Anton Thaddäus of Sumerau

Anton Thaddäus von Sumerau, first regional president of Upper Austria

Anton Thaddäus von Sumerau (born March 23, 1697 in Lenz ; † February 17, 1771 in Freiburg im Breisgau ) was the first regional president of Upper Austria from 1753, initially in Constance and from 1759 in Freiburg.

Education and early years

The Vogt von Alten-Sumerau and Prasberg came from the area of Tettnang and had acquired property in Breisgau , among other things . Anton Thaddäus von Sumerau came from a Swiss branch that had emigrated to Graubünden in the 14th century . He received his PhD in 1721 in Vienna Dr. jur. and then worked in the imperial court until his appointment to the Upper Austrian government council in 1729. In 1723 he married Maria Elisabeth von Lambeckhoven (1704–65) in Vienna. From the capital he made contact with his distant cousins ​​on Lake Constance and, because of his large and varied, charitable and favorable testimonies, was accepted into the Breisgau knighthood in 1738. In 1745 Sumerau received a baron diploma.

Professional background

Sumerau was initially a consultant for the Upper and Lower Austrian provinces and from 1746 sat in Innsbruck with the title of Vice-Court Chancellor and secret council . In 1750 the government sent him to Breisach as court commissioner to settle disputes between the council and the mayor. Probably because of the reports to the Viennese government that Sumerau wrote in 1751 after an inspection trip through the Breisgau, Maria Theresia decided on April 24, 1752 to separate Upper Austria as an independent province from Tyrol . Sumerau became the first regional president of Upper Austria on January 1, 1753, initially in Constance , but when the administration was relocated to Freiburg in 1759, the former Stürtzel palace became Sumerau's seat of government.

Activity as the regional president of Upper Austria

In Breisgau, Sumerau found a society of estates that had grown over centuries , whose ideas about power did not match those of an absolute ruling system aimed at by Vienna. The estates as owners of the manor continued to see themselves as mediators between the government and the subjects. However, the Viennese court wanted, with the help of its district president, to carry out direct state supervision and, above all, to bring about equality , which is pleasing to God, into force in taxes . But the estates defended their old privileges, so that Maria Theresa decided, polarized by various quarrels with the Breigau estates, to disempower the assemblies. They were replaced by an imperial decree on July 4, 1764 by a joint consess , which consisted of two representatives from each of the three estates and which had to be accepted as President of Sumerau. The tax reform, which forced the aristocracy and prelates into the circle of taxpayers, brought Sumerau im Breisgau to a conclusion by 1764.

His struggle was not over with that, however, because the university reform that Maria Theresa had been calling for since 1752 with the aim of replacing the medieval teaching system at the Albertina with modern methods met with resistance from the conservative professorships. When she persistently refused to implement the reorganization, Joseph II sent the energetic Government Councilor Hermann von Greiffenegg to Freiburg to support the President , who unceremoniously repealed the existing university constitution and dismissed the Senate. On April 1, 1767, Greiffenegg imposed a new consistorial constitution on the university with a court decree .

In the years 1769/68 Sumerau's health deteriorated and he often had to be represented in his official business. On January 18, 1769, he was retired with his full salary of 6,000  florins . Sumerau was still in retirement for a little over two years. The first Freiburg Regional President is buried in the Heimhofer Chapel in the ambulatory of the Freiburg Minster.

family

His wife Maria Elisabeth von Lambeckhoven, whom he married in Vienna in 1723, died in 1765 while he was still serving in Freiburg. In the same year he was able to bequeath his imperial baron dignity, which he had acquired in 1745, to the children of his brother Johann Matthaeus Vogt (von Summerau), who had already died: Joseph Thaddäus , Maria and Anna. From then on they carried the title of Sumerau Vogt and Freiherr auf Altensumerau . This privilege was granted to Sumerau in a diploma drawn on August 3, 1765 in Vienna. This indicates that he may have died childless.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ von Kageneck, p. 14.
2. ↑ von Kageneck, p. 23.
3. ^ Dieter Speck : 550 years of the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg . Verlag Karl Alber, Freiburg / Munich 2007, p. #.
4. ↑ Ernst Heinrich Kneschke (ed.): '' New general German nobility lexicon : in associations with several historians ''. Ninth volume, F. Voight, Leipzig 1870, ISBN 978-1143771828 , pp. 407f .

literature

• Alfred Graf von Kageneck: The end of the front Austrian rule in Breisgau . Rombach & Co. Verlag, Freiburg 1981, ISBN 3-7930-0365-5
• Friedrich Metz (Hrsg.): Vorderösterreich, a historical regional studies . Publisher Rombach Freiburg 1967
• Franz Quarthal: The four regional presidents of Upper Austria in the second half of the 18th century, in Habsburg and the Upper Rhine . Waldkircher Verlagsgesellschaft, Waldkirch 2002, ISBN 3-87885-344-0

predecessor	Office	successor
	District President of Front Austria 1752–1769	Carl von Ulm zu Erbach