16. Tersch House

16. Tersch House

Starobranská 5

The Tersch family, which was among Šumperk’s elite, acquired these two originally separate houses and commissioned their Classicist remodel between 1882 and 1884. The family made its money from trading tobacco, and the family founder, Franz Xaver Tersch Sr., later built a thriving textile business. He also purchased several bleaching machines for treating linen and yarn bought off from linen weavers from the foothill areas. In 1841, the house served his son, Franz Xaver Jr., as a place for founding the first private post office and relay station in Austria-Hungary.

The acquired wealth helped the family gain a nobility title. The Tersch family owned land, the Třemešek and Chudobín chateaus, and a farmstead in Šumperk. Running so many properties drained Franz Tersch financially and to get out of debt, he had to sell the farmstead. His son, Fridrich von Tersch, did not prevent the economic decline of the family business, but he was the longest-serving mayor of the town. He spent a quarter of a century in office, between 1882 and 1907. Šumperk was in its heyday, as it was in the process of changing from a provincial town into a centre of industrial progress.

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