Carl Anton Hirschman

Carl Anton Wilhelm Hirschman was a Dutch banker, co-founder of FIFA in 1904 and the 2nd General Secretary of FIFA, serving from 1906 to 1931. He was also one of the founders of the Dutch Olympic Committee in 1912.

When FIFA president Daniel Burley Woolfall died in 1918, Hirschman kept the organization from falling apart, almost single-handedly and at his own costs, operating from his offices in Amsterdam. He was FIFA’s interim president until Jules Rimet was elected its third president in March 1921.

After the Crash of 1929 Hirschman’s stock trading company went bankrupt and the money he had invested for the NOC and FIFA was mostly lost. Hirschman unexpectedly resigned from both NOC and FIFA in 1931.