The Nobel Family

Swedish Geniuses in Tsarist Russia

Bengt Jangfeldt

Now famous the world over for the prize which bears their name, the Nobels were the Swedish founders of the Russian oil industry whose business and personal lives were fundamentally intertwined with the histories of Sweden and Russia, as well as the economic and entrepreneurial development of Europe in the long 19th century.

Using thousands of Nobel family letters shared here for the first time, Bengt Jangfeldt provides a fascinating and authoritative multi-generational chronicle which charts the family exploits. Jangfeldt reflects on how Immanuel Nobel, a polymath architect, inventor, engineer and designer, set the family on a path to financial success amidst a backdrop of imperial Russian industrial growth. He shines a light on the Nobels’ progressive efforts in the fields of welfare, charitable work, social change and cultural life, and tells how Immanuel’s sons, Alfred and Ludvig (and later grandson, Emanuel), continued the family dynasty until the communist revolution struck. What followed would be a terrifying escape from Russia so that the family could start over again in their native Scandinavia after suffering the terrible losses of their enforced Russian exile.

During a time of immense change in Russia and right across Europe, the Nobels' story stands out as one of both brilliance and resilience, with family firmly at its heart.

Bengt Jangfeldt is an author and historian. His biography

Axel Munthe: The Road to San Michele (I.B.Tauris) was published in 2003 and won the Swedish Academy's prize for biography. A further large-scale biography, A Life at Stake, about the renowned Russian poet Mayakovsky, appeared in 2007 and was awarded the August Prize for best non-fiction book of the year.