François-Henri Lavanchy

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François-Henri Lavanchy (born January 4, 1848 in Morges , † May 11, 1922 in Cannes ) was a Swiss entrepreneur , philanthropist and film pioneer.

life and work

Lavanchy was a nurse for the Swiss Red Cross during the Franco-Prussian War . In 1879 he married the Englishwoman Jenny Elisabeth, née Clarke.

In the 1880s Lavanchy stood up for the concerns of the visually impaired and founded a vocational school in Paris in 1881 . In 1892 Lavanchy supported the establishment of a studio for the visually impaired in Lausanne .

Lavanchy, who founded a company for the use of coin-operated machines in 1889, had shown an interest in researching moving images long before the cinematograph . With his father-in-law William Gibbs Clarke, Lavanchy was one of the four founders of the Société Française du Phonoscope , which aimed to further develop the work of Georges Demenÿ .

As a licensee of the Société Lumière , he produced a film on behalf of the entrepreneur Achilles Lotz at the end of September 1896, which was shot by Constant Girel on the Mittlere Rheinbrücke and shown to the public in Basel , together with other Lumière films, in the city ​​casino . The film features Lotz and his family members, Joseph Alexis Joye and Lavanchy, among others.

From 1889 Lavanchy was the general agent of the Lever Brothers , manufacturers of “Sunlight Soap”, in Switzerland. In 1898 he was director of the first subsidiary of the Helvetia soap factory founded in Olten , which was renamed the Sunlight soap factory in 1909

Lavanchy was the concessionaire of the Lumière house and organized the first cinematographic screenings in Switzerland during the national exhibition in Geneva in 1896. For the Lever Brothers he organized film screenings, which were always associated with Lever Brothers advertising, as well as well-known personalities such as Lavanchy, Ferdinand Hodler and Emil Beurmann .

The frequency with which Lavanchy appeared in his own films suggests that he was the producer rather than the cameraman, the latter role possibly being carried out by his younger brother Emile Lavanchy (1857-1923). A year after the Helvetia soap factory opened, Lavanchy retired from the company.

Lavanchy as a mediator was involved in the negotiations leading to the agreement with the March 26, 1896 Ludwig Stollwerck and the Societe Lumiere on the recovery of the cinematograph of the Lumière brothers introduced in Germany.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The Lotz Era. Basel Buildings, accessed on June 26, 2020 .
  2. ^ Daniel Hagmann: 50 seconds of film. Basel-Stadt State Archives blog, accessed on June 26, 2020 .
  3. ^ Philippe Chappuis: Ferdinand Hodler discovered in a film scene - by accident. Swiss television, accessed on June 26, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Lavanchy, François-Henri
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss entrepreneur, philanthropist and film pioneer
DATE OF BIRTH January 4, 1848
PLACE OF BIRTH Morges
DATE OF DEATH May 11, 1922
Place of death Cannes