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Biography
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The biography can be accessed in different ways. If you want to read right from the beginning start here. Names of people alive and company names still active today will not be mentioned unless they gave their explicit permission to do so in order to respect their privacy. We try to portrait the man behind his glasworks by means of documents and testimonials. You will notice that if you step on his toes you'll better stay away from him. Alfred was not afraid to speak very directly and was always straight forward. Also in writing he did the same which is sometimes hilarious today when you read it.
Structure and selections
Other selectioncriteria (click the icon to select):
- Per decennium.
- Per country where he lived or worked.
- His glassfactories, Christmas decorations.
- His family:
Johann Jezelin sr (his father), Thérèse Linzmeier (his mother), Johann Jezelin jr (his brother), Elisabeth Jezelin (his sister), Wilhelmina Koos (his wife), Minny Jezelin (his daughter) - His relation to the Jochmann family professionally and in private:
Fritz sr, Fritz jr, Helga, Gisela and Loni (his daughters) - His relation to the Lotterjonk family professionally and in private:
- A specific combi selection can be made in the combined tagselection.
In brief
Alfred was born in Weißwasser in 1905. As a young adult he moved to Eindhoven together with his family. “We left our mother in Weißwasser when we moved to Eindhoven” said his sister. Today we know that she ment Eindhoven instead of Weißwasser. They had discovered that she was a member of a sect and all their money disappeared into an account of that sect. We know from his sister that during their childhood their mother put Alfred into a basket with a woolen sweater or a blanket. Then she pulled the basket on a rope into a tree and left him hanging in the sun for an hour or so when he had been naughty. Was Alfred a very difficult child? Was their mother a wicked woman? Or was it a combination of both? Nobody can answer this question. Together with his father Alfred moved on from Eindhoven to Herentals, Hemiksem in Belgium and moved several times to start with Schelle and other villages of Antwerpen. At last he moved again to Hemiksem where he was on the top of his carreer. Everyone who worked for him still speaks with great and warm respect about Alfred. He even had troubles with the unions, but not for what you might expect. The unions were complaining that he paid too much as other glassworks in the neighbourhood had problems with their labourer. His private life was simply dramatic in total contrast with his professional life. With his German wife, who was an orphan, there was often a fight. She was sickly jealous and he always encouraged it just for fun. When Alfred was calm then he was quite a pleasant man and father but you had to disappear in seconds when he had an outburst of anger. That's why a small fully packed suitecase stood always standby so that his wife and daughter could flee to a hotel in front of the Century hotel on the Keyserlei in Antwerpen. She had always enough money in her purse to survive for a while. It has happened several times that his daughter did not go to school because of illness, but in reality she was bruised. This is Alfred's dark side not well known amongst the people of Hemiksem. With his Christmas decoration he was at the top of his carreer. Imagine that supermarkets place an order and that they come to you with their own labourer for packing the merchandise. His Christmas decoration was a real hype at that moment. Because of his outburts, bad advisers and troubles with his wife he moved all of sudden to Grevenmacher in Luxembourg. Professional glass blowers were not there, so he engaged his old labourer from Hemiksem but many returned home after some time suffering from homesickness. In 1954 he closed Grevenmacher and moved to Germany and finally to Euskirchen where he started again his glassworks. Until his death he remained there and died as poor as Job. In the 60s he was assisting the start up of 2 glassworks in Israel. In the 80s he was a consultant at glassworks in Brasil which is actually very famous. Anyway, he was a very skilled craftsman but with a turbulent life.
