Count Matthäus von Thun und Hohenstein was from a very wealthy family in Trentino, Tyrol, in the Italian alps near the Austrian border. He preferred the Italian form of this first name, Matteo.
Graf Matthäus Thunn [1] built La Préférée motorcycles in Paris 1912-1914. He rode one of these in the 1912 Paris-Tours event.
He was also the main agent in France for Phänomen from 1911, and drove one of those in the 1912 Tour de France.
In March of 1915 the French government seized possession of all properties belonging to German and Austro-Hungarian businesses. Thunn was regarded as Austrian, so he lost everything.
In 1922 Thunn moved to Austria where he established a new business as a Phänomen dealer, and in 1925 he established the MT marque.
In 1931, Thun was the victim of a serious motorcycle accident. Production appears to have ceased in 1932 or 1933, and Matthaeus Thun closed his factory and store around 1938/1939.
He died in a POW camp in 1945.
N.B. 1. The name is spelled both ways - Thun and Thunn. He adopted the latter version in France to avoid pronunciation problems.
Sources: thunweb.com, lestricars.es.tl.
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