The Villeroy & Boch company's history begins in 1748, when François Boch began manufacturing ceramic tableware.

In 1812, Jean-François Boch started work on a state-of-the-art ceramics factory in an abandoned abbey in the town of Mettlach in the Saarland.

In 1836, Jean-François Boch and Nicolas Villeroy merged their ceramics businesses into Villeroy & Boch.

In 1918 the Company was divided among French, German, Polish, and Baltic state territory as a result of World War I surrender accords. The Saarland, site of two Villeroy & Boch factories, was ceded to France.

In the latter half of the 1930s, the Nazi government declared the company nonessential for the war effort and closed its factory in the Saarland (which had returned to Germany after a popular plebiscite).

After World War II, France once again took over the Saarland, cutting the company's headquarters in Mettlach off from the rest of Germany.

Company head Luitwin von Boch, who was given political responsibilities by the Allies, worked at reducing tensions between Germans and the French occupation. He lobbied for the Europeanization of the Saarland - establishing it as an autonomous region that was neither French nor German. The movement was dashed when the area's population voted in 1955 to be German.

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