25.04.08

Speech of Dr. Michael Nobel at the Villa Petrolea inauguration

Dear Prime Minister, Your Excellencies, Ladies and gentlemen,

Today is a historic day. After almost one hundred years of desolation and neglect Villa Petrolea, the Nobel Family residence has now been restored to its former beauty, thanks to the dedicated efforts of Dr. Bagirov through the Baku Nobel Heritage Fund.

Villa Petrolea is of special significance to the family. Gustaf Nobel’s father Gunnar was born here. This edifice houses the first museum in the world dedicated to the family’s direct ancestors, Ludwig and Robert Nobel, the brothers of Alfred. The family thus owes a debt of gratitude to the Baku Nobel Heritage Fund and its chairman and my good friend, Dr. Bagirov, for his splendid vision that has involved an enormous amount of work and dedicated efforts, with a great attention to detail and a considerable respect for preserving the Nobel legacy. Today we celebrate this triumph.

We, the family, hope and expect Villa Petrolea to become a center of Azerbaijani – Swedish cultural, scientific and business relations.

We will do our best to assist and support Baku Nobel Heritage Fund in its efforts to continue the restoration of the Nobel heritage in Azerbaijan.

I have been informed of several such projects, for example the establishment of a world-class medical centre under the name of my grandmother Martha Nobel-Oleinikoff, who was Russia’s first female doctor and who sponsored a hospital wing in St. Petersburg and a small clinic here at the Petrolea village.

There are also plans to recognize Emmanuel Nobel, the son of Ludwig Nobel and his personal contribution to the development of the oil industry in Baku. For those of you who do not know about him, he was the general manager of the Nobel Brothers’ company Branobel for more than 30 years and left Azerbaijan only after the Bolshevik revolution in 1920.

It is a pleasure and a privilege for the family representatives and for NCT’s president in Japan David Matsumoto, to be here today on this august occasion and I feel we should all give Dr. Bagirov a warm applaud for his outstanding work and commitment.

Thank you.