Gerlach Maw

Gerlach Maw (born November 17, 1622 in Aachen , † January 1681 in there) was a German copper master and multiple mayor of the imperial city of Aachen .

Live and act

The son of the wine merchant Mathias Maw and Agnes Priem initially worked as a copper master around 1648 and then took over his father's wine trade. He joined the Aachen “Bock Guild”, in which the patricians, scholars, doctors, lawyers, merchants and officials of the city were organized.

In addition, Maw was involved in local politics and was appointed Meier von Burtscheid from 1644 to 1665 . He was also elected to the city council and held the office of builder in 1654, the office of rent master in 1656 and the office of foreman in 1658. In addition, he became a member of the Sacramentary Brotherhood of St. Foillan , whose members consisted of the nobility and upper bourgeoisie and to whose Greve he was also called in 1658. Finally, Maw was elected mayor from among the guilds in 1665/66, 1666/67, 1668/69, 1670/71 and 1672/73. He had to rule alone in 1672, since between 1671 and 1673 the lay judges had not proposed a candidate from their ranks in protest, as the candidate they had intended for 1670 had not been recognized by the council.

Gerlach Maw was married to Anna Fiebus († 1676), daughter of the mayor Balthasar Fiebus the Elder . Together they had eleven children, including the future mayor Mathias Maw . It was the heyday of the Aachener Mäkelei , during which the Aachen city council showed excesses of corruption and post-collusion. In this context, Maw endeavored to take turns with his brother-in-law Nikolaus Fiebus as mayor and to install his son Mathias Maw and his nephew Balthasar Fiebus, the younger, as successors by arrangement.

The same clusters were decisive for Maw's real estate policy, in which he and his brother-in-law Nikolaus Fiebus initially bought the property of the Stadtwaage at the court, which burned down in the city ​​fire of Aachen, as well as a neighboring property, but sold both properties to the pharmacist Adam Coebergh two years later, on which later then the house Monheim was built. Maw also acquired another copper mill with an estate belonging to it, and through inheritance from his wife came into possession of several properties in the area of ​​today's new gate in front of the Neutor . In addition, he had a representative town villa built on what was then the “Foggengraben” (Froschgraben), which served both as a negotiating venue for the peace negotiations of 1668 and as a guest house for the papal nuncio Agostino Franciotti. The villa was later honored again and in 1818 became a negotiating venue for the Aachen Monarchs' Congress and a guest house for Prince Carl of Prussia, who had traveled with them . The later owner of the city villa had the Nuellens garden house built there.

Gerlach Maw died in 1681 and in memory of him the “Foggengraben / Fockengraben” was renamed “Mawengraben”, which became today's Friedrich-Wilhelm-Platz after the monarchs' congress.

literature

• Hermann Friedrich Macco : Aachen coat of arms and genealogies . tape 1 , 1907, p. 285 ( PDF ).
• Luise Freiin von Coels von der Brügghen: The Aachen mayors from 1251 to 1798 . In: Journal of the Aachen History Association . tape 55, 1933/34 , pp. 70/71 ( aachener-geschichtsverein.de [PDF; 1.7 MB ]).