Arnold Otto Aepli

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Portrait of Arnold Otto Aepli 1888

Arnold Otto Aepli (born August 22, 1816 in St. Gallen ; † December 4, 1897 there ) was a Swiss statesman and lawyer .

biography

Aepli was born as the son of a respected city-St. Gallen bourgeois family. After high school in St. Gallen and the Academy in Lausanne, he studied from 1836 to 1840 at the universities of Heidelberg , Berlin and Zurich jurisprudence and political science. During his studies he joined the Swiss Zofinger Association . After returning to his hometown, the lawyer rose from the secretary of the lower court to a cantonal judge by 1849. 1873-1883 he presided over the cantonal court . In addition, Aepli was a member of the Swiss Federal Court from 1857 to 1866 , which he presided over in 1862.

St.Gallen 1856, the year the Rorschach-Winterthur railway line opened

As a liberal statesman and advocate of representative democracy, Aepli also used his extraordinary creative power in the legislative and executive branches of the canton of St. Gallen and the federal government. From 1847 to 1883 he was a member of the Grand Council of the Canton of St. Gallen. From 1849 to 1872 Aepli represented the canton of St. Gallen in the Council of States , with interruptions , where he was successful a. a. for the remission of the war guilt of the Sonderbund cantons. In 1868/69 he was President of the Council of States . In 1851 Aepli was also elected to the St. Gallen cantonal government , the government council, where over time he headed the judiciary, foreign affairs and military as well as construction. He was a member of the government until 1873 and held the office of regional president seven times . From 1872 to 1883 the electorate elected Aepli with the highest number of votes to the National Council ; In 1876/77 he presided over the large federal chamber. In 1875 he was also a candidate for the Federal Council , but the cantonal radicals did not nominate the liberal Aepli.

In his canton of St. Gallen, Aepli succeeded in mediating in the passionate party struggle between conservatives and radical liberals. So he became the father of the new cantonal "peace constitution" of 1861. The Evangelical Cantonal Church thanked him for the democratic constitution of 1862, which u. a. introduced the instrument of the "People's Synod".

Minister Aepli in Vienna around 1890

Aepli's pronounced skill, always mediating the balance between different positions, was also used by the Confederation by assigning various mandates to Aepli. So Aepli was Federal Commissioner in Geneva in 1858 and 1860 ( Savoy trade ) and 1862-1870 in the border conflicts between the two Appenzell . The most difficult mandate, a sensitive one even for the Protestant Kulturkampf refuser Aepli, concerned the solution of the Lombard-Ticino diocese question, combined with the controversial position of the Bishop of Basel, Eugène Lachat . In 1866 Aepli was interim chargé d'affaires and from 1883 to 1893 Swiss envoy in Vienna , with accreditation in Serbia and Romania; Aepli had helped the latter monarchy to elect a prince by boldly issuing a passport in 1866.

Aepli played a leading role in the negotiation of the State Treaty with Austria on the correction of the course of the Rhine into Lake Constance, which was signed on December 30, 1892.

Aepli was not a party man, but was well networked at home and abroad and was also active in journalism and in semi-official and non-official bodies: as a founder, president or ordinary member of railway companies (he fought for the Lukmanierbahn, among others), in the non-profit society and in cultural organizations (legal reading association, historical association, St. Gallischer and Schweizerischer Kunstverein). In 1868 he was one of the founding members of the Association for the History of Lake Constance and its Surroundings .

Arnold Otto Aepli is described as one of the most important Swiss statesmen of the 19th century, with a breadth of commitment that hardly anyone else showed.

Works

Unprinted sources

  • Written estate in the canton library "Vadiana" St. Gallen.
  • Memories (1835–1866). Written at an advanced age, only until 1866. Machine copy of the unfinished manuscript in the estate of Hans Hiller.
  • Letters to August Gonzenbach (Bern City Library).
  • Letters to Peter Conradin von Planta (private property, Basel).
  • Letters to Jakob Dubs (Zurich Central Library).
  • Letters to Alfred Escher (Federal Archives Bern).

Printed sources

  • Correspondence with Karl Anton von Hohenzollern. In: Correspondence between Arnold Otto Aepli and Karl Anton von Hohenzollern 1864–1884 . Edited by Dr. Johannes Dierauer. St. Gallen, 1904.
  • Notes on the issuing of passports for Prince Karl von Hohenzollern. Supplement to the correspondence , and in St.Gallen Analects . Edited by Dr. Johannes Dierauer. XIII: From the papers of Landammann Aepli. St. Gallen, 1904.
  • Concise presentation of the formation and development of the commercial corporation in St. Gallen and its achievements and fate up to the end of 1841. In: St. Gallische Jahrbücher 1835–1843 . Second division. From P. Ehrenzeller. St. Gallen, 1843. pp. 385-402.
  • Which coinage should the Swiss people prefer, the French or the Swiss? St. Gallen, 1850.
  • Views on the constitutional revision, at the same time as an answer to the "concerns about the constitutional revision" of the government councilor Steiger. St. Gallen, 1851.
  • Expert opinion of the majority of the commission of the Council of States on the estate of the Sonderbundsschuld. From July 28, 1852 (published independently and in the Federal Gazette 1852 Vol. II).
  • Historical representation of the sovereign rights of the Swiss Confederation on Lake Constance ( communications on patriotic history XII). St. Gallen, 1870.
  • Johann Jakob Blumer, letters to Arnold Otto Aepli (1845–1848). St. Gallic Analects . Edited by Johannes Dierauer. IX. From the Special League period IV. St. Gallen, 1899.
  • Submission of the Protestant Synod of the Canton of St. Gallen to the tit. Constitutional Council of the same concerning the future position of the church and school system in the overall organism of the Canton of St. Gallen 1861. Main author Aepli.
  • Declaration by the minority of the Constitutional Council of the Canton of St. Gallen to the St. Gall people on the constitutional revision. St. Gallen, 1860. Main author Aepli.

photos

  • Aepli's birthplace at Spisergasse 16 (arrow) on Aepliplatz in St.Gallen

  • Grand Council Chamber (Parliament) in the St.Gallen government building, where Aepli served as a grand and government councilor

  • Portal to the former cantonal court in St.Gallen, where the federal court met in 1862 under Aepli's presidium

literature

  • Ivo Bischofberger: Border disputes between Appenzell Ausser- and Innerrhoden. Appenzell, 1990.
  • Ernst Ehrenzeller: The conservative-liberal contrast in the canton of St. Gallen up to the constitutional revision of 1861. St. Gallen, 1947.
  • Erich Gruner and Karl Frei: The Swiss Federal Assembly . Volume 1, Bern, 1966.
  • Hans Hiller: 1866 with Swiss passport to the Romanian throne Prince Charles of Hohenzollern and the St. Galler AO Aepli . 2007. Manuscript (St. Gallen Cantonal Library, St. Gallen State Archives).
  • ders .: Landammann Arnold Otto Aepli 1816–1897. His work in the Confederation and Canton . St. Gallen, Verlag der Fehr'schen Buchhandlung 1953. 233 pp.
  • ders .: Landammann Arnold Otto Aepli (1816–1897) . In: Liberal Minds. Leading politicians from the 150-year history of the canton of St. Gallen . St. Gallen, Liberal Democratic Party of the Canton of St. Gallen, 1953.
  • ders .: A diplomatic advance by Switzerland to regain formerly Grisons property . In: Bündner Monatsblatt , Chur, 1954, No. 6.
  • ders .: Otto Aepli . In: Die Landammänner des Kantons St. Gallen , first part 1815–1891. St. Gallen, Verlag der Fehr'schen Buchhandlung, 1971 (111th New Year's Gazette, edited by the Historisches Verein des Kantons St. Gallen), pp. 27–28.
  • ders .: Otto Aepli - the man of balance. Memories of a great 19th century statesman from St. Gallen . In: Werdenberger Jahrbuch , 23, 2010, pp. 249-253.
  • ders .: The invention of the middle. Statesman Arnold Otto Aepli, 1816–1897. VGS Verlagsgenossenschaft St. Gallen, 2011. Additional publications on Aepli are attached. 88 pp. ISBN 978-3-7291-1128-8 .
  • Historisch-Biographisches Lexikon der Schweiz (HBLS), Vol. 1, 1921, pp. 139–140.
  • Marcel Mayer: Aepli, Arnold Otto. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
  • Gerold Meyer von Knonau :  Aepli, Arnold Otto . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 46, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1902, p. 25 f.
  • Peter Stadler: The Kulturkampf in Switzerland . Frauenfeld and Stuttgart, 1984. 787 pp.
  • In memory of Minister AO Aepli. St. Gallen, 1897.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Arnold Otto Aepli in the digital Alfred Escher letter edition . Retrieved August 9, 2017.
  2. ^ Association for the history of Lake Constance and its surroundings, statutes and list of members from December 1868: Stadtarchiv Lindau, B II / 85/4, acts of the city council, subject Bodensee-Geschichts-Verein, Tit. IV., Cap. 11, compartment 85, act 4.
predecessor Office successor
Johann Jakob von Tschudi Swiss Ambassador in Vienna
April 18, 1883 - October 31, 1893 		Alfred de Claparède
personal data
SURNAME Aepli, Arnold Otto
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Aepli, Otto
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss politician
DATE OF BIRTH August 22, 1816
PLACE OF BIRTH St. Gallen
DATE OF DEATH 4th December 1897
Place of death St. Gallen