REPORTAGE – Last week, we invited you to discover in video the temporary exhibition “On the move with Louis de Funès” of the Musée national de l’automobile – Collection Schlumpf from Mulhouse. This week, we present to you its extraordinary permanent collections, which include more than 500 classic vehicles.
In a sumptuous setting, the “Schlumpf Museum” offers visitors the most fabulous collection of old cars in the world, brought together by two passionate brothers, the industrialists Hans and Fritz Schlumpf. This museum, which welcomes visitors from all countries, enjoys the reputation of being the most beautiful automobile museum on the planet.
Throughout history “crazy drivers and their funny machines”, it is a part of human ingenuity and creativity that is on display. Legendary or more modest, historical or popular cars, but also films and objects, testify to the obstinacy and creativity of genius inventors, launched in a quest for freedom, beauty but also to go beyond limits.
A short history of the “Schlumpf museum”
In the middle of the 20th century, Hans and Fritz Schlumpf were two prosperous industrialists, at the head of a small empire in the worsted wool spinning sector in the east of France. Owners of several factories, they will close one in Mulhouse, which will be devoted to housing a car collection that will be built up over the years, in the greatest secrecy.
It all started with the purchase of a Bugatti 35 B in the 1930s by Fritz Schlumpf, a great automobile enthusiast. He participated in races, bought other vehicles, but it was not until the 1960s that he embarked on an insatiable quest for cars of all kinds.
The idea of creating a museum, dedicated to their mother Jeanne, took shape, and the brothers embarked on the project of lavishly fitting out the factory to receive visitors. They imagined a restaurant, designed a luxurious entrance and went so far as to have no less than 900 lampposts made, copies of those adorning the Alexandre III bridge in Paris and which light up the huge room where most of the cars are on display, giving the place a unique beauty.
But in 1976, history caught up with the two manufacturers. The textile crisis forced them to cease their weaving activities and to lay off some 2,000 workers. The following year, the unions discovered the existence of the museum in the making, and demanded its liquidation to pay the social debts. They suspect that the collection was built up at the expense of industrial activity.
The workers occupied the premises, and also sequestered Hans and Fritz Schlumpf for three days in their Mulhouse house. The two brothers, of Franco-Swiss nationality, were then taken back to Switzerland by the French authorities, for their own safety. They will reside there permanently.
The public authorities were not mistaken about the heritage value of the collection accumulated by enthusiasts, and in 1978, it was classified as a “historical monument” by the Council of State. It can therefore no longer be dispersed.
An association, mainly made up of Alsatian public authorities, but also the Paris Motor Show Committee and the Automobile Club de France, was founded. She acquires, for a largely underestimated price, the marvelous collection from the trustees in charge of the liquidation of the estate of the Schlumpf brothers.
In addition, a second association was created to manage the museum. The latter opened in 1982, under the impetus of car manufacturer Jean Panhard, who had been pleading for years for the creation of a French car museum.
Still, the Schlumpf brothers were “robbed”. An intense legal battle begins.
In 1988, the Paris Court of Appeal decided to give them partial justice, considering that their work deserved legal protection in that it constituted “a work of man bearing witness to a specific era and a creative genius”.
The magistrates underlined that not only was the museum mainly the result of a personal investment by industrialists, since the latter owned almost all the capital of their companies, but also that they contributed very favorably to employment and to the artistic and tourist influence of Alsace.
Justice recognizes a moral right to the two brothers, and orders that the surname “Schlumpf” be attached to the name of the museum which is now called “National Automobile Museum – Schlumpf Collection”.
After the death of Fritz Schlumpf in 1992, his widow Arlette Schlumpf continued the legal battle to honor the memory of her husband. In 1998, justice recognized de facto the spoliation of which the latter had been the victim, by ordering that around sixty vehicles be returned to him.
She also wrote an autobiography, “For the Love of Fritz”published in 2009 posthumously, a year after the death of its author in 2008.
The history of the Schlumpf Museum testifies to the creative force of passion. Life can smash men, the exceptional work remains. In this respect, the Schlumpf affair is exemplary. The employees of the Schlumpf factories lost a lot when the social crisis caught up with them. Their bosses too. But the French cultural heritage is indebted to them and therefore to future generations.