Heinrich Josef Thimus

Heinrich Josef Thimus (from 1780: Heinrich Josef Freiherr von Thimus-Zieverich ; * around 1719 in Eupen ; † 1789 ) was a German manor owner and mayor of the imperial city of Aachen .

Live and act

Heinrich Josef Thimus was the son of the Eupen banker and dye works owner and multiple mayor Leonard Thimus and Anna Maria Gade. Heinrich Josef Thimus was entitled to exercise public offices in the city through his father, who had received Aachen citizenship in 1733 and became the owner of the Rote Burg in Kleinkölnstrasse. His main occupation was the royal Hungarian-Bohemian head forest master in the Duchy of Limburg, and he was also involved in the city council of Aachen as a representative of the so-called "old party", which was conservative and traditionally oriented. In the years 1777/78, 1779/80, 1781/82 and 1783/84 Thimus was elected mayor together with the lay mayor Joseph Xaver von Richterich as a representative of the guilds. Since he had replaced each other with von Richterich in the mayor’s office with the likewise conservative mayors Stephan Dominicus Dauven and Johann Jakob von Wylre , the representatives of the “New Party”, consisting mainly of merchants and leading cloth and needle manufacturers, saw each other existed, massively blocked and disadvantaged. This heated up the smoldering in Aachen for years , and in the 1780s there were massive and sometimes violent unrest in the city.

After Thimus for his services as chief forester on 13 March 1779 by the Empress Maria Theresa in the kingdom nobility had been raised, he also received after the acquisition of Castle Zieverich the to the primogeniture bound Zieverich Baron title , in accordance with the rules of primogeniture to the each firstborn son could be inherited. This title was passed on to his son, the merchant Karl Erhard von Thimus-Zieverich (* 1763), who, however, had no male descendants.

Heinrich Joseph Freiherr von Thimus-Zieverich was married to Katharina Goertz from Eupen, daughter of the dye works owner and builder of the local Nisper chapel Erich Adolph Görtz, with whom he had three children. After her death he married Therese Josefine Baroness van Grave de Bajenrieux (1743-1830) from Brussels , who bore him ten more children and was accepted into the Prussian baron class by her husband in 1829. Through his youngest son, Philipp Anton von Thimus (* 1777), he is the grandfather of the appellate judge Albert von Thimus .

Literature and Sources

• Hermann Friedrich Macco : Aachen coat of arms and genealogies , Volume 1, Aachen 1907, pp. 192–193 digitized
• 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. 76/77 ( aachener-geschichtsverein.de [PDF; 1.7 MB ]).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Family Thimus-Gade on ostbelgien.net