Fritz Schlumpf

Fritz Schlumpf, actually Federico Filippo Augustino Schlumpf ( born February 24, 1906 in Omegna in Milan, † April 18, 1992 in Basel) was a Swiss textile manufacturer and automobile collectors from Mulhouse in Alsace, France.

Smurf was the son of Swiss textile engineer Carl Smurf and his wife Jeanne Becker Alsatian. The textile producer Hans Schlumpf was his brother. 1908 the family moved to Mulhouse, Alsace, and Smurf lived there until the flight of the brothers into exile in Switzerland in 1977. The brothers succeeded in between the 1930s and 1970s to gain a monopoly for combed yarns in France, which they and their three factories in Alsace and in Northern France dominated the market without restriction.

The brothers Fritz and Hans Schlumpf wore 1945-1977 a huge collection of about 500 classic cars together, including several dozen Bugatti and two of the six surviving " Bugatti Royales ." To finance this hobby they loaded their businesses such that they became insolvent in 1977, and had to be dismissed in the following over 2000 people into unemployment. The unknown up to this time, the public car collection was discovered during riots in the context of a strike by the former workers of the textile work.

With the proceeds to be obtained from the sale of vehicles the claims of creditors could be served, but could the collection - especially by the intervention of the French government under François Mitterrand - are preserved in their entirety. This is also a requirement of unemployed workers was ( including a large number of women ) met: They would have been cheated by selling a second time, because the collection they wanted to at least get the region.

The former factory buildings of its textile mills in Mulhouse today house the Musée National de l'Automobile in France, which is also known under the name Schlumpf Collection.

The desire and work of the brothers Schlumpf is contradictory to rate: Their economic and social responsibility - both themselves and their employees over - completely leaving out of account, they left behind for posterity one of the largest and most fascinating automobile museums in the world.

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