Thyssen

"a sister of my grandfather, with a young man from the Bicheroux family, renowned entrepreneurs in the German industry of the time, gave my grandfather the chance to lay the symbolic first stone of the Thyssen empire, by partnering with his brother-in-law’s family to create, in 1867, a steel rolling company under the name Thyssen Foussol & Co., of which he would be the commercial director. It was three intense years in which he worked eighteen hours a day, seven days a week, clearly showing that his tenacity knew no bounds. It was there that he adopted the motto of his life “If I rest, I rust”."

""When I was born, only my grandfather August was waiting for me." Thus, with this surprising and concise sentence, Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza began the story of his life one winter night as the snow fell incessantly over Saint Moritz. According to him, no one else was waiting; and, of course, no one could imagine that this child would be forced to take over the reins of the Thyssen empire at only twenty-three years old, exactly the same age his grandfather August was when he laid the first stone of the said empire, which he started by creating his own rolling mill workshop with twenty thousand dollars he borrowed from his father."

"In the emblem or shield of the Thyssens, this maxim stands out: "La vertu surpasse la richesse" (Virtue surpasses wealth)."

"At twenty-three years old—the same age I was when I took over my father's business—my grandfather, convinced that the future and fortune were in the steel industry, founded the Thyssen empire, starting with twenty thousand dollars that he borrowed from his father and about seventy workers, and grew to have commercial interests on all five continents."