Alfons Simonius-Blumer
Alfons Simonius was a was a Swiss engineer, entrepreneur, colonel (Oberst in German) in the Swiss Army, and a banker. He had been a passenger on the Titanic on its fatal maiden voyage.
Alfons was the son of Paul Christian Simonius , a wool wholesaler from Ravensburg, and Carolina, née Oschwald (1816-1893), from Schaffhausen. He was born in Basel on 23 October 1855.
His father had received Basel citizenship in 1848. He had made contact with long-established Basel families and had quickly risen to the ranks of the upper bourgeoisie. He also became a partner and manager of Hans Peter Fürstenberger-De Bary's company, which was active in the wool trade. Their place of business was "am Sperber" in Basel. Alfons Simonius was the younger brother of Theodor Simonius.
Simonius married to Alice Blumer in 1880. They had a son, Paul, in 1881. In 1891 they had a daughter, Mina Ella, and a year later another son, Alphons.
As an engineer, Simonius acquired a license to produce sulfite pulp using Alexander Mitscherlin's process. In 1881 he founded the cellulose factory Wangen im Allgäu in Sigmamanns on the road to Isny. He then took up residence there and, like the founder of the spinning mill, Eduard Widmer, and director of the spinning mill, Wilhelm Lengweiler (1850–1925), became involved in the Protestant community.
From 1893 Simonius lived with his family in Zurich and from 1896 he was on the board of directors of the Lengweiler spinning mill. In addition, he founded or owned other plants that belonged to Simonius'schen Cellulosefabriken AG, such as in Kelheim, in Fockendorf and in Thuringia. From 1906 Simonius was the chairman of the board of directors of the bank association or Swiss Bankverein, which was later to be merged into UBS.
In 1912, Simonius had to take care of business in New York for Heine & Co., which was a daughter of the Swiss Bankverein. He bought a First Class ticket from his agent Kaiser & Cie and came aboard in Southampton. Alfons got acquainted with two other Swiss passengers, Maximilian Josef Frölicher-Stehli, the father of Hans Frölicher, and the lawyer Max Stähelin-Maeglin. Alfons stayed in room A-26.
He and the two other Swiss gentlemen he got a long with, were playing cards on the fateful night when Titanic would scrape along an iceberg. They were in the Smoke Room playing thier game around 11:00 P.M., and had retired half an hour later. At 11:40 P.M. Alfons felt something. He went out of his cabin to see what had happened.
He and Max Stähelin-Maeglin got away in lifeboat 3, and that's how he survived the sinking.
To keep warm they helped with the rowing.
On Carpathia he had to recover from the cold so he asked on of his fellow Swiss survivors to write 2 telegrams for him. Only the second one was sent, the Marconi Room had too much to do.
After disembarking in New York, he and his friend Max spent a while in the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. They then went on to do the business for the Heine Co. and on 7 May they headed back to Europe by taking voyage with the Victoria Luise.
Their son Paul also an engineer, built a cellulose factory in Drvar. He led these as commercial and technical director. The factory in Drvar was called Otto Steinbeis until 1918 and was then partially nationalized. However, the Simonius family still held the majority of shares of 51%. In 1937 Paul Simonius returned to Switzerland and worked as a consultant for various companies. Their daughter Ella (1891–1981) married René Clavel in 1913. Simonius died of heart failure in Lucerne and found his final resting place on the Wolfgottesacker in Basel.