* 1772, † 1847,

       He was born in Vidnava (today Opavian Silesia), the son of Jan Michał Kaufmann, a tax officer in the town, and Maria Anna. In 1782 he started attending the Cieszyn Catholic gymnasium, lodging at that time in Count Tenczyński’s dormitory. The director of the school and the dormitory at that time was Father Leopold Jan Szersznik, who helped Kaufmann in many ways. After the dormitory was closed in 1786, Kaufmann was one of a group of Szersznik’s former students who lived in a rented house in the square known today as Plac Teatralny, with Szersznik in loco parentis. In 1787 Kaufmann went to Prague to study and after several years of studying was employed as a syndic in Nový Jičin in Moravia. In 1804 he was appointed a syndic and an officer of the Municipal Office in Cieszyn, where he settled. One of his first achievements was completing the introduction of street lighting by oil lamps in Cieszyn. In 1813 he organised an amateur theatre troupe, which performed under his direction raising money for widows and orphans of deceased soldiers. The money raised was used to finance a foundation approved of by the Emperor in 1815. He also raised money to put up a monument to Szersznik and was one of the first curators of Szersznik’s museum collections.
       In 1814 Kaufmann was appointed mayor of Cieszyn, remaining in the post for the rest of his life. The indisputable economic and social development which took place in Cieszyn in the first half of the 19th century was to a great extent thanks to his efforts. However, the greatest achievement of the mayor of Cieszyn was the four-volume Chronicles of the Town of Cieszyn (Gedenkbuch der Stadt Teschen), which included the history of the town from its founding until 1822. It was written on the basis of documents, now no longer in existence, from the town’s archives which he himself organised, and remains to this day the main source of information about the history of old Cieszyn.