Ernest Thiel

Biography

Ernest Thiel was born in 1859 in the Swedish town Norrköping to parents Fanny and Jean-Jacques Thiel. His father was involved as an engineer in the town’s textile production, his mother was a German Jewess who had moved to Sweden when she was young. At 15 years old Thiel went to Hamburg to gain work experience in a bank, and by 1877 he was back in Stockholm and employed at Stockholms Enskilda Bank. In 1891 he started his own firm, Stockholms Kredit och Diskontförening. By this time, in the mid 1890s he was one of the wealthiest men in the country. In 1884 Thiel married Anna Josephson and together they had five children, Signe, Ragnar, Carin, Olof and Margit. However, in 1896 Thiel fell in love with his wife’s lady companion, the young widow Signe Maria Hansen and in 1897 they were married. Thiel and Signe Maria moved to an apartment on Strandvägen in Stockholm and together they had two children, Inga-Maria and Tage. Signe Maria urged Thiel to read Friedrich Nietzsche, whose writings became very important to Thiel and he even produced several translations of the philosopher’s works. Furthermore, Thiel started to collect art and soon the apartment became all too small. In 1904–1907 Thiel employed the architect Ferdinand Boberg and a palatial house was built on a hill at Blockhusudden in the royal park of Djurgården. The Thiels thus begun collecting art which laid the foundation for the Thiel Gallery, and the majority of the purchases were made around the turn of the century 1900. During the First World War, Thiel lost a large part of this fortune and after 1910 he lived alone in the gallery after a separation from Signe Maria. To solve his debts, he proposed that the Swedish state should purchase the building, the art collection and the furnishings. An agreement was reached, and so Thiel moved from the palace and in 1926 The Thiel Gallery opened to the public.

Daughter: Carin Östberg (1889 - 1963) Son: Tage Thiel (1909 - 1990) Daughter: Inga-Maria Thiel (1913 - 1996) Wife: Anna Josephson (1863 - 1947) Wife: Signe Maria Thiel (1869 - 1915) Daughter: Signe Henschen (1885 - 1969) Mother: Fanny Thiel (1837 - 1918) Brother: Arthur Thiel (1860 - 1933) Son: Ragnar Thiel (1885 - 1969) Father: Jean-Jacques Thiel (1827 - 1895) Son: Olof Thiel (1892 - 1978) Daughter: Margit Thiel (1896 - 1931) Helga Henschen (1917 - 2002)