François de Théas by Thoranc

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Count François de Théas von Thoranc (born February 19, 1719 in Grasse , † August 15, 1794 ibid) was a French officer and art collector.

During the occupation of the imperial city of Frankfurt am Main by French troops in the Seven Years' War , he was Lieutenant du roi and head of the city's civil administration from 1759 to 1763 . From 1759 to 1761 he lived in the household of Johann Caspar Goethe in the Großer Hirschgraben . The young Johann Wolfgang von Goethe experienced this billeting in his father's house (see Goethe house ) and later told the French royal lieutenant in his autobiography From my life. Poetry and Truth a literary monument.

life and work

Thoranc entered the French military service in 1734 after a Jesuit upbringing . He served in the Italian theater of war in the War of the Polish Succession . In 1758 he joined the French Army in Germany, commanded by Duke de Broglie and Prince de Soubise , and on New Year's Day 1759 negotiated with the Frankfurt Council on the surrender of the imperial city of Frankfurt. After the surrender without a fight, he took over civil administration as Lieutenant du roi . From 1759 to 1761 he lived in the household of the Imperial Council Johann Caspar Goethe , of these compulsory billeting hinnahm reluctantly. In his autobiography Poetry and Truth, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe described a dispute between the officer and his father that took place on Good Friday in 1759. Out of anger over the defeat of the Prussian allies under Duke Ferdinand von Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel in the Battle of Bergen , Goethe's father let himself be carried away into an exchange of words that almost brought him to imprisonment. Thoranc was friends with the patrician of Frankfurt, who was younger in 1761 and who was mayor in 1771, Johann Daniel von Olenschlager , in whose house Johann Wolfgang Goethe liked to frequent his youth.

In 1762 Thoranc was raised to the rank of imperial count . After he left Frankfurt in 1763, Thoranc became governor of the Antilles island of Santo Domingo for a few years . In 1768 he returned to France, quit military service and retired to his home town of Grasse. When he died he left behind a considerable collection of paintings, including around 200 works that he had commissioned during his time in Frankfurt.

Thoranc introduced a number of innovations during his time in Frankfurt, including house numbers , street signs and street lighting , and modernized the fire extinguishing and rubbish disposal regulations from the Middle Ages. Until then, the Frankfurt houses could only be distinguished by their names, which were not always unique. House numbers and street signs made it easier for the French occupation troops to find their way around the city. The lanterns fired with rapeseed oil that were hung over crossroads in 1761 and 1762 were only extremely weak from today's perspective, but nevertheless led to a significant improvement in road safety and a decrease in night-time street crime.

The anatomical-surgical college he founded became the model for the Senckenberg Foundation, founded in 1763 . Encouraged by Johann Caspar Goethe's private picture gallery, he summoned the Frankfurt painters in 1759 and commissioned numerous artists, including Christian Georg Schütz the Elder. Ä. , Johann Georg Trautmann and Johann Conrad Seekatz . Johann Wolfgang Goethe's cleared children's room served as a studio. In the course of time, over 200 commissioned works were created. In 1907 , the Free German Hochstift received 12 monthly pictures made by Seekatz as a gift from Thoranc's estate. You are in the Goethe House today.

Thoranc is the title hero of the comedy Der Königsleutnant by Karl Gutzkow , which saw numerous performances in the 19th and 20th centuries. A pedestrian passage between the Großer Hirschgraben and Berliner Straße in Frankfurt is named after him.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Free Deutsches Hochstift, p. 198
  2. ↑ Silke Wustmann: When the French hit the people of Frankfurt. Press and Information Office of the City of Frankfurt am Main, January 15, 2009, accessed on March 22, 2015 .
personal data
SURNAME Thoranc, François de Théas of
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French officer and art collector
DATE OF BIRTH February 19, 1719
PLACE OF BIRTH Grasse
DATE OF DEATH August 15, 1794
Place of death Grasse