A Swedish and Russian engineer, inventor, entrepreneur, and philanthropist, elder brother and business partner of the founder of the Nobel Prize, Alfred Nobel. A first guild merchant of Saint Petersburg. The first chairman of the Scandinavian charitable society in St. Petersburg. Member of the Russian Technical Society. Buried at the Smolensky Lutheran Cemetery in Saint Petersburg, plot: 56
The father of Nobel owned a mechanical factory in Saint Petersburg and provided his son with an excellent technical education. The factory produced artillery shells, cannons, carriages, underwater mines and torpedoes, shields to protect infantry from gunfire, rifles, metalworking machines, and gunpowder production equipment.
In 1862, he purchased Sherwood’s mechanical workshops, which later became the engineering plant "Ludvig Nobel." From that time, he paid guild dues. Since 1876, Ludvig Nobel began working in the then nascent oil industry. Together with his brothers Robert and Alfred and several others, he founded the oil company "Partnership of the Nobel Brothers" (Branobel), currently located at Griboedov Canal, 6.
Oil extraction and processing were carried out in Baku and Cheleken. Before Nobel, crude oil and kerosene were transported from the extraction sites to factories in barrels on carts; barrels were transported by water to Nizhny Novgorod, from where they were distributed across Russia. With such a primitive system, Baku manufacturers could not compete with American kerosene without increasing tariffs on it. Nobel introduced oil transportation from fields to factories via pipelines and steam pumps; organized the shipment of finished oil products across the Caspian Sea and Volga River in iron tank steamships and barges, and by rail in tank cars; replaced the previous earthen pits used for storing oil products in barrels with iron reservoirs. The engineers of the Partnership created the world’s first cylindrical oil storage tank, an oil tanker, and the first oil pipeline in Russia. Due to these innovations and various technical devices applied in oil processing, Russian kerosene completely displaced American "Standard Oil" from Russia. For outstanding achievements in technical and industrial fields, the Technological Institute awarded Nobel the title of engineer-technologist.
Nobel provided housing for his workers; schools, sanatoriums, and hospitals were opened for children; scholarships were granted to the sons of employees for education.
Ludvig Nobel was married twice. His first wife died in childbirth with their sixth child. A year later, Ludvig married for the second time, to Edla Collin (1848-1921), a teacher from the school at the Swedish Church of St. Catherine who had come to Petersburg. This marriage produced 12 more children, of whom 7 reached adulthood. After Ludvig Nobel’s death at the age of only 57, Edla Nobel became the head of the family, as her stepson Emmanuel never married.
At the Smolensky Lutheran Cemetery, Ludvig Nobel is buried alongside his first wife, Sofia Wilhelmina (Mina) Nobel (née Alsel, 31.10.1832–16.5.1868). A vase under a cover on a tall granite pedestal, granite curb-tomb, a beautiful cast-iron fence (now lost). Plot 56.
The son Karl-Ludvig Nobel (22.9.1862–27.11.1893) was buried in plot 98.
Children (grandchildren of Ludvig and Edla Nobel) – Marie-Lorna Nobel (14.6.1902–22.6.1911) and Manuel Nobel (17.1.1904–22.6.1911) are buried in plot 90. A marble sculpture of a mourning woman leaning over an urn. A stele with a tall cross. In 1986, the tombstone was destroyed, the sculpture thrown into the crypt. The monument has been restored but still requires further restoration.
Pages from the metric book – Ludvig Emmanuel Nobel died of typhus...
Sources:
https://spslc.ru/burial-places/nobel-lyudvig.html
