Diplomat private sector banker
Otto Peter Friedrich Bemberg was born in Cologne, Germany, in 1827. He emigrated to Argentina in 1850 and married María Luisa Ocampo, the daughter of prominent local landowners and developers. On the eve of his departure, Bemberg established his first manufacturing firm, the Franco Argentina Brewery.
His father, Pedro Bemberg Boullé, had been partly of French descent.
He established an import-export firm specializing in the import of textile products and the export of local cereals for the European market. In 1860 he was appointed Consul General in Paris, where the couple remained until 1867. Bemberg obtained commissions from Presidents Bartolomé Mitre and Nicolás Avellaneda for the establishment of agricultural colonies in the then-practically undeveloped Santa Fe Province, the site of some of the country"s most productive cropland.
The facility was the largest and most advanced in Argentina, and soon eclipsed its main competitor, the Bieckert Brewery.
Otto Sebastián"s son, Otto Eduardo (1887–1984), went on to take the Bemberg dynasty to its zenith in the mid-20th century. In August 1929, aged 42, he reportedly had a premonition about the Wall Street Crash in his sleep, which he quickly acted upon.
He sold all his shares and bought 400 tons of gold just in time, a move which undoubtedly saved his family from financial ruin. Nonetheless, when he broke the good news to his father, Otto Sebastián simply replied "I knew you would".
One of Bemberg"s five children, María Luisa Bemberg, went on to become a successful film director in Argentina from 1980 until her death in 1995.
Her son, Carlos Miguens Bemberg was the last member of the Bemberg family to sell their stake in the Quilmes Brewery in 2006, 118 years after its foundation.
