President & Chief Executive Officer (owner), FREYWILLE GmbH
Pura Poesia Juhász Annával #26: Friedrich Wille | Nők Lapja
Friedrich Wille otthonosan mozog a Pura Poesia budapesti lakásában – a festmények, képek, művészek világa az övé, tanulási folyamata évtizedek óta tart, ars poeticája pedig egyszerű – szépet adni az embereknek, a szabadság, az alkotás jegyében. Juhász Anna vendége a Pura Poesia legfrissebb adásában Friedrich Wille, a Freywille tulajdonosa, a sorozat első nemzetközi vendége, aki munkájával a képzőművészet előtt tiszteleg.
About Friedrich Wille
Friedrich Wille, owner of the jewelry company Frey Wille, appeared on the Hungarian program *Pura Poesia Juhász Annával* in June 2025, where he discussed his lifelong engagement with art. He stated that his father, a lawyer who loved music and art, took him to exhibitions and on art-themed holidays, which he said "infiltrated" his brain. Wille described his company's mission as "to send happiness to other people" and said that a business has "only a right to exist when we can make people happy." He also spoke about the importance of freedom, calling it "the most important sense to live." In earlier interviews and company materials, Wille has described Frey Wille's design process and business strategy. He said the company's logo, a sphinx, was taken from a piece of art from the seventh century BC and "symbolizes creativity." Wille stated that the company is "unique because of creating completely new artistic designs" using a fire-enameling technique that gives the jewelry "enormous brilliance." He noted that the company has about 40 owned shops and works with around 800 retailers globally, with a focus on travel retail and duty-free markets.
Transcript (22 segments)
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Friedrich Wille0:00
And I think this freedom you can see through all her works. But she always was very strong for the rights of other people. She didn't like injustice.
My father was a lawyer and he loved music and he loved art and we were six children. I was number two and I always accompanied my father to every exhibition in Vienna, every holiday, always art holidays wherever we went. So it was infiltrated in my brain completely and all my life I was really fascinated. I was always with art. For instance, Pharaonic art of Egypt was so impressive for me that when I was 14, I took it as my nickname, Ramses, because I was so full of enthusiasm for this part of art.
This is something which was not immediately there, as I tried to explain. It came later when I had the chance to work also in art. I think this is very important — if you have the chance to work together with artists, which is the best thing which can happen in your life, to be together with artists and imagination and to share thoughts with them. So this made me enthusiastic as well. It was clear for me that art makes me happy.
Art is now in the latest development — a very interesting work from the University of Vienna, together with international scientists of psychology. They said art really makes you happy, and there are five different reasons why. First of all, it is the emotions. The emotions can be very strong when you look at art. The second thing is to think about something deeper — so it's brains. Then it's the social aspect. If you share with a second person, then it's completely different. If you're alone going into an exhibition, not the same. If you're together with a second or third person, then you are automatically on another level together. It's a social effect. And then it works on you. Number four, that you develop your own personality because of art. And number five is resilience.
When you have very hard times in life, you come over it with a strong willpower but also with art. Art can help you very much to overcome problems, big problems in your life, because it's so interesting how art works in our life. For me, the biggest impression in my young time were films like Hiroshima Mon Amour — it was before you were born — and Schulmädchen. Those were so impressive and influenced my life to be open to everything. And Hiroshima Mon Amour was also wonderful because the woman who fell in love with a survivor of the atomic bomb was a French girl. She was driven out of France because she had a love affair with a German soldier. This was so overwhelming. You saw the freedom of life there, and all my life I'm impressed by these two films.
Of course in our education system, maybe like here in Hungary, we start already in high school to go through the classical literature of different nations. Very important — the German of course, we have also some Hungarian, Russian, English, French. So all these things you go through in the last four years of high school. This was a very good start. Humanism was for me always the center of my life. Humanism means to respect other people, to use the rules of social behavior. I wanted to become also a knight in my behavior — like a knight. The rules of a knight: he helps wherever he can.
In art, I was first not immediately concentrating on art. I was concentrating on psychology because I wanted to analyze my own behavior first. I studied psychology and many, many books. It was very interesting, and when I thought I had already found the solutions, I stopped psychology. It was not any longer interesting for me as a focus. When I came into the chance to work together in this existing company with the founder, it was a long time ago. I concentrated first not on art — I concentrated on the business, on commercial systems, and also on human relationships. This was very, very important.
When she died — it was a long time ago — then I had to make a decision. Do I want to continue with the company? And then I decided I will continue, but it must be at a very high level from an artistic point of view. So I found the Academy of Applied Arts in Vienna, and my existing wife was there. Together with four or five of her best artist friends, they all came into the company. And from there on we started to make only new works of art. Not first the homages to famous painters. First we concentrated on geometry. Later, what was especially in those days, the 80s, it was very in to think about other continents, about other lives. And later on it was Egypt. It was a big fascination for me.
Then we were very much active in France since the 70s already. In France I was contacted by the president of the Fondation Monet. She was an American, and she said, 'We have Giverny. It is at the bank of the Seine River, and every year 300,000 people come, and many Americans. Please, couldn't you create a wonderful collection in jewelry?' Because she had seen what we were doing already for Hommage — we were together for more than 30 years.
Monet was for me the most important one. He was a normal man, completely normal. He was so in love with a woman who had already five children from another man. And they were so in love, and they lived together in Giverny until the end of his life. In the Orangerie in Paris you find the wonderful huge canvases — it's called in French 'Water Lilies.' When I was 12 years old I was with my parents in Paris and I was so impressed. It was wonderful because I was always fascinated by Monet.
I'm now learning with Frida Kahlo that everything which we had done before was always a real homage on a famous artist. But this time it is not only an homage on the famous — it is also an anthem for Mexico. This is only positive, only positive and wonderful in nature.
Frida Kahlo had all her life through, from the first accident — it was the bus — but before she had polio already at six years. Always they had not anything to help her really. She was suffering enormously. And she had what you call today in psychology a resilience, which is overcoming it all the time, being hopeful for the future. And this gave her enormous power. So 'Life is Beautiful' and 'Viva la Vida' — this is something which she was living through until the very end. You probably remember when she had the last exhibition in Mexico, she was forbidden to go there, but then they took her on the bed and she arrived, and there was a big triumph. Everybody was so happy. She died very young really, but I think she was giving many, many people a lot of hope for the future.
When I was a child, my parents were not very happy because I asked all the time — I was always very curious. In psychology you say people who are very curious, they live much longer, because the curiosity — you want to live many things which you haven't lived yet all the time. So at my age, I'm very curious.
We first study very carefully the life of an artist, and then we see what he painted in which period of his life, and then we understand it. I'm always accompanying the artists. The artists have to do that primarily. Then they start thinking and dreaming, and then they sit down, they're sketching and taking colors out, and then a new work of art is done. And this is never a copy of what the artist had made himself, but it takes the idea. People have to understand and associate it immediately with the artist. So with Monet we have used, for instance, the beautiful transparent butterfly and the flowers. This is so beautiful. I myself am so enthusiastic about how we could interpret it.
Gustav Klimt — because Gustav Klimt is still the pope for decorative art. Each woman which he portrayed became immortal because he used wonderfully also decorative art in his paintings, and also the frames he made himself. I was so fascinated by him, and I think we would have made a big mistake to not continue. And Vienna — Vienna is also important. I think we always want to show we come from Vienna, because the art world is very much dominated by France, as you know, and it is the number one country of art, there's no doubt about it. But also in other countries there are very strong artists. In the 19th century, especially Budapest and Vienna — we have something in common, not only that we were in the same big empire, but also Art Nouveau in Budapest and in Vienna was the best in Europe.
Also Alphonse Mucha, as you know, was from Prague. And when he was in Paris, he was so much influenced because he worked there. We have now brought out very recently something about Mucha when he was in Paris. He worked making publicity posters for famous actresses — Sarah Bernhardt for instance. And one of these posters was so beautiful that we wanted to take it as a basis. So Mucha is very important. And Hundertwasser is also Viennese. He was living when we had already started, and he wanted absolutely to participate, but he died in 2000. We only had time to work for his works of art afterwards.
I studied law and I learned to express myself with very few words also. And if I have to say one word: we want to send happiness to other people. This is the most important thing. I think we have only a right to exist when we can make people happy. Which means we have to really celebrate relationships between people and respect of each other, as respect of other cultures. This is my message.
For me, as you know, her father was German and the mother was Mexican, mainly from a tribe of indigenous people called Comanches. So she was very much influenced by them, I'm sure, because what she has painted is what people in these tribes do. All the social life is different from the European way of life. But overwhelming is nature, and relationship between man and woman, or woman to woman, men to men — for them it's all the same. They do not distinguish. They are not bound to any Christian religion. So they are completely free. And I think this freedom you can see through all her works. But she always was very strong for the rights of other people. She didn't like injustice.
For me, freedom is absolutely — you cannot replace it by anything else. Freedom is absolutely the most important thing to live. So I'm 100% for freedom, and everybody who has not freedom, I feel very sorry. I think we have to stay in our art, in our globe of art. I think this is the best way, the best protection against the mean things in our life.
I have had several times in my life the question where I would love to be. I could imagine myself to live also, for instance, in England, in France, in Italy, maybe also in Hungary, or today also in the other countries which we have around us. Italy I love also very much because I lived seven years all together of my life in Italy, maybe five years in France. So this gives me of course priorities. I love these cultures very much. So France, Italy, and Austria — these are the strongest experiences in my life, to be home.
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Interviewer22:50
Thank you so much. Thank you so much.
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Friedrich Wille22:52
Ah, thank you very much.