Humbert de Wendel (4 February 1876 – 14 November 1954) was a French steelmaker who came from a long line of Lorrainian industrialists. He and his brother François de Wendel were among the leaders of the French steel industry from before World War I until after World War II.
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. He was followed by eight generations of steelmakers. After the German annexation of Alsace-Lorraine, Les Petits-Fils de François de Wendel et Cie (PFFW) controlled the Wendel family's steel operations in Lorraine, while Wendel et Cie owned the French Wendel properties around Jœuf.
Life
Pre-war period (1876–1914) Jean Marie Humbert de Wendel was born on 4 February 1876 in Paris VIII. His parents were Henri de Wendel (1844–1906), a steelmaker, and Berthe de Corbel Corbeau de Vaulserre (1849–1918). His father was elected to the Reichstag for Thionville - Boulay in 1884 and reelected in 1887 as a "protesting deputy", one who objected to the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine to the German Empire by the Treaty of Frankfurt (1871) without having consulted the people. Humbert's elder brother was François Augustin Marie de Wendel (1874-1949) and his younger brother was Maurice Marie Ignace de Wendel (1879–1961). In 1892 his brother François chose to become a naturalized French citizen, and Humbert followed his lead later. Humbert was very discreet in politics, and did not support his elder brother's involvement in public affairs, which led to François being elected a deputy for Briey in 1914. In the pre-war period Humbert de Wendel controlled the Hayange football club.
François became a gérant of PFFW in 1903, and Humbert became a gérant in 1906. The three brothers, François, Humbert and Maurice, worked closely together. Often they spent the day in the same office and then shared the evening meal. Maurice handled public relations and social welfare, while Humbert managed commercial matters and relations with industry organisations. The brothers later said they were so close due to their shared difficulties with the German authorities. Humbert wrote, "My brothers and I were authorized to visit Lorraine only a few weeks each year. This stringency of the German administration appeared to compromise our future in the family management; it provided a disposition that loved independence more than orders with a sufficient reason to direct its choice toward careers that left more room for a cult of oneself."
World War I (1914–19) At the outbreak of World War I the three brothers left Hayange in Lorraine and drove to Paris. In 1915 Humbert was sent to London where he worked with the British government over the supply of industrial materials. The military attaché to the French Embassy, who supervised Humbert de Wendel's purchases of metals, was Général Louis de La Panouse (1863–1945). Through his wife, Sabine de Wendel, he was Humbert de Wendel's cousin. Later a parliamentary commission was set up to review profits made by suppliers of war materials. François de Wendel drew up the report of metal industry contracts. Due to this involvement, there were allegations that the Wendels used their positions to further their interests, but their Lorraine steelworks were behind the German lines throughout the war. The Wendels simply provided their expertise in metallurgy and metal markets to the French state.
Towards the end of World War I (1914–18) study groups under Humbert de Wendel requested a postwar settlement in which the Saar would be ceded, Alsace-Lorraine returned to France and Luxembourg transferred from the German customs union to a new union with Belgium. Camille Cavallier was one of a small number of iron masters who also wanted the left bank of the Rhine. The Comité des forges, the steelmakers' association, wanted to keep German steel producers out of French markets while maintaining free access to German markets from the Lorraine producers. On 23 August 1917 Robert Pinot, secretary of the Comité des forges, wrote to Humbert, then president of the Union des industries et métiers de la métallurgie (UIMM). He saw that in many ways the collective strength of workers had grown during the war, and French industry must therefore become better organized as a group to defend their interests in the postwar period.
