Johann Wilhelm Gottfried von Lommessem

Johann Wilhelm von Lommessem after a photo in the StA Aachen

Johann Wilhelm Gottfried Franz Freiherr von Lommessem (born October 4, 1743 in Aachen ; † April 3, 1810 ibid) was a German mayor of Aachen and the first president of the Chamber of Commerce, today's Aachen Chamber of Commerce .

Live and act

The son of the lawyer Wilhelm Gottfried Gabriel von Lommessem and Maria Franziska Sibylle Packenius studied spiritual and secular law and in 1766 did his internship at the Imperial Court of Justice in Wetzlar . Two years earlier, Lommessem was elected a member of the Council of the Free Imperial City of Aachen at the age of twenty , and was re-elected thirteen times until 1789. He was also given the office of lay judge , which he held until 1798 and finally as lay judge master.

In 1786 Lommessem was appointed judge of appeal for the county of Wittem and the lordship of Eys. During the so-called Aachener Mäkelei (electoral influence) in the same year, there were unrest in the elections for the city council and mayor , from which Lommessem distanced himself and also refused an offer for mayor during this time. For his services in those years he was awarded the title of baron by the Elector Karl Theodor von der Pfalz on June 4, 1792 .

In December of the same year, Aachen was captured by the French troops for the first time as part of the First Coalition War and, after a brief recapture by the Austrian allies, was finally captured in the areas of the Left Bank of the Rhine in June 1794 . Lommessem escaped the turmoil of war in what was then Aachen, but returned in October 1794 and was only able to resume his offices under difficult conditions and with interruptions. After the administrative reorganization of the Département de la Roer in 1798, the jury's chair in Aachen was abolished and Lommessem only held his legal offices.

Although the Aacheners initially harbored a deep hatred of the French, this subsided over the years after the reorganization had shown that it had advantages in many areas. Trade and economy flourished, industry enjoyed more orders and the citizens were also doing better than in the previous decades. This also led to a veneration of Napoléon Bonaparte at Lommessem and he was henceforth one of the most important notables of the Département de la Roer for the French , who were to integrate the nobility and bourgeoisie as the basic pillar of French society in the new state. These notables were characterized by significant private and corporate assets as well as land holdings. Finally, on October 31, 1804, the city of Aachen elected him to succeed Jakob Friedrich Kolb as their mayor. His powers and those of the Council Chamber also extended to the cantons of Burtscheid , Linnich , Heinsberg , Sittard / NL and Geilenkirchen . In December of the same year Lommessem belonged to the Aachen delegation, together with the President of the Canton Aix-La-Chapelle Matthias Goswin Pelzer , who attended Napoleon's coronation in Paris . In the course of these celebrations he was made a Knight of the Legion of Honor . At the same time he tried in Paris to get back the statue of Charles from Aachen's Charles Fountain , which was stolen from the French in 1792 as spoils of war . This request was met benevolently and the statue of Charles could finally be erected again in its old place in June 1805. In addition, in 1805 he succeeded in re-establishing the Aachen commercial court in consultation with the French, which then included the large cloth and needle manufacturers and wholesalers.

Due to Napoleon's government decree to found a “ Chambre consultative de manufactures, fabriques, arts et metiers ” on April 2, 1804 and the subsequent establishment of the Aachen Chamber of Commerce on June 21, 1804, today's Aachen Chamber of Industry and Commerce , Lommessem became mayor in addition to his office also elected President of this institution. In 1807, as a representative of the city, Lommessem received two valuable portraits of Napoléon and his wife Joséphine de Beauharnais , which are now in the possession of the Suermondt Ludwig Museum in Aachen, due to their good contacts with the French .

For reasons of age and health, Lommessem resigned his offices in 1808 and the Aachen needle manufacturer Cornelius von Guaita was elected as his successor both as mayor and president of the Aachen Chamber of Commerce.

family

Lommessem was married to Cornelia van Heyningen (1744-1825), with whom he had three sons and two daughters. One of his sons, Gerhard Freiherr von Lommessem , became first adjunct of Aachen from 1808 and from 1816 to 1825 district administrator in the Düren district . His son Johann Wilhelm von Lommessem became city councilor of Aachen and in 1846 acquired Blumenthal Castle , in which he established a nunnery with an attached boarding school for the Catholic Order of Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (Sacre Coeur) and which his two daughters Anna and Caroline von Lommessem joined. The von Lommessem family also owned Rahe Castle in Aachen- Laurensberg for a long time .

Literature and Sources

• Luise Freiin von Coels von der Brügghen : The lay judges of the Royal See of Aachen from the earliest times until the final repeal of the imperial city constitution in 1798 . In: Journal of the Aachener Geschichtsverein , No. 50, 1928, pp. 496–501
• Thomas R. Kraus : On the way to the modern age - Aachen in the French time 1792/93. 1794–1814 , Verlag des Aachener Geschichtsverein , Aachen 1994, ISBN 3-9802705-1-3 ; P. 500 and a.