Hedwig Thyssen

Hedwig Thyssen (* 19th December 1878 in Mülheim an der Ruhr , † 31 July 1960 in Kreuzlingen ( Thurgau , Switzerland )) was the daughter of the industrialist August Thyssen and co-owner of Thyssen & Co .

Life

Hedwig Thyssen was born as the youngest child and only daughter of the entrepreneur August Thyssen from the Thyssen entrepreneurial family and his wife Hedwig Pelzer. After attending the Luisenschule in Mülheim an der Ruhr, which she left without a degree, Hedwig Thyssen married the Prussian civil servant Baron Ferdinand von Neufforge (1869–1942) in 1899 , which earned her the title of nobility.

The connection with Ferdinand von Neufforge resulted in three children: Hede (* 1900), Ferdinand (* 1902) and August (* 1906). The marriage failed and Hedwig married a second time in 1908. Since her husband, Baron Maximilian von Berg (1859–1925), as a devout Catholic, was not allowed to marry a divorced Catholic, she converted to the Protestant faith for marriage. The marriage had two daughters: Maximiliane (* 1908; † 2004) and Mignon (* 1917; † 1958). In 1908 she moved to Hungary with Maximilian von Berg, where she lived with him on his estates near Budapest.

In order to prevent the dissolution of the Thyssen group when he divorced, her father August Thyssen had transferred the ownership rights to his company Thyssen & Co to her and her three older brothers Fritz , August junior and Heinrich . At the same time he had secured the usufruct and thus excluded his children from running the company. This arrangement created considerable conflict between the generations. Hedwig and August junior in particular pressed for a share in the company or appropriate compensation due to financial bottlenecks. The latter was ultimately granted to them by their father in the form of a severance payment that included a waiver of their company shares.

After the death of her husband in 1925, Hedwig Thyssen returned to Germany, settled in Munich until 1943 and then spent the last years of her life in the Bellevue sanatorium in Kreuzlingen on Lake Constance. She died there on July 31, 1960.

literature

• Simone Derix: The Thyssens. Family and wealth. (= Family - company - public. Thyssen in the 20th century 4). Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh 2016. ISBN 978-3-506-77974-8 ; review
• Stephan Wegener (ed.): August and Josef Thyssen. The family and their company. Klartext, Essen 2004, ISBN 3-89861-312-7 , pp. 116–119.