Oscar Kambly

Kambly was born on 29 March 1887 into a modest family in the Kanderbrück section of Frutigen, Switzerland to Johann Karl Kambli (1846-1919)[2][3] and Anna Margaritha (née Stoller; b. 1848). His paternal grandparents, originally from Zürich, emigrated to Cernay, Haut-Rhin in the Alsace region of France at the beginning of the 19th century due to religious persecution for being Anabaptist.[4] His father operated a firewood manufacturing business in Frutigen after returning to Switzerland.[5] He grew-up with seven siblings, three sisters and four brothers.

Kambly changed the spelling of his name at some point from Kambli to Kambly for the Bernese line of descendants. He attended the local public schools and then spent a year learning French in Villeneuve where he was also introduced to his later wife. Through her he came to Trubschachen, where he completed an apprenticeship as a baker/confectioner with the local village bakery of Fritz Wälti.

In 1909, after getting experienced in his trade, while working in Zürich, Basel and Stuttgart (then Grand Duchy of Baden), he took-over the bakery of his former master Fritz Wälti. Since 1911, the company was known as Kambly Brothers, after his elder brother Paul Ernst Kambly (1883-1976) got involved in the company.[6]

During the next years, he expanded the company gradually from a small bakery and confectionary shop into a global player of biscuit manufacturing. In 1922, Kambly co-founded the soft cheese producer E. Baer & Co. in Küssnacht am Rigi, which was ultimately sold to Lactalis, a French dairy concern. In 1925, he acquired the Blausee Estate on Blausee in the Bernese Oberland. Since 1953, the company was turned into a family-owned stock corporation.[7]

In 1913, Kambly married Emma Jakob, from Trubschachen. They had one son: Oscar Jakob Kambly, II. (1914-1998), who inherited Kambly and was also a patron of the arts[8][9]

• Martin Clausen; 100 Jahre Kambly - eine wahre Liebesgeschichte Stämpfli Gruppe AG (2010) (in German)
• Ursula Kambly-Kallen: Das Kambly-Bretzeli. Stämpfli Verlag, Bern, 2007 (in German)