It is, with Saint-Gobain, the oldest of large French companies. Long before the oil or tech empires, a systemic giant, a dynasty of blood and iron: the Wendels. This line of forge masters produced the iron of the royal armies, the rails and the steel of the industrial revolution, the two world wars and the Thirty Glorious Years. The Wendels, an industrial and political myth which marked the country’s social imagination.
The saga began in 1704. Jean-Martin Wendel bought a forge in poor condition in Hayange, in Moselle, then the lordship. He takes the particle and expands the area of forests supplying the furnaces with charcoal. His son Charles developed the business, driven by the wars of Louis XV. The Wendels supplied the royal armies and made a name for themselves in Versailles. Appointed engineering officer by Louis XVI, Ignace de Wendel (1741-1795) received the mission of modernizing French metallurgy in the face of English power. He created in Le Creusot, in 1782, the first “English foundry” running on coal and steam. The Revolution comes. The Wendel forges are confiscated and the family’s assets sold. Ignatius is forced into exile. In Hayange, his mother Marguerite, nicknamed “the iron lady”, faces revolutionary vindictiveness alone. Imprisoned, on her return to Hayange in 1795 she found the forges abandoned. Marguerite died in 1802 without having experienced the resurrection of her House.
A ruined forge
The following year, his grandson François de Wendel (1774-1825) bought the estate. Wendel supplied Napoleon’s armies, and François inaugurated the family’s entry into politics by becoming mayor of Hayange, president of the general council of Moselle, then royalist deputy in 1815. After his death, his son Charles entered the railway era. Wendel acquired iron and coal mines and founded the town of Stiring-Wendel. Charles died in 1870. Wendel was then the French number 1 in metallurgy. But the defeat against Prussia cuts Lorraine and the company in two. The Wendels retain control with separate companies on both sides, but Hayange moves into the annexed zone. Henri (1844-1906), son of Charles, lived there to protect the family heritage.
In 1880, Wendel acquired the license for the British process to finally transform Lorraine iron ore, rich in phosphorus, into quality steel. The operation was politically sensitive: Wendel bought the patent for its German factories and joined forces with Schneider to exploit it in French Lorraine. The agreement gave rise to the Joeuf factory which would place Wendel among the leading steel producers in Europe. Lorraine was covered with blast furnaces and supplied steel to the Belle Époque and then to the preparations for the Great War. When it broke out in 1914, the Wendels unanimously chose the French homeland. The group supplied the army with coal and ammunition, but its German factories were requisitioned by the Reich. In 1918, the Hayange factory was in working order, but that of Jœuf was in ruins. The reunited group immediately launched its reconstruction.
Between the wars, Wendel produced nearly a quarter of French steel. Its leader, François II de Wendel (1874-1949), is a figure of the country’s conservative power. President of the powerful Forges Committee, regent of the Bank of France, deputy then senator, he is the target of the left, who will make the Wendels a hated symbol of the power and money of the “two hundred families”. In 1939, history repeated itself: refusing collaboration, the Wendels were expelled from Lorraine, their mines flooded to prevent the German army from seizing them and their factories confiscated again by the Nazis. Although patriotic, the Wendels emerged very weakened from the war.
In 1945-1946, the government resulting from the Resistance nationalized its coal mines. The steel industry remains private but, in return, the group must comply with the objectives of the Monnet plan to modernize the national economy and price control. Faced with the colossal costs of new technologies and the push from northern competitors brought together in Usinor, the Wendels merged with other steel groups to create Sollac (1948), then Sacilor (1964). Wendel employs 60,000 people and is operating at full capacity, but its model is running out of steam.
From one war to another
From 1971, the group closed its obsolete steelworks. The first oil shock (1973-1974) will be the final blow. Asphyxiated by the debts contracted to modernize, Wendel can no longer cope. In 1978, the Barre government took control of Sacilor, before its formal nationalization by the socialist government in 1982. It was the end of the Wendel steel empire. The family then used its financial resources to create, under the aegis of Ernest-Antoine Seillière, descendant of François de Wendel, an investment fund managing 55 billion euros in investments in 2025. Having reached the eleventh generation, the 1,300 descendants of the Wendels are no longer casting steel, but the founding family has achieved the feat of retaining, for more than three centuries, control of the company.
