In the 1830s the family matriarch, Madame Joséphine de Wendel, drew up contracts through which the children and grandchildren of François de Wendel would nominally receive a cash payment as their share of the inheritance, but the money would be invested in the business, paying a low rate of return.
Théodore de Gargan died in 1851 and Charles became the sole manager, but still shared ownership with his siblings and their children.
On 24 April 1857 Madame de Wendel, Charles de Wendel and Théodore de Gargan junior signed a deed that established the commandite of Le Fils de Francois de Wendel et Cie.
Madame de Wendel put up almost all the capital of the partnership and took 80% of the profits, while Charles took 12% and Gargan took 8%.
Wendel and Gargan greatly expanded operations at Hayange and Moyeuvre in the 1840s and 1850s.
Both plants were connected by rail to the company's coal mines and coke furnaces at Stiring-Wendel and at Seraing in Belgium, alleviating a chronic shortage of coal and coke.
During the metallurgy slump of 1847–50 Charles de Wendel was assisted by the Bank of France, which he fully repaid in 1851.
In the crisis year of 1848 Charles de Wendel and Eugène Schneider saved the foundry at Fourchambault from bankruptcy by co-signing a huge bank loan.
In 1846 Charles de Wendel and the Parisian businessman Georges Hainguerlot bought the coal mining concession of Schœneck.
Politician
In 1848 Charles de Wendel was elected to the General Council of Moselle by acclamation.
he represented the canton of Thionville.
On 13 May 1849 he was elected Representative for Moselle in the legislative assembly, where he sat on the right.
He fully supported the policy of Napoleon III, and approved Napoleon's coup d'etat.
He was elected deputy to the legislature as the government candidate for the second district of Moselle on 29 February 1852, and reelected on 22 June 1857 and 1 June 1863, each time with a huge majority.
He resigned from the legislative assembly in 1867 due to health problems.
He left office on 19 February 1867 and was replaced by Stephen Liégeard.
Death and legacy
Charles de Wendel was made a knight of the Legion of Honour.
He died on 15 April 1870 in Paris.
In 1834, when Charles de Wendel returned to France, the Wendels produced about 1% of French iron.
By 1870 they produced 11.2%, and were the largest iron operation in France.
At the time of his death, Wendel et Cie employed some 7,000 workers and produced 134,500 tons of pig iron and 112,500 tons of iron a year.
With his death his mother, now 86, was again in charge of the family firm.
After the annexation of Lorraine following the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, in December 1871 she converted the enterprise from a simple proprietorship to a société en commandite, Les Petits-files de Francois de Wendel et Cie. Her nine grandchildren were shareholders.
Charles left two sons, Henri de Wendel (1844–1906) and Robert de Wendel (1847–1903), who both continued in the steel-making tradition.