Anton Maria Karl von Belderbusch

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Willy Faßbender: Portrait of Count Anton von Belderbusch (1927)

Anton Maria Karl Graf von Belderbusch (* 1. June 1758 in Heerlen , † 28. September 1820 in Heimerzheim in Bonn ) was 1804-1814 Maire , then to 1816 Mayor of Bonn. Even after the Congress of Vienna in 1815 he remained as Lord Mayor (by resolution of February 25, 1814 the designation Maire was replaced by the designation Lord Mayor) at the head of Bonn's city government. In 1816 he became district administrator of the Bonn district. In 1810 he became a Knight of the Legion of Honor .

Life

Anton Maria Belderbusch came from the Von der Heyden family called Belderbusch , and was a nephew of the former Elector of Cologne Minister Caspar Anton von Belderbusch . Already in his early youth he entered the state service in the Electorate of Cologne. In 1784 he inherited his uncle's fortune, including the Belderbuscher Hof , and a short time later that of his aunt Caroline, abbess of Vilich. In this way he became one of the richest noblemen in the Electorate of Cologne with possessions in the whole area. From 1792 he was a member of the Bonn Reading Society founded in 1788 . He was also a member of the Bonn Masonic Lodge, Les frères courageux, founded in 1805 .

In 1802 Belderbusch married the landlady Babette Koch, who was also courted by Ludwig van Beethoven in his last years in Bonn . This improper second marriage of the count, abandoned by his first wife, would have been impossible without the radical social and political changes in his homeland that were brought about as a result of the occupation of the Rhineland by French troops.

Napoleon's first visit to Bonn in the autumn of 1804 not only meant that Napoleon's wife Joséphine became the godmother and namesake of the newborn daughter of the Belderbuschs, the visit also helped the count to become the new "Maire" of Bonn. He also exercised this function after the end of French rule, after Bonn was awarded to the Kingdom of Prussia in the Congress of Vienna .

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