In the history of enterprise, Ferdinand Joseph, 8th Prince of Lobkowicz is one of the names that keeps returning.
The record lists Ferdinand Joseph, 8th Prince of Lobkowicz as (1797-1868) Bohemian nobleman, Austrian entrepreneur.
Ferdinand Joseph, 8th Prince of Lobkowicz was born at Hollabrunn in 1797. His recorded nationality is Cisleithania.
This was the age of chartered companies and long-distance trade, when a single voyage could make or ruin a house.
He worked as entrepreneur, politician and patron of the arts.
Business reputations are unusually sensitive to the decade in which they were made.
That the business was built from Cisleithania shaped it: capital, regulation and market size differ by country, and they decide what is even attemptable.
Ferdinand Joseph, 8th Prince of Lobkowicz died in 1868, aged 71. What remains is the enterprise and its consequences, which is the only durable measure of a commercial life.
