Johann Carl Salomo Thon

Johann Carl Salomo Thon (born December 31, 1751 on the Lichtenburg near Ostheim in front of the Rhön , † March 7, 1830 in Eisenach ) was an Eisenach Privy Councilor and senior consistorial director in the Duchy of Saxony-Weimar-Eisenach . He became known through his publication “Schloss Wartburg”. More recently, his efforts in caring for the poor in the city of Eisenach have also been recognized.

Family origin

Johann Carl Salomo Thon was the youngest of 8 children of the ducal Saxon-Eisenach bailiff in the Lichtenberg district, Johann Heinrich Christian Thon (1699–1784) and his wife Magdalena Johanna Juliana Limpert (1711–1795). Like five of his brothers and two sisters, he was born on the Lichtenburg near Ostheim. "

School education and professional career

After attending the school of the Halle orphanage , where his older brother Friedrich Elias Thon (1740–1777) worked as a teacher in Zillbach and Kaltensundheim before his pastor, Johann Carl Salomo Thon studied law in Jena . He completed his studies at the age of 21 and did an internship with his father in Ostheim. Since two brothers were already employed by the Ostheim or Lichtenburg office, Thon applied to the duchess Anna Amalia of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel for a post in the duchy. Thereupon he was given a job as a chamber assessor at the state government in Eisenach. In 1786 Duke Carl August appointed him to the district chamber councilor and in 1802 to the secret chamber councilor . When the Eisenach Chamber was merged with that of Weimar in 1809, Thon stayed as a deputy in Eisenach to take care of the day-to-day business in the Eisenach district. From 1814 to 1822 he was the successor to his nephew Christian August Thon as head of the senior consistory. He was responsible for the supervision of the entire educational institutions and of the Protestant church in the Grand Duchy . In 1816 he was elected to the state parliament in Weimar for six years as a member of the Eisenach citizenship . In 1823 he became chairman of the fisheries commission and in 1824 chairman of the road construction commission. At the age of 77, Thon retired in 1829 and died the following year.

family

In 1782 Thon married the writer Eleonore Sophie Auguste Röder , daughter of the Saxon-Weimar Chamber Secretary August Friedrich Röder in Eisenach. Since 1796 she was paralyzed and could only sit in a special armchair made for her. Shortly after their death, in 1807, their only son Eduard also died. As a young soldier in the Austrian service, he was reported missing.

Merit and Appreciation

In 1808 the road from Eisenach to Wilhemsthal was built on the recommendation of Johann Carl Salomo Thon. As a regional chamber councilor, he was also commissioned to organize the Wartburg archives and to investigate the poor system in the city of Eisenach and to propose solutions for its redesign. As a result of the former activity, the book “Schloss Wartburg; a contribution to the story of the past ”, which appeared in four editions (1792, 1795, 1815 and 1872). The book is considered the first local guide for the Wartburg. Thon's importance for the poor in the city of Eisenach has been scientifically investigated:

" Stefan Wolter , in his book, Bear in mind that poverty. The poor system of the city of Eisenach in the late 17th and 18th centuries' the achievements of Johann Carl Salomo Thons for the poor and described its reform program in detail. As a source he used a handwritten report of almost 100 pages, which Johann Carl Salomo Thon wrote in 1788 and which bears the title: 'The more detailed description of the current constitution of the poor.' In it, Wolter explains how, after years of dispute with the consistory, Thon managed to actually use the funds and donations intended for the poor. In his efforts he was supported by Duke Carl August, without whose support he would not have been able to assert himself against the consistory. "

A number of verses which he himself drafted testified to Thon's courage in his activities. On a rock face on the road to Wilhelmsthal there is the inscription: "The benevolent ruler's word gave the hikers safe roads here on desert mountains." To increase the willingness to donate to the poor, he designed new labels for the collection boxes, which are in many places (including in the Inns of the city) were:

“The thought also occurred to me to put a can with the inscription (...) under the picture of Saint Elisabeth, who afterwards refreshes and supports the poor, in the Wartburg Church, where many strangers come, (...): 'Oh you nobles, In the picture of your philanthropist, think gently of the poor, whose thanks are worthwhile to you! And it blossoms on your ways, towards you the sweet joy who lives alone in good hearts. '"

The latter was rejected by the then senior consistorial president and secret councilor Johann Ludwig von Bechtolsheim because of the length and ordered the label “Beenket das Armuth”, which has since been present in many places in the city.

Thon's decision (1817) to sell the Lichtenburg, "the place of his birth and youth", to Ostheim citizens proved to be fatal. He saw that the buyers used the castle as a quarry. Two years later, the government bought back the 30 m high keep and in 1843 the remains of the wall.

For his 56 years as a public servant in the Duchy of Saxony-Weimar Eisenach, he was awarded the Commander's Cross of the White Order of the Falcons . The scientific analysis of Thon's reform efforts comes to the conclusion:

“Johann Carl Salomo Thon, who in the course of his life could neither part with his long braid nor his short trousers with silver knee buckles, may have thought and acted traditionally on many points, but his personality already points to a new type of civil servant. With commitment and a sense of duty, he tirelessly took care of new income for the alms fund and contributed to the central administration of the funds. By relying on the expansion of social taxes by dividing the city into supervisory districts and numbering the houses, so that in future hardly anyone could escape bureaucratic observation, he gave authority to the developing state. An authority that was not yet realized in the 18th century. "

literature

• Bernhard Friedrich Voigt (Ed.): New Nekrolog der Deutschen, 1st part , Ilmenau 1832
• Heinz-Jürgen Thon: History of the Thon family. From the beginnings in Saxony-Eisenach to the new beginning in Bavaria (1535–2005) , Hausen 2006, ISBN 978-3-87707-677-4
• Stefan Wolter: "Think about poverty", the poor system of the city of Eisenach in the late 17th and 18th centuries. Almosenkasse - orphanage - penitentiary , Göttingen (Hainholz), 2003, ISBN 978-3-932622-22-9

Web links

• Johann Carl Salomo Thon in the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ^ Bernhard Friedrich Voigt (ed.): New Nekrolog der Deutschen, 1st part, Ilmenau 1832, pp. 215-218.
2. ^ Heinz-Jürgen Thon: History of the Thon family. From the beginnings in Saxony-Eisenach to the new beginning in Bavaria (1535–2005), 2006, p. 46 ff.
3. ^ State and address manual of the states of the Rhenish Federation for 1811, p. 391 f. .
4. ↑ Ibid.
5. ↑ Ibid.
6. ↑ Quoted from Heinz-Jürgen Thon: Geschichte der Familie Thon, 2006, p. 47 f.
7. ↑ Review of Stefan Wolter: “Beenket das Armut”. The poor system of the city of Eisenach in the late 17th and 18th centuries. Almosenkasse - orphanage - penitentiary, Göttingen (Hainholz) 2003, in: Journal of the Association for Thuringian History 57 (2003), pp. 372–374.
8. ↑ Stefan Wolter: "Beenket das Armuth", Göttingen (Hainholz) 2003, p. 374.
9. ↑ Ibid., P. 173.
10. ↑ Ibid.
11. ^ Thon, Geschichte der Familie Thon, 2006, p. 46 ff.
12. ↑ Wolter, “Beenket das Armuth”, 2003, p. 391.