Edmund Emundts

(Franz) Edmund Emundts (born July 22, 1792 in Aldenhoven , † May 4, 1871 in Burtscheid ) was a German politician and Lord Mayor of Aachen.

Live and act

Nothing detailed is known about Edmund Emundts' early life, except that he was said to have been present when the Aachen Carnival Society Florresei was founded in 1827. What is certain is that he held the office of state procurator at the Royal Regional Court in Aachen. At the request of the city council in December 1831 and with royal approval from January 1832, Edmund Emundts was installed as the new Lord Mayor of Aachen. Prior to that, Wilhelm Daniels and Mathias Solders, as mayors in the successor to Cornelius von Guaita , the first official mayor after the withdrawal of the French, had jointly controlled the fortunes of the city since 1820 . The office of Lord Mayor had remained vacant since then because, in the course of restorative tendencies, the reform policy in Prussia was broken off in 1819/20. Emundts should hold the office of Lord Mayor at least until a new town order was introduced. In addition, from 1832 to 1834 he also assumed the office of President of the Aachen Chamber of Commerce and Industry .

On October 15, 1840, on the occasion of an audience with King Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia in Berlin , Emundts campaigned significantly to ensure that the paintings of Emperor Napoleon by Louis-André-Gabriel Bouchet and Empress Joséphine by Robert Lefèvre are returned to the city of Aachen should, which had been given to her by Napoléon in 1807 and at that time were in the Berlin City Palace . Friedrich Wilhelm IV approved the request, but then had Carl Schmid make copies of these portraits in 1841 . The paintings were put back in the Aachen City Hall , where they are still to be found today, after having been part of the Aachen Suermondt Ludwig Museum for a long time .

Emundt's tenure was in a period of several political and social unrest. So he initially had to compensate for the aftermath of the unrest in Aachen on August 30, 1830 . Later, the effects of the German Revolution of 1848/49 did not leave Aachen and Emundts unaffected. Through prudent financial management, he had largely repaid the city's debts, which had been incurred in the turmoil of recent years as a Free Imperial City and during the time of French occupation, when the political movements of 1848 and the associated trade and business stagnation City plunged into new financial difficulties and forced a large loan to employ and feed the numerous and discontented factory population.

The city archivist Herbert Lepper then assigned Edmund Emundts to both the " 1st phase of the oligarchy appointed by the state and dependent on it (1814-1845) [as well as the] 2nd phase of the oligarchy of the bourgeoisie (1845-1918) ".

He wrote: “ It was the former state procurator Edmund Emundts who, until the turmoil of the revolutionary year 1848, directed the fortunes of Aachen with a clever and sometimes too firm hand. According to his judgment, the 'difficulties and the regrettable political morals' of the city councils were based on their' powerlessness', even under his rule, because a body that only has an advisory and no decisive function ', as Emundts let the district president know, had to know To ask about the 'real purpose of his job' ”. “ The Aachen municipal council took into account the wishes of the population for more civil liberty and on March 4, 1848 drafted a petition to the Prussian king. Inactivity and hesitation on the part of the royal ruler increased the irritable mood during the weeks. When news of the revolution in Berlin reached Aachen on March 20, 1848, the ball got rolling. The anger of the many needy was directed against the unpopular Lord Mayor Edmund Emundts. The consequences were unrest and property damage ”.

The turbulence of the events at that time, when the windows were thrown in his house in Aachener Pontstraße and the furnishings were destroyed, finally led in 1848 to the abdication of the now secret government councilor, who was awarded the Order of the Red Eagle III. Great Edmundts as Lord Mayor. A year later he worked as a district judge in Düsseldorf before he was called back to Aachen in the same capacity from 1850 to 1860.

Emundts was married to Jeanne Marie Brunelle. The portrait of Edmund Emundt (HCF Billotte) was made around 1845 by the Aachen society painter Heinrich Franz Carl Billotte . Since 1827 he has also been a member of Club Aachener Casino . Emundts found his final resting place in the family crypt in the Aachen Ostfriedhof .

literature

• Herbert Lepper: Forms of urban self-government then and now. A documentation. Self-published by the Aachen City Archives. 1986².
• Eduard Arens / Wilhelm Leopold Janssen : Club Aachener Casino Druck Metz, Aachen 1964, p. 138

Individual evidence

1. ^ The message from Paul Kuetgens: "previously in a Paris gallery" is unclear. Paul Kuetgens Ed .: Carl Borromäus Cünzer Folie des Dames. Illustr. Bert Heller. Aachen, 1932, pp. 50, 201f., Note 38.
2. ^ Ernst Günther Grimme: The town hall of Aachen. Einhard, Aachen 1996, p. 121.
3. ^ Herbert Lepper: Forms of urban self-government then and now. A documentation. Self-published by the Aachen City Archives. 1986². (Lepper), Fig. 20, p. 5.
4. ↑ Lepper, p. 7.
5. ^ Ulrich Daldrup: Petitions and Barricades. Lecture from 1998 in the town hall of Aachen, p. 6. (PDF; 110 kB), accessed on April 21, 2013