Hermann Heusch

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Hermann Heusch Monument in Aachen

Maria Julius August Aloys Aegidius Hermann Heusch (born June 23, 1906 in Aachen ; † January 15, 1981 there ) was a German local politician ( CDU ). From 1952 to 1973 he was Lord Mayor of Aachen and co-founder of the International Charlemagne Prize of the city of Aachen.

family

Hermann Heusch came from the old Catholic German bourgeois and merchant family Heusch, which is a branch of the Hoesch entrepreneurial family and goes back to the common progenitor Heinrich Hoesch († 1552). Heusch's ancestors had been entrepreneurs and councilors of the Free Imperial City of Aachen for several generations . His father was the Aachen factory owner and central politician Albert Heusch , owner of the family company August Heusch & Söhne , Kratzenfabrik and member of the Rhenish Provincial Parliament, and his brother was the entrepreneur Gerd Heusch . On May 8, 1930, Gerd Heusch married Elisabeth b. Pauli. The family lived on the Wylre'schen Hof at Aachener Jakobstraße 35, a baroque listed building that was rebuilt by Laurenz Mefferdatis and furnished in the style of Johann Josef Couven , and which has been owned by the family from 1861 to the present day.

Life

After graduating from secondary school in Aachen , Heusch studied from 1925 at the Université de Lausanne and the higher commercial school in Lausanne and then initially worked for his father's company A. Heusch & Söhne, the oldest scratching factory in Aachen. During his studies in Lausanne, he joined the Société d'Étudiants Germania Lausanne .

Heusch's political career began after the end of the Second World War . In 1945 he was elected to head the Aachen Chamber of Commerce and Industry , and remained its President for 35 years until his death in 1981. In the following year he became a member of the city council of Aachen. He was also President of the German-Belgian-Luxembourg Chamber of Commerce in Cologne.

In December 1949 he was a co-founder of the "Society for the Awarding of the International Charlemagne Prize of the City of Aachen" (Charlemagne Prize Society) and was one of the founders of the Charlemagne Prize of the City of Aachen, which is still awarded today. Along with twelve other founding members, he was one of the signatories of the “Proclamation of 1949” of the Charlemagne Prize Foundation, which - supplemented by the declaration of 1990 - still forms the spiritual foundation of the Charlemagne Prize. The International Charlemagne Prize of the City of Aachen for special services to unification and peace in Europe was first awarded in 1950.

Heusch finally succeeded Albert Maas in 1952 as the Lord Mayor of Aachen . He was elected by the Aachen city council. Until 1995 the council elected the mayor from among its members as chairman and representative of the city, who was active on a voluntary basis . During his term of office, the reconstruction of the city falls in particular. The town hall and cathedral were restored, the Elisenbrunnen rebuilt according to old plans, and the city theater, of which only the facade was preserved, was given a new building. Heusch co-founder was the first twinning of Aachen, the partnership of the city of Aachen with the French city of Reims in the Region Champagne-Ardenne . On January 28, 1967, Lord Mayor Hermann Heusch and Mayor of Reims Jean Taittinger signed the partnership agreement. He was instrumental in the local reorganization of the Aachen area, which was then implemented in 1972 with the Aachen law . Heusch was also responsible for the resurgence of Aachen as a major cultural center. Heusch remained mayor of Aachen for 21 years until his resignation in 1973.

Heusch was one of the founding fathers of the International Conference for Spatial Planning in Northwestern Europe (CRNO) , founded in Liege in May 1959, and was its president from 1959 to 1961.

In addition to his political activities, Heusch campaigned for the maintenance of language and customs. He was known to have campaigned for the preservation of the Öcher Platt . He is the author of several articles on the local history of Aachen. As an entrepreneur, Heusch had fruitful contacts with regional entrepreneurs. Hermann Heusch was deputy chairman of the supervisory board of AachenMünchener Feuer-Versicherungs-Gesellschaft and Aachener Rückversicherungsgesellschaft and was a member of the supervisory boards of Colonia , Thuringia Generali Versicherung AG , Fortuna Rückversicherung and Oldenburgische Versicherungs AG.

Heusch died of heart failure on January 15, 1981 at the age of 74. His grave is in the Aachen Ostfriedhof .

Awards and honors

When he left office, he was made an honorary citizen of the city of Aachen . Likewise, on November 11, 1954, the RWTH Aachen named him "[...] in recognition of the long-standing, friendly and effective cooperation with the Rheinisch Westfälische Technische Hochschule Aachen." Merit and the care of the city fathers for the development of the university ”to the honorary senator .

On January 5, 1979, Hermann Heusch was awarded the Gold Medal of Honor by the Chamber of Commerce and Industry for Maastricht and the surrounding area in Maastricht. He received this award a. a. for his efforts in forging international relationships.

In 1983 the city of Aachen named the newly designed Hermann-Heusch-Platz in the city center after him. A portrait of Hermann Heusch can be found in the "ancestral gallery" of former Aachen city leaders in the meeting room of the Löwenstein family in Aachen.

Publications

  • Aachen, city of Charlemagne and the healing springs. with an introduction by Hermann Heusch and Anton kurz, Verl. Die Schönen Bücher, Stuttgart 1956, 6th completely revised. 1972 edition
  • On the history of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry for the Aachen administrative region in the years 1929–1954. Publishing house of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry, 1954
  • The Wylresche Hof in Aachen. In: Zeitschrift des Aachener Geschichtsverein , 68, 1956, pp. 333–359.

Talk

Web links

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b cf .: Erich Meuthen:  Familie Heusch. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 9, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1972, ISBN 3-428-00190-7 , p. 45 ( digitized version ).
  2. ^ See proclamation from 1949. Signed among others by Hermann Heusch. ( Memento of the original from September 7, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.karlspreis.de
  3. ↑ See: Press Office of the City of Aachen: Review in the chronicle of the city of Aachen from 2007 (PDF; 2.7 MB) on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the city partnership with Reims.
  4. ↑ See: Press Office of the City of Aachen: Review in the chronicle of the city of Aachen from 2006 (PDF; 579 kB) on the occasion of Hermann Heusch's 100th birthday.
  5. ↑ Erwin Klein: A life for the hometown - Hermann Heusch . In: Here in Aachen - city chronicle from 1.1.1970 to 31.12.1973 . Aachen 1973 ( aachener-geschichtsverein.de [PDF; 4.5 MB ; accessed on August 6, 2015]).
  6. ↑ Press Office of the City of Aachen: Chronicle of the City of Aachen from 1983 (PDF; 19 kB)
personal data
SURNAME Heusch, Hermann
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Heusch, Maria Julius August Aloys Aegidius Hermann (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Lord Mayor of Aachen
DATE OF BIRTH June 23, 1906
PLACE OF BIRTH Aachen
DATE OF DEATH January 15, 1981
Place of death Aachen