Alfred Ganz-Wolff

Alfred Ganz was born on 8 November 1874 on the Rosengasse in Mainz. His parents were Moritz and Karoline Ganz, who ran a kosher butcher's shop. Alfred had nine siblings, two of whom died in early childhood. He attended primary and secondary school in Mainz, completing his Mittlere Reife. On 15 April 1890 he began an apprenticeship as a merchant in the iron trade at Julius Sichel in Mainz, where he subsequently went to work.

On 5 February 1904 he married Valerie Wolff, an acquaintance of his sister Ida. Together they had four children: Ernst (1904), Felix (1906), Madelaine (1908) and Elisabeth (1911). All the children were born in Luxembourg, where Alfred — who had become a partner in the firm of Sichel in 1903 — saw good prospects for developing the company. Luxembourg lay at the heart of European steel production, alongside the Ruhr region, Lorraine and Belgium. In 1912 Alfred took over management of the two important Sichel branches in Luxembourg City and Esch-sur-Alzette. When the other partner, Ferdinand Sichel, lost his eighteen-year-old son, he withdrew from the management of the firm, and Alfred took over the majority of the company.

Alfred was a far-sighted, energetic entrepreneur. He recognised the importance of both calcium carbide and soldering tin as commodities of the future, and so the firm of Sichel evolved from a trading house into a manufacturer. Through his great drive, it grew into a substantial enterprise headquartered in Luxembourg, with subsidiaries in Germany, France and Belgium.

In Thonon on Lake Geneva, Sichel acquired a power station in order to build a calcium carbide factory. It went into operation in 1914. When the manager of this factory died suddenly, Alfred was forced to move with his family to Thonon. When the First World War broke out, the family had to leave Thonon in haste and moved to Wiesbaden, where Alfred's parents lived.

Alfred was conscripted into the military. Thanks to his command of French, he was assigned to the railway surveillance service. His good connections secured him a posting on the line Saarbrücken – Thionville – Luxembourg, which also allowed him to attend to his private affairs. After his calcium carbide production was confiscated by the French, he found new sources in Switzerland at the carbide works of Mr Frey Fürst on the Bürgenstock.

These contacts led him to settle in St. Niklausen near Lucerne. On 1 May 1918 the entire family moved into the Villa Solina. From there he ran the constantly growing Sichel group. On 17 December 1921 the Faculty of Philosophy of the Ludwig University of Giessen awarded him an honorary doctorate. The certificate honoured him as a "far-sighted merchant who in more than thirty years has led the firm under his direction to a position of brilliance", as a "discerning patron of scholarly work" and as a "warm-hearted supporter of aspiring minds, for whom he has paved the way upwards". In the 1920s he acquired an anthracite coal mine in Grône in the Valais and in 1923, together with the Bank La Roche, founded Blockmetall in Buchs near Zurich, a producer of soldering tin.

In the recession of 1929 and then chiefly through the rise of the National Socialists, the German companies were seized and the firms in Luxembourg and France placed under sequestration. The family survived the Second World War in St. Niklausen. The coal mine became a great stroke of luck, as coal grew scarce in Switzerland.

Alfred Ganz was a generous and open-hearted man. His cheerful nature won him many friendships, including in the world of business. In his life he helped countless people; his close and extended family in particular owed him much. Thus he sheltered his brother Cäsar and his wife Emilie, the parents-in-law of his youngest daughter and, at times, his son Felix and family throughout the war years. Not all his siblings could be saved: his sister Regina Ida was murdered in 1943 at the Theresienstadt concentration camp. He died at the age of 84 after a brief illness.