Johann von Thys
Johann "Jan" Reiner von Thys , (born September 25, 1715 in Eupen , † September 1773 in Klagenfurt am Wörthersee ) was a merchant and cloth manufacturer from what was then the Austrian Netherlands , who in 1762 was the first of these to set up the Thys Kk fine cloth factory in the Carinthian capital Klagenfurt Art founded in Austria . In addition, Thys was a competent advisor on agricultural issues and was raised to the free nobility for his services.
Live and act
Eupener time
Johann Thys was the fourth of seven children of the Eupen businessman and Reiner Franz Thys († 1746) and Anna Margaretha Klebanck († 1749) elected several times as mayor. There are no records of the first thirty years of his life, but he must have undergone commercial training in line with family tradition. Johann Thys was first mentioned in a document in 1744, when he handled the liquidation of a brewery with courtyard and garden of the late Matthias Juncker from Eupen as part of an execution of his will. On May 15, 1748, in Liège , he married Catharina Theresia Coletta Willems, daughter of the banker Michael Willems and Maria Margerita de Hayme de Bomal, the builders and owners of the Palais d'Ansembourg in Liège. Since Johann's father-in-law Michael was also the brother of Nicolaus Willems, the second husband of Johann's mother Anna Margaretha Klebanck, his step-uncle and Catarina was therefore his “step-cousin”, he had to ask the Holy See for dispensation for the marriage , which finally approved has been. This marriage resulted in eight children, three sons and five daughters, all born and baptized in Eupen. His daughter Maria Elisabeth Franziska (* 1760) married Ignaz Joachim von Hagenauer (1749-1824) from Salzburg, a freemason, merchant and founder of the "Assicuratori Marittimi" in Trieste in 1785.
By 1750 Thys was meanwhile a wealthy and influential man in Eupen. He owned, among other things, a house in Gospertstraße, a plot of land with a dye works in the area of Heggenstraße, ponds near Buschbergerweg in Kettenis , and water-rich grounds in Ketteniser Talstraße. He left the latter to his brother-in-law and husband of his sister Maria Elisabeth (* 1723), the Eupener mayor and cloth merchant Renier-François Grand Ry (Reiner Franziscus Grandri) (1716–1777), who between 1754 and 1757 had his new country estate Schloss Thal with adjoining Dyeing was built, in which Johann Thys also made a financial contribution.
In addition to his professional obligations, Thys was heavily involved in local politics. In 1750 and 1754, respectively, he was named mayor of the city of Eupen, was a deputy of the Third Estate and for eleven years he was a “perpetual delegate” for commerce .
Fine cloth manufacturer in Klagenfurt
For professional reasons, Thys went on numerous business trips and got to know influential people, including Gerard van Swieten , the personal doctor of the Austrian Empress Maria Theresa . This acquaintance was to his advantage when he applied to the offer of the Empress to establish new factories in Austria. Both in his application to the Habsburg ambassador in Brussels, Johann Karl Philipp Graf Cobenzl , and in the presentation to the empress herself, van Swieten played a decisive role in Thys' plans to set up a fine cloth factory. Empress Maria Theresa approved the application on April 1, 1762, supported it with an advance of 100,000 guilders , allowed Thys to determine the location of his factory himself and gave him numerous privileges. At the same time, she appointed Thys as a real commercial councilor and approved his factory to carry the state award “ kk Feintuchmanufaktur” and the imperial eagle in the company emblem.
Johann Thys chose the city of Klagenfurt am Wörthersee in Carinthia because of its relative proximity to the port of Trieste , but it took until November 13th 1762 to open the first part of the “Kk Feintuchfabrik Thys”. First he had to do his business and offices in Eupen and at the same time there were problems taking over the property in Klagenfurt because a tenant there did not want to vacate the intended area on the Glan river and the Empress therefore had to intervene. Thys finally started production with 47 employees, nine of whom were masters whom he had recruited from the Habsburg Netherlands and who had arrived a month earlier with their own spinning wheels and equipment. Thys quickly planned the expansion of the company and in autumn 1763 had a further factory hall with fulling mill and dyeing built , as well as a soap-making and finishing plant in 1764 , including its own funds of 120,000 guilders . With his now 297 employees, including 38 cloth makers from his homeland, it was his goal to not only supply the domestic market with his cloth, but also to open up export markets in Eastern Europe.
Production was now in full swing and Thys urgently needed connected wool spinning mills for the supply of yarn. To this end, he had a first spinning school built in 1763 and, with official approval, relocated two orphanages from Graz and Völkermarkt to Klagenfurt by 1768, and a few months later set up a military orphanage in the immediate vicinity. Thys was then appointed imperial representative for the spinning school system and was given the management of the affiliated orphanages. In 1768, around 90 children from the Klagenfurt orphanage, most of the 500 children from the military orphanage, around 60 children from orphanages in neighboring towns and around 50 people from the poor house , the workhouse and the penitentiary in Klagenfurt were working for Thys under extremely inhumane conditions another 50 or so workers from other spinning schools.
The children in particular suffered from the precarious conditions in the “Kk Feintuchfabrik”, which were common in numerous companies at that time: 14 hours of work every day of the week in drafty and cold spinning rooms were the norm. Two or three of them slept in one bed, were poorly or poorly clothed and had limited personal hygiene options. Many of them were malnourished, contracted scabies and other skin diseases, as well as bronchial and lung diseases, which the majority of the children did not survive. They were also denied access to regeneration times, educational opportunities and church services, as well as social contacts.
Thys had now become one of the most important men in Carinthia and was at the height of his work. With his 42 looms he was hardly able to meet the demand from the Habsburg hereditary lands . Dealers in Vienna, Prague and other trading locations confirmed that his cloths were among the best. The estates followed his efforts with interest and granted him the estate as early as 1765 . For his services to the promotion of commerce in Carinthia, Thys was raised to the nobility on April 20, 1765 and a street in Klagenfurt was named after him in the 20th century.
After Johann von Thys death in September 1773, his eldest son Reiner Franz (* 1750) took over the flourishing company, which got increasingly into difficulties after subsidies and commitments by the state were gradually withdrawn and the coalition wars with France began to sell Let cloths break in for good. Finally Reiner von Thys was forced to close the "Kk Feintuchfabrik" around 1800. The military received the main building in 1815 and converted it into a military hospital . The armed forces had already taken over the military orphanage , which was closed in the 1780s and has since been converted into a cigar factory, and continued to operate as an orphanage barracks , which in turn was dissolved in 2009 and partially demolished in 2013 and rebuilt as a block of flats.
Agricultural commitment
In addition to his work as a cloth manufacturer, Johann von Thys was instrumental in promoting Carinthian agriculture. In 1764, Empress Maria Theresa suggested that so-called arable societies should be founded in the Habsburg hereditary lands in order to promote self-cultivation and to become more independent from imports. Fascinated by this idea, Thys and 23 other gentlemen founded the “Kärntner Ackerbaugesellschaft” on October 1st, 1764, which was dedicated to improving agriculture and promoting the arts and appointed Thys Chancellor of the society. On April 8, 1765, Maria Theresa declared this elite association as a model for all other arable farming societies in the Austro-Hungarian hereditary lands and certified that it provided central support in matters of practical agricultural promotion. At the imperial request, Thys was also available as a “godfather” for the founding of the “Styrian Agricultural Society”.
Thys proved to be an extremely active and imaginative member of the Carinthian arable farming society. He grew maize on his test fields, modernized cheese production, promoted the cultivation of flax, mulberry trees, aniseed, fennel, onions and garlic, brought the potato to Carinthia, which is specifically mentioned in the log of the land survey in the 1820s, and propagated the Lucerne clover as animal feed. He also pointed out how "living fences" made from trees and shrubs such as hawthorn, barberry, hazelnut or alder can be used. From 1770 the Carinthian agricultural company had to submit to the " free market economy " introduced by Zinzendorf , but was able to survive in this form until 1848, in contrast to many other agricultural companies and the Thys fine cloth factory.
literature
- Leo Hermanns: Johann Thys van Eupen, an economic pioneer of the 18th century in Carinthia , in: Geschichtliches Eupen , Volume 14, pp. 81–96, Markus-Verlag, Eupen 1980.
- Martin Wutte: Johann Thys from Eupen, a pioneer of the national economy in Carinthia , in: Free votes , Klagenfurt 1931
- Anton Freiherr von Pantz : A study trip through Carinthia in 1771. Historical contributions to the local history of Carinthia, Klagenfurt 1941.
- Carinthia's famous and deserving men , in: Rudolf Niederl: Kärnten - an illustrated home book , Klagenfurt 1950, p. 239
- Karl Dinklage: Klagenfurts industrial development , in: Landeshauptstadt Klagenfurt , 2nd volume 1970, p. 241ff
- Roland Bäck, Werner Drobesch , Claudia Fräss-Ehrfeld : The Carinthian Agricultural Society as the engine of agricultural modernization from the Theresian era to the late March: membership development, social structure and activities . (= Archive for Patriotic History and Topography, 93), Verlag des Geschichtsverein für Kärnten, Klagenfurt 2007
Individual evidence
- ↑ For more information, see: fr: Hôtel d'Ansembourg , itemization 2
- ↑ Hagenauer - the Triester branch , on salzburg.com
- ↑ Chapter The fine cloth manufacture of Johann Thys zu Klagenfurt in 1762. In: Alfred Ogris: The Linzer Wollzeugfabrik and the Oriental Company: Reactions in Carinthia (1725/26) to a privilege. In: Historical yearbook of the city of Linz 2003/2004. Edited by Walter Schuster, Maximilian Schimböck and Anneliese Schweiger, p. 385/386, entire article p. 375–386, online (PDF) in the forum OoeGeschichte.at.
- ^ History of the orphanage barracks ( Memento from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
- ^ Press release of the Austrian Armed Forces of September 27, 2009
- ↑ Monument Protection Initiative of August 26, 2013 Communication on Facebook
- ↑ Roland Bäck: The “Kärntner Ackerbaugesellschaft” from its foundation in 1764 to the basic relief in 1848. An early bourgeois association as an economic modernization instrument; Diploma thesis, Klagenfurt 2005
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Thys, Johann von |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Thys, Johann Reiner von (full name); Thys, Jan Reiner von (nickname) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Textile manufacturer and agricultural consultant in Klagenfurt am Wörthersee |
| DATE OF BIRTH | September 25, 1715 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Eupen |
| DATE OF DEATH | September 1773 |
| Place of death | Klagenfurt am Wörthersee |