The Javal family originated in
Alsace. They benefited from
Napoleon I's policy of
openness toward Jews, and in the 19th century experienced a remarkable ascent, with family members becoming prominent bankers, industrialists, physicians, public officials and artists. Dr Dov Weisbrot says "In the twentieth century, the name Javal was equal in prestige with those of
Pereire,
Fould, and
Rothschild."
The Javal were a family of important captains of industry, businessmen and bankers, well rooted for many generation [in 1889] in Paris and Europe (...) The Javal [...] managed for well over a century that jump in the industrial revolution. Amongst the minority of businessmen and industrials that evolved at the top of French society and integrated with its elite, were the Javal. This family produced all across the 19th century bankers, captains of industry, professors of medicine, high civil servants, members of parliament and artists.[1]
The Javal, writes
Pierre Birnbaum have known an exceptional financial success. Since the late 18th century, they participated to numerous economic adventures, from railways to textiles and weaved very close links with the business world [...] At the heart of an international industrial network, they start in the early 19th century financial operations on a vast scale, gathering a considerable fortune that places them in the first rank of the social elite.[2]
Early history
The family fortune began in the early part of the 18th century but really took off with the industrial revolution. Starting with the two Javal brothers (both named Jacques, and called respectively Jacques Javal the Elder and Jacque Javal the Younger) that operated a spinning mill in
Mulhouse.
In 1826, Jacques Javal the Younger entered the Board of Manufacturers and in 1828 he was made a
Knight of the Legion of Honor, under its industrial activity on the proposal of Count Chabrol de Volvic, prefect of the Seine. He built a mansion at the bottom of
rue Taitbout while his son and partner, Joseph, settled rue Chauchat. When Jacques the Younger retired in 1835, he was one of France's richest men.
Leopold Javal
Jacques the Younger sponsored
Leopold, then 31 years old, to invest in new businesses. Leopold invested in mines in Provence, in pipeline companies, a department store, a public bathhouse on the Seine at the foot of the
Samaritaine, a housing neighbourhood for workers in Montrouge. In ten years, he multiplied by three the capital of the family companies and created his own personal fortune. He took control of the banking side of the family empire and renamed it "Leopold Javal and C i.e. "and took the lead. Through this bank, it invests in the development of railway lines, in combination with the house Koechlin.
He also took up a political career as general counsel of the
Gironde from 1851, with the support of the imperial regime, and as a representative of the department of the
Yonne to the Legislature from 1857, where he appeared first as a Republican against the Bonapartist candidate, and was consistently re-elected in 1863, 1869 and 1871. In 1862, he was made an
Officier de la Legion d'honneur. He lived at the end of his life, an hotel particulier of rue d'Anjou, and started the very important Javal art collection with paintings of
François Boucher,
Claude Joseph Vernet,
Canaletto,
Andrea del Sarto,
Bruegel and
Rubens.
In 1838, Javal married Augusta von Laemel, daughter of the financier
Léopold von Laemel and the Baroness Sophia von Eichthal, sister of the
BaronSimon von Eichthal, a member of one of the
Deux cents familles [
fr], the two hundred families that were the biggest shareholders in the
Bank of France, a family which gave several governors to the Bank of France.
Being heavily influenced by
Saint-Simonism, Javal began by planting pine forests and drilling wells and was also passionate about agriculture: he was innovative and took great care in the management of his landed properties. The Javal family owned some 300 hectares around the
cistercian abbey of
Vauluisant, while in
Andernos Javal enlarged an estate at Audenge to Ares and to Lacanau, thus forming a big property of over 3,000 hectares.
The Javal owned the perfume house Houbigant, the second oldest perfume house in Europe. Operating since 1775, the House of Houbigant is the only fragrance house that has existed through four centuries of history. Through these centuries, the perfumers of the House of Houbigant have made groundbreaking discoveries in the formulation of perfumes that have revolutionized forever the way perfumes are constructed.
Over the centuries, the House of Houbigant became perfumer to the royal courts of Europe. When in 1793
Marie-Antoinette was guillotined, she carried three vials of Houbigant perfume in her corsage to give her strength.
Josephine, the future Empress of France, belonged to a group of stylish young men and women called "The
Muscadins" because of their craze for musk which was Josephine's favourite essence. Houbigant fragrances travelled in
Napoleon's campaign chest during the years when he was conquering Europe. In the spring of 1815 Napoleon was only in Paris for three months, a period known as the "
Hundred Days". In those brief months he raised an army and yet found time to shop at Houbigant.
In 1882, the famous Fougère Royale came out, a fragrance that would define a new category of perfumes – the "fougère" (or fern-like) fragrance family, which is still today the most popular family in men fragrances. In 1912, Houbigant perfumer Bienaimé picked up the ball from Paul Parquet and introduced Quelque Fleurs, one of Houbigant's all-time great fragrances and the first multi-floral bouquet ever created. During the same period, Houbigant stretched out its commercial arms around the world. Under the direction of the Paris office, offices were established in the United States, England, Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Poland, Romania. Connections were made in Havana, Buenos-Aires, Rio-de-Janeiro, Australia, Japan, and China.
Captain of industry at the age of twenty-nine years, from 1922 to 1940,
Paul-Louis Weiller developed the largest construction company of aircraft in Europe, the
Gnome et Rhône conglomerate, which became the
Snecma after nationalization in 1945 . From 1925, he gradually buys the capital of the airline
CIDNA. He participated in the creation of other airlines to Africa. They will all be nationalized in 1933 to become
Air France, of which he will be one of the first directors (he was offered in 1933 by
Pierre Cot, the
Ministre de l'Air, to be President of
Air France, but he refused).
Paul-Louis Weiller was married 29 August 1922 in Paris, with Princess Alexandra
Ghica (of the ruling princes of
Wallachia and
Moldavia) with whom he had a daughter, Mary Elizabeth and whom he divorced in 1931.
Coat of Arms of the Ghica family
He married second wife
Aliki Diplarakou, Miss Europe in 1930. Aliki was the daughter of a diplomat Georgios Diplarakos. She had three sisters, Nada Diplarakos who married French Ambassador André
Rodocanachi, Cristina Diplarakos, who married Henri Claudel, a son of the French poet
Paul Claudel. Aliki second marriage was in 1945 with Sir John (Jack) Wriothesley
Russell (23 August 1914 – 3 August 1984), an English aristocrat who was descended from
John Russell, 6th Duke of Bedford and cousin of the philosopher
Bertrand Russell.
They had a son
Paul-Annik Weiller (1933–1998)[3] who married in Rome, in Santa Maria in Trastevere in 1965, Emmanuela Donna Olimpia a
Torlonia di Civitella-Cesi. She was the daughter of
The European Woman: During
World War I, she published her first press reports under a
pseudonym. In Paris, she came in contact with her first great loves, representatives of countries striving for independence, such as
Eduard Beneš,
Tomáš Masaryk and
Milan Štefánik. Between 1919 and 1939, she often travelled to
Czechoslovakia. In 1918, she founded the weekly newspaper, Europe nouvelle [
fr] (New Europe), which she published until 1934.
Thomas Mann,
Gustav Stresemann,
Rudolf Breitscheid and
Aristide Briand were among her co-authors on the paper. Louise Weiss described those who paved the way for the closening of the
German-French relationship between the World Wars as "peace pilgrims", and they called their important co-worker "my good Louise". Europe dreamed of unification and in 1930, she founded the "Ecole de la Paix" (School of Peace), a private institute for international relations. With the takeover by the
National Socialists in
Germany, the possibility of a unification was over.
In 1979, Louise Weiss stood as a candidate of the
Gaullist Party in the
first European election in 1979. On 17 July 1979 she was elected as a French
Member of the European Parliament (MEP), sitting with the
European People's Party. At the time of the first election, aged 86, she was the oldest member in Parliament and thus the EP's first
'oldest member'. She remained MEP and oldest member until her death on 26 May 1983, aged 90.
The main parliament building in Strasbourg bears her name.
The Women's Rights Activist: In 1934, she founded the association, La femme nouvelle (The New Woman) with
Cécile Brunsvicg, and she strove for a stronger role of women in public life. She participated in campaigns for the
right of women to vote in France, organised suffragette commands, demonstrated and had herself chained to a street light in Paris with other women. In 1935, she unsuccessfully sued against the "inability of women to vote" before the French
Conseil d'État.
André Maurois was a famous French writer who in 1938 was elected to the prestigious Académie française. He was encouraged and assisted in seeking this post by Marshal
Philippe Pétain, and he made a point of acknowledging with thanks his debt to Pétain in his 1941 autobiography, "Call no man happy" – though by the time of writing their paths had sharply diverged, Pétain having become Head of State of
Vichy France.
A student of the philosopher
Alain, during World War I he joined the
French army and served as an interpreter and later a liaison officer with the
British army. His first novel, Les silences du colonel Bramble, was a witty and socially realistic account of that experience. It was an immediate success in France. It was translated and became popular in the United Kingdom and other English-speaking countries as The Silence of Colonel Bramble. Many of his other works have also been translated into English,[5] as they often dealt with British people or topics, such as his biographies of
Disraeli,
Byron, and
Shelley.
When World War II began, he was appointed the French Official Observer attached to the British General Headquarters. In this capacity he accompanied the British Army to Belgium. He knew personally the main politicians in the French Government, and on 10 June 1940 he was sent on a mission to London. The Armistice ended that mission. Maurois was demobilised and travelled from England to Canada. He wrote of these experiences in his book, Tragedy in France.[6]
Maurois's first wife was Jeanne-Marie Wanda de Szymkiewicz, a young Polish-Russian aristocrat who had studied at
Oxford University. She had a nervous breakdown in 1918 and in 1924 she died of
sepsis. After the death of his father, Maurois gave up the family business of textile manufacturing.
Maurois's second wife was Simone de Caillavet, the granddaughter of
Anatole France's mistress
Léontine Arman de Caillavet. After Germany occupied France the couple moved to the United States to help with propaganda work against the
Nazis.[7]
Cerf Herschel Jacob (became Javal in 1808) (1751–1819), merchant at
Seppois-le-Bas
x (1) : Hindel Juda Blum
│
├──> Jacques Javal the Elder
│ x Claire Schöngrun (died in 1822)
│ │
│ └──> Joseph Javal ( -1844)
│ x Julie Javal
│
├──> Jacques Javal the Younger ( -1858)
│ x Lucie Blumenthal
│ │
│ ├──> Julie Javal
│ │ x Joseph Javal ( -1844)
│ │
│ └──> Léopold Javal (1804–1872), banker, agronomist, republican deputy of
Yonne
│ x (22 July 1838) Augusta de Laemel (1817–1893) (daughter of Leopold von Laemel and Sophia d'
Eichtal)
│ │
│ ├──> Louis Émile Javal (1839–1907), ophthalmologist, deputy of
Yonne
│ │ x (30 July 1867) : Maria-Anna Ellissen (1847–1933)
│ │ │
│ │ ├──>
Alice Javal (1869–1943)
│ │ │ x (23 May 1882)
Lazare Weiller (1858–1928), industrialist, senator of
Bas-Rhin
│ │ │ │
│ │ │ ├──> Jean-Pierre Weiller (1890– ?)
│ │ │ │
│ │ │ ├──> Marie-Thérèse Weiller (1890– ?)
│ │ │ │
│ │ │ ├──> Georges-André Weiller (1892– ?)
│ │ │ │
│ │ │ └──>
Paul-Louis Weiller (1893–1993), industrialist and financier
│ │ │ x Princess Alexandra
Ghica
│ │ │ │
│ │ │ ├──> Marie-Elisabeth Isarri
│ │ │ │
│ │ │ ├──>
Countess Pilar de La Béraudière
│ │ │ │
│ │ │ ├──>
Jacques-Louis de La Béraudière
│ │ │ x
Aliki Diplarakou
│ │ │ │
│ │ │ ├──>
Paul Annick Weiller
│ │ │ x Donna Olimpia
Torlonia di Civitella-Cesi (daughter of Don Alessandro
Torlonia, 5th Prince di Civitella-Cesi and the infant
Beatriz of Spain)
│ │ │ │
│ │ │ ├──>
Sybilla Weiller
│ │ │ x S. A. Prince Guillaume of Luxembourg (son of Jean, Grand Duc de Luxembourg and the Princess Joséphine of Belgium)
│ │ │ │
│ │ │ ├──>
Cosima Weiller
│ │ │
│ │ ├──> Jeanne Félicie Javal (1871– ?)
│ │ │ x
Paul Louis Weiss (1867–1945), engineer
│ │ │ │
│ │ │ ├──>
Louise Weiss (1893–1983), journalist and politician
│ │ │ │
│ │ │ ├──> Emile Jean Jacques Weiss (1894–1987), inspector of finances
│ │ │ │
│ │ │ ├──> André Eugène Paul Weiss (1899–1950), prefect
│ │ │ │
│ │ │ ├──> Francis Weiss
│ │ │ │
│ │ │ └──>
Marie Jenny Emilie Weiss (1903–1987), pediatrician and psychoanalyst
│ │ │ x Alexandre Roudinesco
│ │ │ │
│ │ │ └──>
Élisabeth Roudinesco (1944–), historian and psychoanalyst
│ │ │
│ │ ├──> Jean Javal (1871–1915), engineer, deputy of
Yonne
│ │ │ x
Lily Lévy (1882–1958), writer
│ │ │
│ │ ├──> Louis
Adolphe Javal (1873–1944), professor of medicine
│ │ │ │
│ │ │ ├──>
│ │ │ │ } 2 daughters died in a concentration camp
│ │ │ ├──>
│ │ │ │
│ │ │ └──> Léopold Javal
│ │ │
│ │ └──> Mathilde Julie Javal (1876–1944)
│ │
│ │
│ ├──> Pauline Javal (1842– ?)
│ │ x Jean Théodore de Salemfelds, officer in the army of Austria-Hungary
│ │
│ ├──> Ernest Javal (1843–1897), prefect of
La Creuse
│ │ x Marie Seligmann
│ │
│ ├──> Eugène Javal (1846–1847)
│ │
│ ├──> Alfred Javal (1848–1921), engineer and industrialist
│ │ x Claire Mathilde Dreyfous
│ │ │
│ │ └──> Fernand Javal (1884-1977), engineer and industrialist
│ │ x Lia Aline Schiller (daughter of A. Schiller and E. de Ricqlès)
│ │ │
│ │ └──> Antoine Javal (1921-2008), entrepreneur and collector
│ │ x Imogen Bayerthal
│ │ │
│ │ └──>Laurence Nebout-Javal (1956)
│ │ x Emmanuel Nebout
│ │
│ │ x Léone Leroy (1932-2009)
│ │ │
│ │ └──> Catherine Javal Van de Kerckhove (1964)
│ │ x Jan Van de Kerckhove (1962-2003) (family of immemorial nobility from the country of Limbourg, counts since Charlemagne, descendants of Maingut, nephew of Conrad, 5th duke of Franconia [8])
│ │
│ │
│ │
│ │
│ └──> Sophie Javal (1853–1947)
│ x (1878) : Paul Wallerstein (died in 1903), engineer
│
│
├──> 2 other sons
│
│
│
x (2) : Keyle Felix
Notes and references
^Jacques Mousseau, Le Siècle de Paul-Louis Weiller. 1893–1993, Paris, Stock, 1998, p.49
^Pierre Birnbaum, Les Fous de la République, Paris, Le Seuil, coll. Points, 1994, pp.289–290
^Liukkonen, Petri.
"André Maurois". Books and Writers (kirjasto.sci.fi). Finland:
Kuusankoski Public Library. Archived from
the original on 5 December 2006.
Frédéric Viey, " La famille Javal ", in :
Léo Hamon (dir.), Les Républicains sous le Second Empire, Entretiens d'Auxerre, Paris, Éditions de la Maison des Sciences de l'Homme, 1993, p. 91
Dr Dov Weisbrot, "France in the European Domain: Identity, Languages and Revolutions"
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