Women leaders in industry in nineteenth-century France: The case of Amélie de Dietrich

Abstract

This article traces the history of Amélie de Dietrich in her role (1806 to 1855) as the head of one of the oldest family-owned businesses in Europe: the De Dietrich Company. Economic history has long given a very minor place to women entrepreneurs. Recent analyses nevertheless tend to show that women business leaders were not exceptions in the nineteenth century. This paper is a further attempt to bring women entrepreneurs – and their contribution to the industrial take-off – out of invisibility. Amélie de Dietrich took important strategic decisions to adapt the company to the new economic opportunities which arose in the first half of the nineteenth century. Her choices were decisive for the future of the company; what is more, she succeeded in restoring the familial ownership. Drawing on Amélie de Dietrich’s own unpublished correspondence, this contribution examines the factors that explain her success in imposing herself as a Maître des Forges.

Keywords:

• French industrial revolution
• entrepreneurship
• invisible women
• De Dietrich Company

Acknowledgment

We thank the Association de Dietrich for providing access to its archives at Reichshoffen, and Daniel Fischer for research assistance with our work there. We are indebted to Etienne Pommois and the Société d’Histoire et d’Archéologie de Reichshoffen for their assistance. We also address our warmest thanks to Elisabeth Messmer-Hitzke and the two anonymous referees for their valuable and helpful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 On women’s investors see Hoffman, Postel-Vinay and Rosenthal (1992, 2000), Owens (2002), Green and Owens (2003), Beachy et al. (2006), Green et al. (2011), Freeman et al. (2006), Rutterford and Maltby (2006), Maltby and Rutterford (2006), and Aston et al. (2019).

2 Kahn’s analysis is based on statistical information on French patentees and industrial exhibits.

3 In 2016 it moved to the suburbs of Strasbourg in Alsace.

4 Our translation.

5 Regarding the debates on the retardation-stagnation thesis among economic historians, see Crouzet (2003).

6 Our translation (from now on, all the translations of the papers are ours, especially the correspondence).

7 According to Brauener (1987, p. 77), Pfeffel was the Alsatian author of his time most concerned by the feminine condition: ‘Pfeffel drew at once both solace as well as the greater part of his inspiration from the feminine figures who accompanied him for the entire duration of his life. He was their confidant, their advisor and their advocate. He celebrated in them the qualities of the heart which he considered to be the true accompaniments of the spirit’. Blind, married and the father of thirteen children – seven died before age ten – he also founded the military academy of Colmar, his income as a writer and poet not being sufficient to support his family (Ernewein 2001, pp. 20–21). Sigismond, Amélie’s famous military brother, who would become an important officer in the French Army, attended this academy.

8 On Pfeffel’s religion, see notably Brauener (1994, pp. 141–151).

9 But note that the French Revolution did not directly affect the activities of the group, quite the contrary: for instance, Augustin Perier was housed by the Pfeffels during this period (Brauener 1987).

10 This correspondence is kept in the Archives de Dietrich, the Municipal Archives of Strasbourg and the French National Archives.

11 For a biography of Sybille Ochs, see Messmer-Hitzke (2018).

12 Note that there are indeed more than one Amélie de Dietrich in our narrative: Amélie de Berckheim which will become Amélie de Dietrich after her wedding with Fritz; Amélie de Dietrich, Amélie’s cousin which will marry Scipion Perier; and Amélie de Dietrich, daughter of Amélie and Fritz, which will marry Guillaume de Turckheim.

13 Among these, we might cite for instance Marguerite d’Hausen, known as ‘Madame d’Hayange’, the widow of Charles de Wendel (who died in 1784), Veuve Clicquot-Ponsardin, Veuve Levrault and after her Veuve Berger-Levrault, Veuve Ladrière, Veuve Mermilliod, Veuve Gévelot…

14 ‘You have been so good to me and my children, sir, on many many occasions, that I do not consider myself to be indiscreet in soliciting you to execute your project if it is possible prior to the assembly of shareholders I believe to be held on the 20^th of this month’ (ADD, Amélie to Bernard Frédéric, August 14, 1806).

15 ‘[Maman] gave me great pleasure in announcing to me that Turckheim had just informed you that the management of the forges had been passed to you unanimously. I blessed heaven that at least with respect to pecuniary matters you may now be free from concerns about your children’ (in Bloch 1896, Octavie to Amélie, September 3, 1806). It should be further noted that this quotation shows also that Amélie did not otherwise have sufficient income to raise her four children: her choice whether or not to pursue the work of her late husband was indeed quite constrained.

16 Casimir Perier would later become an important French political figure: member of the Chamber of Deputies from 1817 to 1831, and Prime Minister of France in the year 1831, when he died from cholera.

17 See Rapport du jury sur les produits de l’industrie française, présenté à S. E. M. de Champagny, ministre de l’intérieur ; précédé du procès-verbal des opérations du jury. Imprimerie impériale. Paris. 1806. Joseph-Marie Degerando, who was the husband of Annette de Rathsamhausen, a very close friend of Amélie and former member of the ‘Cercle de Schoppenwihr’, was also a member of the jury.

18 As evidenced by the diary of Jean-Valentin Haas, Bussière’s efforts bore fruit: ‘I wrote to M. Renouard on the matter of a new order for projectiles, proposed by the Ministy of War’ (SHARE 2021, December 1822, 34).

19 Louis Becquey was the general director of the ponts et chaussés et des mines during the Restoration. The existing legislation required that cart and carriage wheels be of a minimum width in order to prevent damage to pavements.

20 Polidoro Marocco.

21 In the field of accounting, while historians have long dated the advent of mature cost management to the 1880s, Fleischman and Parker (1991) and Fleischman and Tyson (1993) provide evidence that sophisticated cost-management techniques were used by British entrepreneurs of the early industrial revolution. The fact that a chief accountant was hired by Amélie de Dietrich in the early nineteenth century supports the idea that specialization of tasks and rational tools for management were also put into practice in some French industries in the early phase of the industrialization process.

22 According to Wilhelm, the use of compressor engines had not become general practice before 1835.

23 See INPI (Institut National de la Propriété Industrielle): https://www.inpi.fr/fr/base-brevets-du-19eme-siecle: three of them especially focused on railroads, while the two others dealt with the improvement of specific chimneys and a sytem of cast iron bridge.

24 The French term used by Amélie in the letter is liquidation. Even improperly employed, one can infer that by it she means the end of Paul Athanase Renouard de Bussière’s debt, which never ceased to worry her until her death.