Carl Anton Wilhelm Hirschmann

Banker, General Secretary of FIFA (1877-1951)

Carl Anton Wilhelm Hirschmann is remembered in business for decisions whose consequences outlived the decade that made them.

The record lists Carl Anton Wilhelm Hirschmann as Banker, General Secretary of FIFA (1877-1951).

Carl Anton Wilhelm Hirschmann was born at Medan in 1877. His recorded nationality is Netherlands.

Industrialisation changed the scale of everything: factories, railways, joint-stock capital and the first modern corporations.

He worked as banker, association football player and sports executive.

What a company leaves behind is usually infrastructure, habit and employment rather than a name.

That the business was built from Netherlands shaped it: capital, regulation and market size differ by country, and they decide what is even attemptable.

Carl Anton Wilhelm Hirschmann died in 1951, aged 74. What remains is the enterprise and its consequences, which is the only durable measure of a commercial life.

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