Thyssen (entrepreneurial family)

Thyssen is a German entrepreneurial family that originally came from Aachen . The family history is closely linked to the companies Thyssen AG , ThyssenKrupp and ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems .

history

Isaak Lambert Thyssen (1685–1773) went to nearby Aachen because of the fire on his estate near Schlottfeld , where he was the municipal hay knife from 1740 and was responsible for fire protection in the barns. Isaac Lambert's son Nikolaus (1727–1778) became a baker and chief master of the local guild and was a member of the town's small council. His son of the same name, Nikolaus Thyssen (1763–1814), also learned the bakery trade, then joined the city of Aachen as assistant secretary and organized the festivities for the baptism of Napoleon I's son in 1811. From 1792 onwards, he was with Christine Nellessen ( 1766-1818), who came from a respected entrepreneurial family in Aachen and soon took a stake in the Aachen fire insurance company and the wire factory company in Eschweiler .

Their son Johann Friedrich Thyssen (1804–1877) completed a commercial training, namely a bank apprenticeship, and in 1838 married his cousin Katharina Thyssen (1814–1888), the daughter of the Aachen specialty merchant Isaak Thyssen. In March 1822 he founded Germany's first wire rod factory with the Aachen and Eschweiler manufacturers Monheim , Friedrich Englerth , Ludwig Beissel and Jacob Springsfeld in the form of a stock corporation under the name Draht-Fabrik-Compagnie in Eschweiler, based in Aachen, and was director from 1834 to 1859 is responsible for the technical and commercial management of the company. He also founded a private banking business in Eschweiler in the mid-19th century.

August Thyssen (1842–1926) at Landsberg Castle

Fritz Thyssen (1873-1951)

Typewritten global share of August Thyssen-Bank AG from June 1955

Johann Friedrich's sons August Thyssen (1842–1926) and Joseph Thyssen (1844–1915) initially worked in their father's bank. In 1867 August and several relatives founded the ironworks "Thyssen-Foussol & Co" in Duisburg in what was then the Prussian Rhine province . In 1870 the company was dissolved and Thyssen founded the rolling mill Thyssen & Co. with the capital redeemed in Styrum near Mülheim an der Ruhr , which was to form the nucleus for one of the largest integrated European mining groups , the August Thyssen-Hütte . In 1872 August Thyssen married Hedwig Pelzer (1854–1940), daughter of the Mülheim tannery owner Johann Heinrich Pelzer; the marriage had four children. In 1903 August Thyssen acquired Landsberg Castle (Ratingen) , which he bequeathed to a family foundation after his death in 1926, the August Thyssen Foundation, Landsberg Castle , which still owns it today; The family burial place is in the keep. Together with Hugo Stinnes , August Thyssen was one of the founders of RWE . His younger brother Joseph Thyssen was his closest collaborator and confidante all his life; Among other things, he was the founding board member of the Mülheimer Bergwerk-Verein in 1898 .

August's eldest son, Fritz Thyssen (1873–1951), brought substantial parts of the group into Vereinigte Stahlwerke AG after his father's death in 1926 . In 1926 he founded the International Crude Steel Community . In 1931 he participated in the formation of the " Harzburger Front " against the Weimar Republic and supported Adolf Hitler since 1932. However, he criticized the Jewish pogroms and the looming war and in 1939 emigrated to Switzerland under protest; The Nazi regime responded to this provocation by expropriating all of its property in Germany and later with expatriation . Arrested in France at the end of 1940, he and his wife were interned in various concentration camps until the end of the war in 1945. His wife and their daughter Anita Countess Zichy-Thyssen (1909–1990) accompanied the organizational reconstruction of the Thyssen Group in Germany after the Second World War. In 1959, the two heiresses set up the Fritz Thyssen Foundation for the Promotion of Science with a nominal capital of DM 100 million shares in the company that has been trading as August Thyssen-Hütte AG since 1953 . After the founder and her sons were ousted from the foundation's board of trustees by influential industrial managers in 1988, the sons Claudio and Frederico Zichy-Thyssen, who lived in Argentina, sold their remaining 16.6% shares in Thyssen AG in 1995. In 1999, Thyssen AG merged with KruppHoesch to form ThyssenKrupp AG .

Fritz 'younger brother Heinrich Thyssen (1875–1947) had married Margit Freiin Bornemisza de Kászon et Impérfalva (1887–1971) in 1906 and had become a Hungarian citizen; since he was adopted by his father-in-law, he then took the name Baron Thyssen-Bornemisza de Kászon . In 1912 he joined the board of directors of the coal mining company, the German Emperors' union . After the end of the First World War , Heinrich Thyssen moved to The Hague and controlled Thyssen’s foreign companies from there. He wanted to avoid entrepreneurial dependencies, which is why, after his father's death in 1926, he refused to share his inheritance in the newly emerging Trust Vereinigte Stahlwerke AG . For this reason, August Thyssen's industrial legacy was divided between the brothers Fritz and Heinrich. When the United Steel Works was founded by Fritz in 1926, Heinrich brought his part of the family inheritance to August Thyssen's Enterprises des In- und Abroad GmbH . These included in particular the Dutch banking, trading and transport companies, but also German companies (August Thyssen-Bank AG, Preß- und Walzwerk AG, Thyssensche Gas- und Wasserwerke GmbH, etc.) Heinrich Thyssen built his own group of companies around the pipe works in Düsseldorf- Reisholz and the now defunct steelworks in Düsseldorf-Oberbilk , which had been part of the group since 1906. He was also a major shareholder in Bremer Vulkan . Most of the companies were later organizationally united in an independent group of companies, Thyssen-Bornemisza, which in the following decades developed into a predominantly international holding company for numerous, wide-ranging industrial and service activities. In 1932 Heinrich Thyssen moved to Switzerland and made a name for himself as an art collector in Lugano.

Heinrich's son, Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza de Kászon (1921–2002), continued the foreign companies, especially in the Netherlands. He moved his father's collection of paintings from the Swiss Villa Favorita to the newly founded Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid. His eldest son, Georg Heinrich Baron Thyssen-Bornemisza (* 1950), continues the company based in Malta from Monaco . This is TBG ( Thyssen-Bornemisza Group) Holdings NV , which brings together a conglomerate of extremely diverse companies in Europe and America, such as a database provider, the pump manufacturer SIHI Group , an oil research company, a manufacturer of satellite antennas, a shipbuilding company, investment management and Real estate and agriculture. The Thyssen-Bornemisza Group generates more than two billion euros annually. For Georg Heinrich's siblings, parts of the group were spun off and transferred to their own holdings when the inheritance was divided.

Family members

The family includes:

Johann Friedrich Thyssen (1804–1877) ∞ (his cousin) Katharina Thyssen (1814–1888)
1. August Thyssen (1842–1926) ∞ Hedwig Pelzer (1854–1940)
  1. Fritz Thyssen (1873–1951) ∞ Amélie zur Helle (1877–1965)
    1. Anita Thyssen (1909–1990) ∞ Gabor Ödon Graf Zichy von Zich and Vásonykeö (1910–1974)
      1. Frederico (* 1937)
      2. Claudio (* 1942)
  2. August Thyssen junior (1874-1943)
  3. Heinrich Thyssen (1875–1947) ∞ Margit Freiin Bornemisza de Kászon et Impérfalva (1887–1971)
    1. Henrik Gábor István Ágost Freiherr Thyssen-Bornemisza de Kászon et Impérfalva (1907–1981)
    2. Margit von Batthyány (1911–1989) ∞ Ivan von Batthyány (1910–1985)
    3. Gabrielle Wilhelmine Hedwige Marie Freiin Thyssen-Bornemisza de Kászon et Impérfalva (* 1916)
    4. Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza de Kászon (1921–2002), married five times
      1. Georg Heinrich Baron Thyssen-Bornemisza (* 1950) ∞ Katharina Eleonore Countess of Meran
        Simon (* 2001)
      2. Francesca (* 1958) ∞ Karl Habsburg-Lothringen
        
        Eleonore (* 1994)
        
        Ferdinand Zvonimir (* 1997)
        
        Gloria (* 1999)
      3. Lorne (* 1963) ∞ Alexandra Wright
        Julia (* 2006)
      4. Alexander (* 1974)
  4. Hedwig Thyssen (1878–1960) First marriage to Count Ferdinand von Neufforge (1869–1942), second marriage to Miksa (Max) von Berg (1859–1925)
    1. Hedwig von Neufforge (1900–1962)
    2. Maximiliane von Berg-Thyssen (1908–2004), married four times, most recently ∞ Adalbert Orgovanyi-Hanstein
      1. Attila Orgoványi-Hanstein (* 1946; † 1987)
        Diana Orgovanyi-Hanstein (* 1972) ∞ Prince Johannes von Schwarzenberg (* 1967)
      2. Ildikó Alexandra von Berg (* 1951; † 2015 at Schwarzenegg Castle )
    3. Mignon von Berg-Thyssen (1917–1958) ∞ Friedrich von Wurmbrand-Stuppach (1904–1997)
2. Joseph Thyssen (1844–1915) ∞ Klara Bagel (1856–1918)
  1. Julius Thyssen (1881-1946)
  2. Johanna Thyssen (1883-1887)
  3. Hans Thyssen (1890-1943)
    1. Bodo Thyssen (1918-2004) ∞ Renate Kerkhoff (* 1939)

literature

Simone Derix: The Thyssens. Family and wealth. (= Family - company - public. Thyssen in the 20th century 4). Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh 2016. ISBN 978-3-506-77974-8 ; review
Thomas Rother : The Thyssens. Tragedy of the steel barons. Campus Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2003, ISBN 978-3-593-37190-0 ; Bastei Lübbe, Bergisch Gladbach 2005, ISBN 978-3-404-61571-1 .
Stephan Wegener (ed.): August and Josef Thyssen. The family and their company. Klartext, Essen 2004, ISBN 3-89861-312-7 .
Manfred Rasch (Ed.): August Thyssen and Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza. Letters from a family of industrialists 1919-1926. Klartext, Essen 2010, ISBN 978-3-8375-0331-9 .
Stephan Wegener (ed.): The Thyssen siblings. A century of family history. Klartext, Essen 2013, ISBN 978-3-8375-0894-9 .

Movie

German Dynasties - The Thyssens. Documentary, Germany, 2010, 44 min., Script and direction: Julia Melchior and Sebastian Dehnhardt , production: WDR , series: Deutsche Dynastien, first broadcast: ARD , November 8, 2010, summary ( memento of August 23, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) the ARD.

Individual evidence

^ Jörg Lesczenski: August Thyssen 1842-1926 . 1st edition. Klartext , Essen 2008, p. 29
↑ Lesczenski 2008, p. 30
↑ ^a ^b ^c Lesczenski 2008, p. 32
↑ DER SPIEGEL 8/1988: A process of unprecedented insolence
^ The Thyssen counts cash in DIE WELT, September 5, 1995
^ Sterling SIHI Group website , accessed March 2014
^ Business magazine Bilanz from November 1, 2005
^ Plumpe, W .: Entrepreneurs - facts and fictions: historical-biographical studies . Writings of the Historical College. De Gruyter, 2014, ISBN 978-3-11-044350-9 ( page 179 ).
^ Hengist Culture Park; Hengist magazine 3/2009 [1]
↑ Demessieur auction house; Frontspitz to the auction catalog / estate Ildikó Alexandra von Berg, March 18, 2017

Web links

The Thyssen family in the Rheinische Geschichte portal

[Lesczenski-1] Jörg Lesczenski: August Thyssen 1842-1926 . 1st edition. Klartext , Essen 2008, p. 29

[Lesczenski_S._30-2] Lesczenski 2008, p. 30

[Lesczenski_S._32-3] Lesczenski 2008, p. 32

[4] DER SPIEGEL 8/1988: A process of unprecedented insolence

[5] The Thyssen counts cash in DIE WELT, September 5, 1995

[6] Sterling SIHI Group website , accessed March 2014

[7] Business magazine Bilanz from November 1, 2005

[8] Plumpe, W .: Entrepreneurs - facts and fictions: historical-biographical studies . Writings of the Historical College. De Gruyter, 2014, ISBN 978-3-11-044350-9 ( page 179 ).

[9] Hengist Culture Park; Hengist magazine 3/2009 [1]

[10] Demessieur auction house; Frontspitz to the auction catalog / estate Ildikó Alexandra von Berg, March 18, 2017