History of the city of St. Gallen
The history of the city of St. Gallen begins with the legend of St. Gall in 612 AD. Otmar then founded the later famous monastery at this point in 719 , which brought the young town its first boom, which lasted until around the year 1000.
With the Reformation in the 16th century began the long-standing dispute between the city, which had accepted the new faith, and the prince abbot, who lived within the same walls and who owned the entire area. This dispute was only settled with the collapse of the old order and the founding of the new canton of St. Gallen (initially canton of Säntis for short ), the new capital of which was the city. In the 19th century, the denominational rifts were still deep and a merger of the city of St. Gallen with its suburbs was only possible in 1918 in the shadow of the First World War and a major crisis in the textile industry in Eastern Switzerland . This had dominated the economy of the city and its surroundings since the 16th century. Today St. Gallen is the economic and cultural center of Eastern Switzerland .
Origins and first bloom
Gallus on the Steinach
The beginnings of the St. Gallen settlement go back to the monk St. Gallus (* around 550; † 620 or 640), who came to what is now Switzerland as a student of the Irish missionary Columban von Luxeuil to teach the Alemanni to Christianity convert. In 612 Gallus built a hermitage on the Steinach River . At that time the so-called Arbon Forest stretched from the Appenzellerland to Lake Constance . Legend has it that Gallus fell into a thorn bush on the way to Alpstein at the exit of the Mulenenschlucht gorge . He interpreted this as a sign from God to stay in this place. Another legend reports that Gallus was surprised by a bear that night. At the monk's behest, he threw some logs of wood into the fire. Gallus gave the bear a loaf and then ordered him never to return. The bear was no longer seen from then on. This legend goes back to the fact that the bear became the heraldic animal of the city of St. Gallen. Gallus gathered a few monks around him and built the first small monastery complex near that point: a chapel and a simple wooden hut for each of his disciples. At that time, today's Fürstenland and Appenzell were largely uninhabited and covered by an extensive forest.
Gallus and his disciples moved about in the area and won many people for the Christian faith. He assisted the population with wise advice and allegedly healed many sick people, including the daughter of the Duke of Swabia . As a result, the news of the pious hermits of the Steinach penetrated far into the country. Gallus died on October 16, 640 (?) In Arbon . He was buried in his hermitage on the Steinach.
Foundation of the St. Gallen Monastery
After his death, his cell fell apart; However, pilgrims from Lake Constance regularly visited his grave. In 719 the Alemannic priest Otmar (689–759) founded an abbey in honor of Gallus at the pilgrimage site and gave it the name "Sankt Gallen" (→ Prince Abbey of St. Gallen ). First, he presumably imposed a personally designed mixing rule on his brotherhood. In 747, at the urging of the Frankish king, Otmar introduced the rules of Benedict of Nursia at the monastery . The Frankish king Chilperich II awarded Otmar the abbot title. Until the fall of the abbey in 1805, St. Gallen was a Benedictine monastery. It became a refuge in the early Middle Ages for Irish scholars and artists who had left their homes because of the incursions of the Vikings and Danes. St. Gallen is also on the Way of St. James from Rorschach to Einsiedeln .
The St. Gallen monks were given the right by the Pope, against the will of the Bishop of Constance, to elect their own abbot . The bishop therefore had Otmar captured. He was sentenced to life imprisonment on the island of Werd based on the testimony of a false witness . Half a year later Otmar died (November 16, 759). He was buried on the Werd. The insignia Otmar are the crozier and the wine keg : Ten years after the death Otmar decided eleven monks of St. Gallen to bring the body of her revered abbot secretly to St. Gallen. According to legend, they found the remains intact. A violent storm is said to have broken out during the crossing over Lake Constance. The strenuous rowing made the men very hungry and thirsty. But apart from a small barrel of wine there was nothing left to eat or drink. When they started to pour this, it was never empty. The storm did not harm the rowboat either, and the torches they had lit continued to burn unmolested. So the monks would have reached the port of Steinach praying and praising God . Otmar was then laid to rest in St. Gallen. The collegiate church of St. Gallen is located above the graves of Gallus and Otmar , the Gallus crypt under the choir and the Otmar crypt under the gallery. Together they are the patrons of the city and diocese of St. Gallen.
The abbey was still dependent on the diocese of Constance, to which it was subordinate. It was confirmed by Charlemagne that the monastery was obliged to pay tribute to the diocese. Some of Otmar's successors in the abbot's chair were also bishops of Constance, including Johannes , Wolfleoz and Solomon .
The emperors on the throne of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation were extremely well-disposed towards the monastery in the first half of the 9th century. In 818, for example, Ludwig the Pious granted the monastery immunity from the count's jurisdiction, Ludwig the German confirmed the free election of abbots to the monastery and since 854 the monastery has no longer been obliged to pay tribute to the diocese. The diocese of St. Gallen is still one of the very few dioceses in the world that is allowed to choose its own bishop.
The first bloom
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In the year 820 the St. Gallen monastery plan, which is still kept in the monastery library , was created in Reichenau monastery . Abbot Gozbert (816–836) had it created because he was planning a significant expansion of the monastery. The plan shows impressively in many details what belonged to an early medieval monastery. Historians today agree that the monastery was never built exactly according to this plan; but it shows the ideal of a monastery in the early Middle Ages. Instead of the one church building, as Gozbert had planned, two were built, one above the grave of Gallus (consecrated in 837), the other above that of Otmar (consecrated in 867). In the scriptorium of the monastery, the monks made many writings and documents. It was considered desirable to have as many such documents as possible. Almost 600 documents from the 9th century alone have been preserved in the monastery library to this day.
In St. Gallen, the monastery was a trading and economic center of the early Middle Ages. The monastery naturally included the sumptuously furnished church, the work and bedrooms of the monks and the office. Guest houses for pilgrims and travelers, a hospital and one of the oldest monastery schools north of the Alps (→ St. Gallen Catholic Cantonal School ) were built around them . As was customary at the time, this was divided into an “inner” and an “outer” part. The future monks were trained inside; the outside was also open to the people, but only to the sons of wealthy families. Pope Gregory IV was so impressed during a visit to the monastery that he granted the children a feast day just for them. This later became the St. Gallen Children's Festival . Handicraft businesses sprang up around these facilities: millers , bakers , blacksmiths , joiners , stables . St. Gallen had become a locality. The monastery was able to steadily increase its wealth, especially in terms of land, through donations and legacies .
The Hungarian invasion
In the spring of 926 travelers reported that the Hungarians were already advancing to Lake Constance on their campaigns. The partially divided empires in Central Germany had nothing to oppose the plundering and pillaging gangs, especially since they could not agree on a common strategy. Abbot Engilbert decided to bring the pupils as well as the elderly and the sick to safety in the moated castle near Lindau, which belongs to the monastery . Many of the writings were hidden in the befriended Reichenau monastery . The monks brought themselves and the valuable cult objects to safety in a refuge , the forest castle in the Sitterwald. At her express request, the hermit Wiborada was the only one to remain in the walled-up church of St. Mangen in the abandoned city.
When the Hungarians invaded the city, they found nothing of value. They damaged buildings and altars and burned down the wooden houses in the village. The attackers also found Wiborada, but no entrance to their walled-up hermitage. Fire could not harm her or the church, so the Hungarians covered the roof and killed her. The Hungarians did not dare to attack the monks' refuge because of their inaccessible location. They were even attacked by the monks as they withdrew. After the Hungarians withdrew, the monks returned with the inhabitants and rebuilt the damaged and burned houses.
Monastery fire
On April 26, 937, two convent students behaved particularly badly. The master instructed the students to fetch him the rod from the screed in order to be able to discipline them with it. Instead of undergoing the punishment, one of the students took a burning log from the stove. In the attic he put it in a brush pile so that it was soon clearly visible smoking. He wanted to pretend to the teacher that the school was on fire. However, the joke was not to remain: the call of the fire soon echoed through the entire monastery. At risk of death, the monks recovered the holy writings from the library, the bells from the tower and the monastery treasures from the sacristy. A few hours later, Gozbert's monastery was just a heap of rubble.
The monastery had to be rebuilt again. However, the monks were not discouraged, so that life in St. Gallen soon took its usual course.
The city becomes independent
St. Gallen becomes an imperial city
In order to be better protected in the event of a war in the future, Abbot Anno ordered in 954 to have a wall with gates and towers built around the monastery and monastery village . The work was completed under his successor Notker. With this, St. Gallen had become a city in the true sense of the word and the citizens now preferred to call themselves city burgers, although the transition is only poorly documented. For the time being, the right to appoint officials and judges remained with the abbot. It is no longer possible to clearly determine when St. Gallen received the additional market rights required for a medieval town and the independence in legal terms. The fair was first held sometime between 947 and 1170. There was an actual marketplace for the weekly market no later than 1228. The oldest evidence of this is that of Joachim von Watt , the city's great reformer. He writes that the fairs took place around Ascension Day and in autumn on Gallentag (feast of St. Gall ). The autumn fair still takes place today together with the Olma on the days before and after the festival of the city's namesake.
Since June 12, 947 at the latest, the abbots officially bore the title of prince abbot , as can be seen in a certificate from Otto I. The disadvantage of this honor was that the abbot was now obliged to achieve military successes as his vassal, which was to be detrimental to the peaceful monastic life over many of the centuries to come.
In 1180, the German king appointed an imperial bailiff from the citizenship who spoke in his place. He was solely responsible to the king and the abbot could not depose him. This made St. Gallen an imperial city . In 1281 Rudolf von Habsburg forbade the abbot to ever mortgage the city. He would have been allowed to do this until now, in case the abbey had got into financial difficulties.
In 1291 Wilhelm von Montfort was Abbot of St. Gallen. The town burghers had given the abbot, who was an opponent of Rudolf von Habsburg, help against the German king. In gratitude for this he granted the town's burgers the following rights in the «Handfeste» of July 31, 1291:
- Every Burger St. Gallens can sell their home and goods freely and without asking. For this change of hand he owes his master, the abbot, only a quarter of wine as a feudal fee.
- In disputes about goods, no foreign judge is allowed to pronounce the judgment.
- The abbot is no longer entitled to inheritances from burgers.
- Anyone who has civil rights in the city or who lives in the city as a free man may not be extradited to strangers.
- You may not seize or arrest a citizen of Sankt Gallen, unless he is a debtor or surety.
Ulrich von Güttingen had already issued a first hand festival to the St. Gallers in 1272/1273 because they supported him in the fight against his counter-abbot Heinrich von Wartenberg . Ulrich had approached Rudolf von Habsburg at that time in order to obtain a favorable Vogt for the monastery, which he did not succeed in, and the relationship between the city and the royal family was permanently clouded. With the issuing of these documents to the city at the latest, the city had also acquired the third important right: the appointment of its own judges and its own jurisdiction . Efforts in this direction have been documented since 1170.
The “four border crosses ” mentioned in the hand festival of 1291 were clearly set up on the arteries of the city , which made it clear to everyone that they were now leaving the city and thus no longer subject to the so-called Constance law (city law). The position of the crosses was not documented in writing until later, in 1470, after a dispute arose because the abbot was told that the crosses had been moved.
These crosses and the border markings placed between them in 1470 marked the border of the city of St. Gallen until the city merger in 1918. The border ran from today's "Chrüzacker" (where the Federal Administrative Court building is today) across Dufourstrasse in the north of the city to Guisanstrasse (on the border with Rotmonten ), down to St.-Jakob-Strasse east of the Olma (2nd cross), then to the St. Fiden cemetery on the road to Untereggen (probably 3rd cross) and finally over pear trees and Drei Weieren to St. Georgen, where the fourth cross was.
Separation of the city from the prince abbey
The period of the late Middle Ages in St. Gallen is characterized by alternating links with the monastery and empire. Both the city and the abbot tried again and again to have the king or emperor assure them advantages over the other side, with varying degrees of success. The city federations were also new in the 14th century . At the behest of Henry VII , the city of Gallus was first connected to Constance , Zurich and Schaffhausen in 1312 . Through the treaty, the citizens of the cities were to assist each other in word and deed should discord arise. In the treaty of 1312, councils are mentioned for the first time, which must have represented the city externally.
Seven years later, the cities of Lindau and Überlingen were also included in the federal government. In the course of the following centuries, the alliances were renewed in varying compositions, with the interest of the St. Gallen residents increasingly focused on the Lake Constance region, so that contracts with cities in the Lake Constance area became more important than those with Zurich or Schaffhausen.
In the middle of the 14th century, the city had to deal with the darkest years in its history. In 1349 the plague broke out. As a result, there was the only historically secure persecution of Jews in St. Gallen. «Fanaticism and stupidity accused the Jews everywhere of having poisoned the well springs [...]. St. Gallen followed the inhumane example of many other cities and captured the Jews who had lived here for a long time behind the arbor; some were chased away, others even burned alive and their goods confiscated for the attention of the city. " At a later time, the Jews were no longer persecuted, but in some cases they were still discriminated considerably, for example through the denial of residence permits and the like. A Jewish religious community was only to develop in the city around 1850.
In 1353 King Charles IV visited the St. Gallen monastery. In order to vote the king, known as a collector of relics, in his favor and to have him confirm old rights over the city, Abbot Hermann gave him the head of St. Otmar and parts of that of Gallus from their graves. The relics were brought to Prague and were later lost in the turmoil of various wars. However, they reappeared in 2018 and are now in Prague's St. Vitus Cathedral.
This sacrilege and the attempt to have rights confirmed that had long since fallen to the city - the choice of the council, the mint master , the bread shaker and the use of measures and weights - led the city to become even more independent. 1354 can be read for the first time by a mayor . The guild constitution came into force around the same time, but unlike Zurich, for example, there were no known conflicts between the sexes. St. Gallen had become a guild town.
Guild Rules and Law
With the introduction of councils and the guild system in the city, the independent legal system within the city began. Several written books testify to statutes that the city and the citizens gave to regulate coexistence within the narrow walls. This included crime articles, as they are a matter of course for every legal act, but also some regulations that seem strange from today's perspective.
So it was frowned upon to flaunt luxury. It was forbidden to have more than three violinists play at a wedding or to invite more than eighteen guests. It was also not permissible to be blamed in the pub - regardless of social position.
For every craftsman there was a compulsory guild, so he had to join the guild of his profession in order to be able to practice the profession at all. Those who were not citizens of the city could not take work in the city; this also applied to the people of the house of God, i.e. the citizens of the prince abbey, about which the abbot complained. The city replied that it was not customary to let strangers work in a city. Conversely, the townspeople made good money by trading with the surrounding area. There were six guilds in St. Gallen, as well as the Notenstein Society as a guild of nobles and merchants. The guilds and their envoys formed the city's small and grand councils, and thus determined politics. The earliest reliable documents for the division of the guilds in the city come from Joachim von Watt .
- Weavers ' guild: weavers , bleachers , leaf makers .
- Blacksmiths' guild: Goldsmiths , painters , stonecutters , farriers , carpenters , wagons , locksmiths , cooper , tinsmiths , glaziers , stoners , turner , kessler , tin foundry , table makers , bathers and barbers , grinders , roofers , brickworkers .
- Shoemaker's guild: shoemakers , saddlers , tanners , beltsmen .
- Schneider guild: cloth and garment people , dyers , Manger, skinner , Krämer , Säckler (bag maker), Hutmacher , Seiler , cloth Scherer , comb makers .
- Miller's guild: Pfister ( baker ), flour trader, grain buyer, landlord without a part-time business.
- Butchers' Guild: Butchers .
High Middle Ages: open conflicts between the city and the abbey
Decline of the monastery
At the beginning of the 12th century it happened that the fame in arms was increasingly considered more than silent service in church, school and library. In St. Gallen, too, monks and abbots exchanged robes for armor and rosaries for swords and set out to seek (earthly) wealth and fame in battle. Others celebrated lavish festivals with other nobles instead of taking care of the affairs of government and the monastery order. When Abbot Berchtold von Falkenstein died in 1271 , one of the abbots who had made a name for himself with glamorous celebrations, people danced for joy in St. Gallen and Appenzell.
Around 1400, at the time of the Appenzell Wars , the monastery fell apart more and more. At times two monks still lived in the monastery, the abbot's chair remained orphaned for several years. In general, the Appenzell Wars had caused quite a stir in the city and the abbey. The cities of the Lake Constance area began to enter into alliances against the unpopular princes and counts. The vassals appointed by the king or emperor tried to expand and consolidate their areas of power through wars, pillage and raids. On the other hand, the cities defended themselves with alliances to secure the peace. The citizens of St. Gallen also entered into alliances with cities in the Lake Constance region and the Swiss Confederation such as Zurich, Schaffhausen and Constance . The nobles and the abbot looked for ways to expand their influence again.
The Appenzell Wars
In 1401 the situation came to a head under the reign of Prince Kuno von Stoffeln . The abbot had overlooked the signs of the times, the Battle of Morgarten , the Battle of Sempach , the Battle of Näfels - each time peasants had triumphed over the nobles - but Kuno still regarded his citizens as serfs . In that year the farmers from the Appenzellerland sent an envoy to the council of St. Gallen to propose a union to the city. He assumed that the abbot wanted to enter into an alliance with the noble family of the Habsburgs . The council decided in a secret ballot to enter into a Volksbund with Appenzell. Various places from the area joined the Bund, the capital of which was now the city. In contrast to the common bourgeoisie, the town's nobles and merchants did not like the establishment of the Confederation, because they feared for the trade routes and customers in the territory of the German Empire. After the places of the Volksbund had chased away several lords of the castle and burned down a castle, the Herrenbund, i.e. the union of the princes of the Lake Constance area, including the abbot, prepared for war. Now the citizens of the city, above all the merchants, began to be more cautious, because a war would stifle the flourishing trade in the bud. So the city announced the Volksbund, which soon disintegrated completely. The old order had returned.
However, the Appenzeller did not want to be beaten down and sought and found help from the Schwyzers . In 1403 they concluded a land law with the Appenzell people. The Schwyzer agreed to lead the Appenzeller's freedom struggle against the prince abbot. While there were some skirmishes and pillage by the Appenzeller in the area around the city, the citizens of the city were divided. Some stood by the abbot, others would have preferred to re-establish the Volksbund. The Lake Constance cities, which were abbot, wanted to prevent this rebuilding and therefore occupied the city and deposed the government. Retaliation was to be exercised for the attacks by the Appenzeller by destroying an army of the abbot Herisau . On May 15, 1403, the Abbot army, with support from the Lake Constance area and the city, moved across the Notkersegg to Speicher with the aim of destroying Appenzell . At the Vögelinsegg, however , the abbot's troops had been ambushed , and the battle at Vögelinsegg broke out , in which the abbot suffered a defeat. However, the war was not over yet and the conflicting parties fought a guerrilla war that lasted for months with great losses among the civilian population of the Appenzeller Vorderland and the principality.
A year later, in April 1404, the citizens of the city finally sat down at a table with the Appenzell people - the abbot had been excluded. The conflicting parties remembered their common enemy, Abbot Kuno von Stoffeln , who again turned to the Habsburgs for support against his rebellious "subjects". The newly appointed Duke Friedrich IV. Of Austria wanted to support the abbot, because he too saw a threat to the interests of his family in the freedom movement. He hoped to be able to rule over its properties as patron of the monastery. The St. Gallers had got wind of the story and were preparing themselves for war, because the Habsburgs wanted them even less as patron than the abbot. So the citizens initiated the expansion of the fortifications, the construction of letzines and the erection of observation posts at all important entrances to the city. The duke moved with part of his army via Arbon in front of the city, but was routed by the townspeople through assaults and had to withdraw. In the meantime, the Appenzeller had to fight with the other part of the duke's troops on the bump. In the Battle of the Stoss they achieved a clear victory, according to which the Austrians' claim to rule over the Appenzellerland and the Fürstenland should be forfeited forever. The Volksbund had held this time and the city fulfilled its former obligations. The citizens of the city now moved to Feldkirch , which had passed into the possession of the Habsburgs, and besieged it because they feared that the duke might plan attacks on the Rhine Valley and the friendly cities there. The city surrendered after a short time and it was accepted as an equal partner in the association of cities "ob dem See". Several castles in the federal territory were besieged, conquered and then burned down in the following years.
However, the covenant shouldn't last long. The confederates overestimated themselves and suffered a severe defeat before Bregenz when they tried to bring Count Wilhelm von Montfort to account for his breach of the covenant. King Ruprecht spoke a word of power and declared the union dissolved.
Kuno von Stoffeln died on October 19, 1411 after he had permanently damaged the monastery economy by pledging or selling various of his lands due to the lack of taxes from Appenzell and the city.
Federal treaties and re-establishment of the monastery
During the Appenzell Wars , the city and the abbey learned what power emanated from the young Confederation. In 1411, the Appenzell family and a year later the city formed an alliance with seven of the eight places of the old covenant (excluding Bern). The confederates saw in the donation of what is now eastern Switzerland a good opportunity to shield themselves against the Habsburgs. The abbot was also interested in an alliance with the federal government. The fact that the prince abbot was still an imperial prince did not matter, as neither king nor dukes offered the monastery realistic protection. In 1451 Zurich , Lucerne , Schwyz and Glarus concluded a protective alliance with the abbey. The abbot promised the cities support in the event of war, and the latter promised him assistance, if necessary also against their own city. The abbot's subjects initially refused to swear an oath on this alliance, because it would seal the fact that they could no longer break away from the abbey like the Appenzellers. The abbot had to guarantee them a large tax remission to induce them to take an oath.
The city now wanted the eternal covenant with the confederates. On June 23, 1454 the messengers from Zurich, Bern, Lucerne, Schwyz, Zug and Glarus rode into the city to proclaim the covenant to the citizens. The townspeople swore: «And so we, mayors, councilors and citizens of St. Gallen swear to God and the saints for us and our descendants, that what has been read to us, faithfully, true, firmly and always so true God help us. " The people of St. Gallen hoped to soon become full citizens of the Swiss Confederation. However, the abbot still believed that he could also demand an oath of allegiance from the townspeople. In the guild chambers, however, it was ridiculed that it should never happen. After endless trials, the city council of Bern , which had been called on as a judge, decided that the city had to pay the abbey the sum of 7,000 guilders, for which the abbot had to finally renounce all sovereign rights over the city. On May 14, 1457, the citizens were able to raise the amount. This made St. Gallen a free imperial city. What had been emerging for a long time was now sealed: the city had been divided in two. On the one hand the monastery, which also owned the entire area from Lake Constance to Toggenburg, on the other - within the same walls - the city and its citizens, whose area was limited to today's center. Even today, the people of St. Gallen say "go into town" when they think they are going to the (shops in) the old town.
In 1463 Ulrich Rösch (1426–1491) was appointed abbot. Through his energetic actions, the monastery was saved from complete ruin. He is therefore also referred to as the “second founder” of the St. Gallen Monastery. His predecessor Kaspar von Breitenlandenberg was not a man of action and loved peace and quiet, so that the monastery fell even deeper into debt. Few of the monks foresaw the disaster that would loom, but who could blame the abbot? When Rösch was first appointed as administrator of the monastery and was able to grasp the full extent of the mismanagement, he made serious accusations against the abbot, which is why he was thrown in prison. Later, however, the monks of the monastery noticed their mistake and sent Rösch to the Pope in Rome as a spokesman against the abbot . The Pope had listened carefully and gave Rösch extensive rights in the monastery community, which is why Abbot von Breitenlandenberg resigned. Now the way was clear to be able to elect Ulrich Rösch, the baker's son, as the first commoner to the office of abbot. Rösch's services to the monastery are manifold: he tightened the monastery discipline, improved the monastery school, reorganized the administration and the judiciary, he acquired the Toggenburg , which almost doubled the territory of the prince abbey . By rebuilding the monastery, he prevented the city from incorporating the monastery area as a subject area and, like Zurich, Schaffhausen, Basel or Bern, from becoming a city-state. Not only the principality, but also the city tried to increase its influence through land, for example in the canton of Thurgau (→ Jurisdiction in Thurgau ).
With the conclusion of the perpetual alliance with the Swiss Confederation, there was also an obligation to comply with a contingent of the federal places. In the spring of 1476, the city received an appeal from Bern that the Burgundian Duke Charles the Bold was crossing the Jura with a large army to invade Vaud. Under Captain Ulrich Varnbüler, 131 St. Gallers moved out to assist the Bernese at Grandson . The Battle of Grandson ended victorious for the Confederates, but their ensign was to be deplored. From the loot of Burgundy, various flags of the vanquished can still be admired in the museum, and captured artillery was also brought into the city to great cheer.
Shortly after the arrival of the victorious soldiers, however, the next call for help came from Bern: the Duke had besieged Murten . Once again the town sent out its men capable of military service, who arrived in a forced march in bad weather on the fourth day before Murten, when the fighting was over and the battle had been decided in favor of the defenders. The Burgundian Wars ended with the battle of Nancy , of which it is not known whether St. Gallen again did military service ; Charles the Bold lost his life in the battle on January 5, 1477.
The St. Gallen War
Abbot Ulrich Rösch's opponent was the mayor Ulrich Varnbuler , who came from an influential St. Gallen family and was a hero of the Burgundian Wars . His intention was nothing less than to gain control over the lands of the prince abbot for the city. He secretly prepared a coup d'état against the abbot, knowing full well that the abbey had also concluded a protective alliance with the Swiss Confederation. He hoped this would simply overlook the abbey's subjugation and accept it as a new fact. He initially rejects the abbot's request to be allowed to build his own gate in the southern city wall. He complained about the slovenliness of the townspeople, about the fact that the people entered the monastery with weapons and armor, beggars lounged on every corner and joy girls tried to dissuade the monastery brothers from the right path. Thereupon the abbot began to build a new monastery on Mariaberg near Rorschach in 1487 , with the intention of moving there with the entire escort and the monastery treasure. The tradesmen in particular did not like this at all, because the absent pilgrims would have seriously damaged the city's economy. Despite requests, the abbot did not want to give up his plan. He too had influential friends among the confederates who could stand by him in the event of a dispute. But the St. Gallen residents did not want to wait for the court decision, gathered a few Appenzellers around them and completely destroyed and looted the construction site.
As a clever politician, the abbot called on the confederates as patrons of the monastery to arbitrate instead of raising their own troops against the city. The townspeople were accused of breaking the peace, which had been decided after the Stans agreement . The confederates followed the abbot's call and marched against the city with 8,000 men in the St. Gallen War . 400 townspeople opposed them. Before the battle broke out, however, they retreated into the city, because the reinforcements from Appenzell had not even appeared because of the superior strength of the enemy. When the townspeople noticed that they had acted very rashly and rashly, they wanted to bring Varnbulians to justice, but he had withdrawn. Heinrich Zili organized the defense of the city, which was now besieged by the confederates . On February 15, 1490, after protracted skirmishes, the St. Gallen War, a peace treaty was signed. Harsh conditions were imposed on the city, however: Varnbuler was banished and the abbot was given general building rights. Some confederates even wanted to make the city the common bailiwick of the federal government. Only with the intercession of the people of Zurich did St. Gallen remain a free imperial city, but its borders and rights were again set within narrow limits. Abbot Ulrich Rösch died in Wil in 1491. The dispute between the former mayor Varnbuler and the Swiss Confederation was one of the triggers of the Swabian War .
reformation
From 1526, the then mayor and humanist Joachim von Watt (Vadian) introduced the Reformation in St. Gallen. In 1529 the city belonged to the representatives of the Protestant minority ( Protestation ) at the Reichstag in Speyer , which demanded the unhindered spread of the new faith. The church of St. Laurenzen has now become the Reformed town church after it had been built by Abbot Heinrich III the year before. von Gundelfingen had actually been donated to the city.
Vadian and the city council commissioned a four-person commission of experts to present proposals for the liturgy and other forms of design within the worship service, including the congregation chant. The former schoolmaster and new pastor of St. Laurenzen, Dominik Zili (before 1500–1542), compiled the German-language, Protestant songbook To Praise and Thanks God for the congregation with a total of 28 songs for the first time in the Swiss Confederation . St. Gallen sent a delegation to each of the disputations in Baden in 1526 and in Bern in 1528 , in which Zili took part. Through him a strict, godly community life and understanding of the world was formed: he introduced the daily 5 o'clock morning prayer, he resisted the transfer of Otmar's bones to St. Gallen, he called for unity against the Turkish threat and he criticized questionable convictions in his sermons. He found important support, for example, in the person of Johannes Kessler .
When the townspeople converted to the Reformed faith, the differences between abbot and town were intensified again. However, they still lived within the same city walls and entered and left the city through the same gates. The differences were many: the townspeople complained that the dining room that the abbey had opened not far from the town church was too loud, and the abbot about the ongoing thefts in his garden. The city guards also patrolled the monastery district, because its towers offered a good view. Only in 1566 was it possible to agree on a suitable solution: The abbot got his own city gate in the south wall, the "Abbot Gate" (later Karlstor , after Cardinal Karl Borromeo , Archbishop of Milan, who is said to have been the first nobleman to pass through the gate). An arbitration wall was built between the abbey and the city, which from then on separated the Catholic from the Reformed part of the city. The passage built as a sign of peace in this wall between the abbey and the city was secured with two doors. One key belonged to the abbot, the other to the mayor. However, the main purpose of the wall was not to seal itself off from the monastery, but rather served the military security of the city, since the abbot and the people of the church were now responsible for guarding the southern part of the city. The abbot was only allowed to open his new gate after the partition wall had been completed.
After the death of Vadian, the city continued to flourish economically and there were many new buildings and extensions to the city's buildings. A new town hall was built and city gates renewed. Striking buildings, some of which can still be seen today, were also built on a private initiative. Obvious splendor is used very sparingly, “so as not to break the rule”. The only gems were the bay windows on the town houses, many of which are still there today.
The city in the early modern era
City plan from 1642
See also: List of the city gates of the city of St. Gallen
The picture shows the city of Gallus around 1642 as it presented itself after the Reformation. Important buildings are identified with letters. North is on the right of the map.
- A (left by the trees) The prince. Chloster - monastery district
- B (above, the big church) The minster - The Otmarsbasilika, below the Galluskirche. Today's St. Gallen Collegiate Church is located above the floor plans of both churches. Their substructure, the Otmar crypt and the Gallus crypt, still exist.
- C (left of the center of the picture, with a large tower) S. Laurenzen - The Reformed St. Laurenzen Church, later rebuilt and expanded.
- D (center of picture, right of St. Laurenzen) The hospital - the houses are still there, the hospital has long since moved out.
- E (center) The town hall - old town hall, demolished in 1877, today there is a monument to Vadian . The roof turret with the town hall bell is now on the weigh house, a council room has been moved to the museum.
- F (right above) The granary - no longer exists. The market square is located there today.
- G (below) Die Metzig - no longer exists.
- H (outside right) S. Mangen - Reformed Church of St. Mangen , later expanded and renovated, consisting.
- I (left of it) S. Catherina - St. Katharinen Monastery , today Reformed Church, Dominican monastery from 1228 until the Reformation , then from 1599 location of the municipal high school with strong promotion of the Latin language and even later the location of the first municipal library, its cornerstone Vadian had laid.
- K (center below) The balance - weighing house , consisting. Today the city council's assembly room .
- L (next to it) Das Brüelthor - Like almost all gates in the city, it was razed during industrialization . However, the names of the gates have been preserved as place or street names.
- M (bottom right) Blatzthor - square gate
- N (top center) Schibenerthor - Schibenertor
- O (to the right of it) Muolterthor - Multertor
- P (top left) The Green Tower - Green Tower, no longer exists
- Q (left center) Müller Thor - Müllertor no longer exists, led to Mühlenenschlucht
- R (bottom center) Spiserthor - Spisertor
- S (right below the center of the picture) Zeughaus - armory , no longer exists. First replaced by the theater, later by a commercial building
- T (bottom left) The Aptsthor - The Abtstor, today Karlstor , is the only still existing gate in the city. Between the former Müller and Karlstor the city wall is still completely in place. Today the canton police detention center is located at Karlstor.
- V (to the right of the monastery, on the wall) Schoolhouse - the city's schoolhouse. There is still a trade school there today, but that is more recent.
The dividing wall between the abbey and the city can also be clearly seen. Parts of it still exist. Where the city wall and the moat used to be, today there are broad streets called Oberer Graben and Unterer Graben .
The moral mandate
From today's perspective, the consequences of the Reformation sometimes showed strange flowers. In 1611, when the price rises and the plague raged again in the city, people remembered the traditional customs and worked them out anew. In order to please the Lord God, they were even stricter than before. There was a practically complete ban on refreshments for young people. Even adults had to give a reason (for example a customer's business trip) to be able to order alcoholic beverages in a pub in the morning. Taverns and guild houses had to close by eight o'clock in the evening at the latest, even wedding celebrations could not last longer.
There were also extravagant instructions on dress codes for the various classes of citizens. A special feature of this moral mandate from 1611 must be that it was not only read aloud, as before, but was also printed and given to all citizens in book form.
In historiography the question of whether the city republic, which was dissolved in 1798 (beginning of the Helvetic Republic), now formed a democracy or an aristocracy is controversial . What is certain is that there was an upper class in the city who were mainly active in trade. In contrast to other cities, however, wealth was not a prerequisite for being able to exercise a political office. It has also not been proven that these groups of people would have been preferred in the election to the councils, but it was very rare that non-members of a guild were elected to an office. The courts, too, functioned regardless of rank or name, so that even highly respected citizens sometimes had to pay a fine, if only for displaying their wealth in one way or another.
The church of St. Laurenzen served as a meeting place for the civil parish, which usually met three times a year, to elect the councils, to receive new regulations and to file the citizens' oath. The town church is still the meeting place for the local community of St. Gallen today .
The Thirty Years War and its Consequences
The Thirty Years' War raged in Europe since the lintel in Prague in 1618 . Although the city and monastery were in conflict more than once about old and new issues, especially when it came to allowing one or the other war party to march through the city, they remembered that a peaceful, Regular coexistence in this difficult time of the city and the monastery would be an advantage. More than once, the troops of the city and prince-abbot jointly occupied the external borders on the eastern flank of the Swiss Confederation in order to block the path of the advancing enemy - regardless of their convictions. This also significantly reduced mutual mistrust.
Brief reports by Kaspar Wild report on the events during the war:
- 1620 After Spanish troops had killed Protestants in Valtellina, around 150 survivors fled to Gallusstadt and were accepted here for five years. This increased the skepticism of the citizens about foreign troop marches. At the same time, the city's troops were increased and additional men were drafted.
- 1623 The city strengthened its defenses again. A citizen who illegally broke an additional window through a hole in the city wall was bused and locked up.
- 1628 The rise in prices made it necessary for the authorities to give grain and bread to those in need.
- 1629 In the emergency of the food shortage , the plague ravaged the city again. Within a year, 1420 people died, between a fifth and a quarter of the city's population.
- 1635 In the spring, several units of the French army marched through the city. They were willingly offered accommodation.
- 1635 In the summer the city was again hit hard by epidemics. In addition to the flu (?) And the dysentery , the plague raged again. Again more than a thousand people perished. In January of the following year the marriage of 40 couples is reported - the increase in baptisms was not too long in coming.
- 1639 In the city for the first time a day of repentance and prayer took place, on which the citizens had to appear in the church and to the sermon.
- 1640 In order to keep up with the enemy in armaments matters, several old armor and helmets were sold from the town's property. The proceeds were used to buy new ones, but these were only freely available to the poor. Wealthy citizens had to pay for their equipment themselves.
- 1646 After Swedish troops under General Gustav Wrangel had conquered Bregenz , troops from the city and prince abbey occupied the Rhine crossing. However, there was no open battle. The officers of the Swedish army attended the service in peace in Gallusstadt and spent their spoils on all kinds of goods.
The Thirty Years' War ended with the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, and the Swiss Confederation, and with it both of St. Gallen, received formal and final independence from the German Empire. The peace treaty was often seen as the basis for the “eternal neutrality” of the Swiss Confederation, which the federal troops and their allies had practiced as much as possible throughout the war, although such a formulation is not discernible in the documents.
The city republic between the Thirty Years War and the French Revolution
In 1656, a few years after the Thirty Years' War , the First Villmerger War broke out between Zurich and the inner places , the first obvious religious war within the Confederation. Because both the city and the abbot were militarily too weak to compete against each other, they behaved largely neutral and henceforth dedicated themselves to mediating religious disputes between the places. As a result of this, the city was granted a permanent seat in the daily statutes of the Swiss Confederation since 1667 , significantly because of the excellent mediation work of a house of God.
The "Sun King" Louis XIV had been in power in France since the Thirty Years' War . On the one hand, an attempt was made to maintain the pay alliance with France and a delegation was sent to Paris to take the oath to the young king in the Notre-Dame Cathedral , on the other hand, after 1685 at the latest, they were faced with a completely new problem: refugee misery . In the 16th and 17th centuries, St. Gallen was spared both from severe war distress and from conflagrations. The citizens had therefore participated several times in small and large donations for other cities and in the building of places of worship, but mostly but never exclusively those from co-religionists.
Louis XIV had the Protestants in France persecuted, forcibly converted or killed across the country. Many of them fled to the east, including to the Confederation. At least 150 refugees were temporarily admitted to the city of St. Gallen, initially in the hope that they would soon be able to return to their homeland, which however soon turned out to be a mistake. Initially, however, the council later even allowed church services to be held in French. The association that emerged at that time within the Evangelical Reformed parish of the city to which it was subordinate is still responsible for all Francophone believers in the canton.
In 1697 there was once again a conflict between the city and the abbey that only narrowly slipped past the bloodshed. The two adversaries fall apart over the regulation that did not allow the abbot and his people to walk through the city to the monastery with upright crosses and flags. The city raised troops and had cannons positioned at the gates, the abbot did the same and besieged the city. However, through the mediation of the Federal Locations, bloodshed could be prevented in time and the conflict was settled through diplomatic channels.
The Second Villmerger War , which broke out in Toggenburg in 1712 after the prince abbot denied his subjects traditional rights of self-determination, turned out less lightly for the abbot . The troops from Zurich and Bern advanced against the city and occupied the monastery and looted its treasures. Many of the treasures that were stolen back then never found their way back to St. Gallen. The dispute over cultural goods flared up again at the end of the 20th century, including over the St. Gallen globe . The dispute between St. Gallen and Zurich was only settled in 2006 through the mediation of the Federal Council .
Due to the increased acts of war in and around the city, the city now made efforts to improve its defense system. Giovanni Pazzaglia, an Italian historian, wrote admiring words about the militia system, which surprisingly one could also read in a book about the Swiss army in the 20th century: That the city “is well provided with sufficient burgers, all of which were used in the war. Are so experienced in art that they can protect and preserve their high-quality freedom from themselves ». Although the arsenal was well stocked with everything necessary, the conscripts had their weapons at home, [and] those who did not maintain their weapons had to repair the defect and, if necessary, face a penalty.
In the 18th century, several scholars, including many doctors who had received their training at the universities of Zurich or Basel, brought the spirit of the Enlightenment to St. Gallen. Various theologians are also named who bring theology into harmony with the laws of nature and thus contribute significantly to a rethinking of traditional theological ideals to new, scientific knowledge. An anecdote that should be mentioned is that the city republic adhered to the Julian calendar until 1724 , but in the abbey since 1582 that of Pope Gregory XIII. introduced Gregorian calendar was valid.
The two golden ages
Economic boom
The economic boom in the city of St. Gallen began during the Reformation with the textile industry in eastern Switzerland . From the 15th century on, the city of St. Gallen was the center of an increasingly flourishing linen industry , which reached its peak around 1714 with an annual production of 38,000 cloths. The canvas production provided work for farmers who planted hemp and flax , spinners (mostly women) who stretched the fibers into threads, weavers who woven the threads into cloths, bleachers who bleached them white in the sunlight, and traders who finally made the Selling towels. The St. Gallen canvas was the best thanks to rigorous quality controls, so that it was traded from Paris to Venice and Prague.
But the fashion in the royal houses changed in the 17th and 18th centuries. The quality of the St. Gallen linen was so good that soon no one could afford them or because of the cheaper competition they didn't want to. The longer the less white towels were ordered. In 1798 the bleaching fields in front of the city were empty and the French were imminent. In 1811, before the Russian campaign , the bleaches were empty again and the French no longer ordered any cloth. Seven years later, grain was grown in the bleaching fields. Large parts of the population became unemployed and the city fell into a deep crisis.
At the same time, 30,000 to 40,000 women all over Eastern Switzerland and nearby Vorarlberg were embroidering for the St. Gallen embroidery exporters, who had made embroidery from the city known all over the world and brought embroidery to its first boom.
In the meantime the city gates that had hindered trade had been torn down. In 1835, all the wings of the city gates were hung up on a single day, and in the following years the gates with their towers were also torn down to make room for wider streets. The Karlstor (Abbot's Gate) is the only one that has survived to this day.
The first embroidery crisis occurred in the middle of the 18th century (low point: annual production of 11,000 scarves), which was caused by the strong competition abroad and even more by the cotton industry introduced by Peter Bion in 1721 . It was very bad that with the continental blockade imposed by Napoleon Bonaparte , nothing could be delivered to England. However, St. Gallen was soon able to take on a leading role in the mechanization of the textile industry, which in the 19th century led to a second, unexpected boom in the textile industry. At the beginning of the 19th century, spinning machines were first installed in St. Gallen , including from the General Society of the English Cotton Spinning Mill in St. Gallen , the first stock corporation in Switzerland. At the same time, the first embroidery machines were developed in Gallusstadt , which were to be much more successful than the former. The machines turned embroidery into a domestic industry that provided the rural poor with additional income. Many farmers in the area had an embroidery machine installed on their farm for a down payment, where they then, supported by women and children, topped up their meager wages. Around 1910 embroidery production was the largest export branch of the Swiss economy with 18 percent and over 50 (!) Percent of world production came from St. Gallen. In eastern Switzerland, around a fifth of the population lived from the textile industry. The population of the city of St. Gallen more than tripled from 11,234 in 1850 to 37,869 in 1910; around 1900 only Geneva had a greater population density than St. Gallen.
Relics from the former economic prosperity of the city of St. Gallen are still visible today:
- On the sunny Rosenberg are the stately villas of the former large merchants, while on the shady Freudenberg side you can find the closely spaced workers' settlements.
- The artificially created Drei Weieren served as a water reservoir for the textile industry and have now become a local recreation area.
- Many buildings are adorned with magnificent oriels decorated with reliefs that show where the merchant had come around in the world.
- The well-known University of St. Gallen was founded in 1898 - during the heyday of St. Gallen embroidery - as a «commercial academy».
- A lot of embroidery was and is always presented at the St. Gallen Children's Festival .
The St. Gallen City Militia Society has existed since 1745 .
Construction of today's collegiate church
→ Main article: Stiftskirche St. Gallen
At the beginning of the 18th century, the monastery church, which had been built by Abbot Gozbert in the 9th century, became dilapidated and in need of renovation. The architects Gabriel Loser and Johann Caspar Bagnato designed the new, baroque monastery building, which was intended to underline the importance of the St. Gallen Abbey. Construction began in 1755 and lasted in stages until 1772. Since then, the building has had to be renovated several times, most recently in the years 2000–2003.
As an indirect prerequisite for the construction of the new collegiate church, the meanwhile very good neighborly relationship between the city republic and the prince abbey is described. Most of the differences of opinion between the two have now been resolved through negotiation in a very short space of time. Both sides increasingly hosted receptions in honor of the other, whereby the traditional rules regarding the modesty of the menu were no longer observed and eleven courses were occasionally served - from dessert alone.
Helvetic, founding a canton, federal state
St. Gallen becomes the capital of the canton of St. Gallen
In 1789 the French Revolution broke out in France . Many of the town's citizens and especially the people in the prince's abbey were not doing very well despite the economic boom. The nobles made sure that the urge for freedom was kept in check wherever possible. "If you give them the little finger, they take the whole hand!" was feared in aristocratic circles. The prince abbey learned this when Abbot Beda Angehrn fulfilled most of the requests of rebel citizens in Gossau in the "amicable contract" in 1795 , which most of the canons did not like. His successor, Pankraz Vorster , tried with all means to preserve the sovereign rights of the monastery. This led to an uproar in the abbot countries, both sides called the abbey's umbrella locations (Zurich, Lucerne, Schwyz and Glarus) for help. In 1797 they managed to negotiate a constitution that largely corresponded to the wishes of the subjects, but displeased the abbot.
A year later, the consequences of the French Revolution hit Gallusstadt like a bomb, the French troops had taken Switzerland and combined it into a unitary state (→ Helvetik ). The area of Switzerland was divided into new cantons. The areas of the prince abbey, the city of St. Gallen and Appenzell were combined in the canton of Säntis . The people were not particularly enthusiastic about the new order, which was solemnly introduced in St. Gallen on June 21, 1798, and the city recommended various primarily superficial measures to the citizens for fear of the French, such as hanging up flags of the new Republic, but at the same time hiding assets. Appenzell was initially the new capital of the canton of Säntis. With the introduction of the new Helvetic order, the guild system in St. Gallen had come to an end. The guilds disbanded and their houses were privatized. The monastery was also closed and almost all of the monks were driven to nearby Mehrerau . The abbot had already left for Vienna with a large part of the monastic property .
As early as July, at the suggestion of Kaspar Bolt, the Helvetic Council made St. Gallen the capital of the new canton of Säntis. However, the canton's territory remained controversial, and Appenzell in particular sought to restore its sovereignty. At the Helvetic Consulta in Paris, where a new order for Switzerland was to be worked out with the mediation of Napoleon Bonaparte , MPs from St. Gallen worked in vain to maintain the canton. After the restoration of the old cantons of Glarus and Appenzell, the new canton of St. Gallen was formed from the remaining areas of the cantons of Säntis and Linth (→ mediation ). On April 15, 1803, the canton's first major council met in St. Gallen. The government and the canton parliament took their seat in the former Palatinate in the buildings of the prince abbey. (→ History of the Canton of St. Gallen )
In an apparently heated debate on May 8, 1805, the Grand Council of the canton decided to implement an (alleged) instruction from Napoleon and formally dissolve the abbey and divide its assets. Under canon law, it was incorporated into the St. Gallen-Chur double diocese in 1823 . In contrast to many other monastery dissolutions, the monastery was given its purely ecclesiastical property and transferred to a new society: The later Catholic denomination part of the canton of St. Gallen (so since 1847) was founded as an organization of all Catholics of the canton and took ownership on Monastery buildings and on the religious objects of the monastery. Among other things, he is responsible for the financing of the clergy in the canton and for the supervision of the Catholic canton secondary school .
Much about the disputes between the city and the representatives of the other districts of the canton and the various cantonal constitutions that were drawn up in the first half of the 19th century can be read in the article on the history of the canton of St. Gallen . An important point to be emphasized is that the city always managed to achieve a disproportionate representation in the Grand Council of the canton. The people's representatives were also elected fairly evenly, so roughly the same number of seats were distributed to Catholic and Protestant members. Thanks to the prerogative of the city, the Reformed representatives still had a small majority, although the number of Catholics in the canton was still significantly larger than that of Protestants.
On April 1, 1816, the Cantonal Council issued a new regulation for the politics of the capital. A city council consisting of two presidents and 17 members and various city courts should be elected and set up (the latter right was no longer applicable with the third cantonal constitution of 1831). The separation of the political community from the local citizen community required by the cantonal constitution was not fully implemented until 1824. The latter is still responsible today for granting urban citizenship . For a long time the citizenship of the city was practically exclusively granted to Reformed citizens. It was not until 1873 that the citizens' assembly voluntarily accepted a Catholic into urban civil rights for the first time (previously it had happened that the canton had ordered the acceptance of homeless people).
Much more than the upheavals in politics, the citizens were preoccupied with a much more urgent problem at this time: In 1816 a famine broke out in the canton of St. Gallen, which was soon to claim two thousand victims. After the fall of Napoleon, the linen trade was on the ground because cheap competition from England flooded the markets again. From then on potatoes were planted in the fields in the bleaching area. The cotton business flourished better. The cotton was exported to North Africa and America via Italy .
The time in the new state
| Population development up to the First World War | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1809 | 8,118 | 1870 | 16,675 | |
| 1824 | 8,906 | 1880 | 21'438 | |
| 1837 | 9'430 | 1888 | 27,390 | |
| 1850 | 11'234 | 1900 | 33,187 | |
| 1860 | 14,532 | 1910 | 37,657 | |
As a result of the Sonderbund War of 1847, the new federal constitution was proclaimed in Bern in autumn 1848. With this, many rights that had previously been granted to the canton were transferred to the federal government. This included, for example, the postal system, telegraphy (the first Swiss telegraph line was established between St. Gallen and Zurich in 1852), customs, currency sovereignty and, for the most part, the military. On May 17, 1852, the currency in St. Gallen was changed to the franc . In the military, the problem arose that there were no longer any suitable barracks available in the city for training recruits. It was only a few years later that suitable locations could be found in front of the city. Another example shows that centralization was important: during an inspection in 1854, around a quarter of the conscripts showed rifles that would have been useless in a battle. The acquisition of weapons and uniforms was still a matter for the military man.
The construction of the new citizen's hospital in 1845 made the two state houses superfluous, which were demolished in 1856 and 1875 respectively.
In the 1850s, the city was faced with the problem of a considerable shortage of space for the various schools and the libraries connected to them. The "Bubenkloster" near St. Katharinen had long since become too small and the provisional arrangements could not satisfy. After lengthy negotiations, an agreement was reached in 1851 that Georg Leonhard Steinlin would buy the area next to today's Cantonal School Park for the new school and library rooms. The commercial corporation advanced part of the purchase price, but took over the city's armory and the Katharinen property in return. The building built by Felix Wilhelm Kubly was opened in 1855 and now housed the boys' secondary school, the grammar school, the so-called industrial school and the city library. In 1865, with another change in the cantonal constitution, the higher education system was transferred to the canton's area of responsibility and with it the new school building. The canton school on Burggraben , which still exists today, has emerged from this.
The railroad comes to St. Gallen
The advantages of the railroad were recognized early in St. Gallen , which first went to Basel in 1844 and ran between Zurich and Baden since 1847 . In 1852, the city and canton of St. Gallen decided in independent meetings to co-finance the railway line from Zurich via Wil and St. Gallen to Rorschach, although the projected costs were far beyond what was usual for state tasks at the time. The city and the canton therefore bought shares in the Sankt Gallisch-Appenzell Railway Company , which immediately began building the line. After Karl Etzel had completed the first large Sitter Viaduct , the most difficult part of the construction work, in 1856, the first train pulled into St. Gallen station on Easter Monday , March 24, 1856 . The tram of the city of St. Gallen was only inaugurated in 1897, but it was operated electrically from the start.
Refugee Problems in the 19th Century
On February 1, 1871, General Bourbaki and his Bourbaki army crossed the Swiss border in the Jura in order to be interned with his soldiers instead of being crushed by the German opponents. The city of St. Gallen hosted 2,000 internees, many of them wounded. It is reported that the locals, wherever possible, willingly lend a hand wherever necessary to solve the major logistical problems caused by the foreign soldiers (the town had 16,675 inhabitants in 1870). In addition to food, the exhausted refugees often had to get new clothes and new shoes.
Economic prosperity
In addition to embroidery , which was reported above and which will be further developed elsewhere, another branch of the economy experienced a strong upswing: banks and insurance companies . Most of the new banks established in the second half of the 19th century later became part of one of the big banks in Switzerland. The St.Galler Kantonalbank and the Vadian Bank (formerly the savings institution of the city of St. Gallen ), which belongs to the local community of St. Gallen , are examples of banking houses that still exist today. The Helvetia Insurance is headquartered today in St. Gallen, close to the station. Examples of other important commercial operations are: the Schützengarten brewery (since 1779) as the oldest brewery in Switzerland, Zollikofer AG (since 1789) as the publisher of the St. Galler Tagblatt , the metal construction company of Pankraz Tobler and the Maestrani chocolate factory (since 1859 in St. Gallen).
With the economic boom, which the city owed not least to embroidery, the cityscape also changed permanently. New quarters emerged and new, representative buildings were erected. In the period from 1900 to the First World War , the Volksbad , the churches of St. Maria-Neudorf , Bruggen and Heiligkreuz, the Tonhalle , the new train station and various villas on the Rosenberg were built.
Beginning of the modern age
Development of the modern water supply
The Steinach had ensured the city's water supply for a long time . In the course of the 15th century, however, the poor water quality, which resulted from the simultaneous use of the river as a sewer, was recognized as the cause of various diseases. In 1471, the monastery and town together created the first water pipe to the so-called hole (at today's Gallusplatz on the west side of the monastery). However, the growth of the city soon made additional pipes and wells necessary. At the end of the 19th century, the existing wells were again no longer sufficient to supply the population with enough water. There were also no more streams suitable for catching the spring. In addition, house connections for running water were already a reality in other cities. In 1893, the city council decided to secure the city's drinking water supply with water from Lake Constance. As a result, the extraction point was built near Goldach , which still takes the water from a depth of 45 meters, cleans it (→ drinking water treatment ) and pumps it up to the town 300 meters higher. Today, other communities in the vicinity of the city also get their drinking water from the city's water supply network.
On May 1, 1895, water from Lake Constance flowed into St. Gallen households for the first time. As a reminder of this, August Bösch created the Broderbrunnen at Multertor . The fountain, which attracts attention with its mermaids and animal figures, got its name from canton judge Hans Broder (1845-1891), who bequeathed the necessary money to the city in his will. Its importance as a monument to the water supply explains why a well system was built at that time, which is not at all suitable for collecting water.
City merger in 1918
The cityscape had changed significantly since the beginning of the 18th century. The city grew in all directions, especially the suburbs Tablat and Straubenzell , which had belonged to the territory of the prince abbey until 1798, were further expanded and attracted many residents. Agriculture was less and less practiced on the plains, but the number of poor factory workers from the growing industrial districts on the outskirts rose sharply. Since 1897, the three municipalities have also been linked by a common tram network, which has allowed frequent commuting into the city. The water and energy supply were also organized jointly by all municipalities. Many new buildings and factories sprang up on the borders between the communities because there was no more space in the city. Soon it was hardly possible to determine the boundaries of the city from the surrounding area. In 1900 a community merger failed because of the resistance of the rich townspeople who did not want to share with the poorer outlying communities and - once again - because of the religious question. The latter still played a role, especially in the school system. Well into the 19th century, denominationally independent schools in the city were the exception and the supervision and organization of schools was the responsibility of the denominations. The non-denominational "residents school community" was not formed until 1879 from the Catholic and Protestant school communities and the secondary school, which remained under the supervision of the local community. This also solved the problem of unequal treatment of local residents and immigrants in the school system, which still existed at the time. In other areas of public life, too, the local community had gradually ceded tasks to the new political community (residents' community).
Longer investigations, a lot of requested statistics on population numbers, growth, wealth, school conditions and all sorts of things delayed the merger even further. In addition, the cantonal constitution first had to be adjusted in order to allow the amalgamation of municipalities.
On June 30, 1918, the merger of the three communities was finally sealed. The city now had 69,261 inhabitants. Only the civil parishes that had formed from the three political parishes in the 19th century remained independent . Even today there are three types of citizenship in the city: that of the old city, that of Tablat and that of Straubenzell. The civil parish of Rotmonten was merged with the local parish of St. Gallen at the end of 2008, as only very few people belonged to it.
The time of the world wars
The First World War did not pass St. Gallen without deep cuts. In addition to high inflation and food shortages, the 1918 flu epidemic brought dire hardship to the city. In 1918, doctors reported over 20,000 cases of flu in the now expanded municipality.
The war and the global economic crisis shortly afterwards also caused the St. Gallen textile industry to slide into a major crisis for the second time. Even before that, there had been mounting signs that the region's economic dependence on the textile industry would lead to problems and conflicts. Large parts of the population became unemployed and thereupon emigrated from the city and canton. Within just 30 years, the number of cantonal employees in the embroidery industry fell from 30,000 to just 5,000. The city alone lost 13,000 inhabitants.
In 1883 there were serious anti-Semitic riots, although in the meantime Jews could also be granted citizenship in St. Gallen and the synagogue was not built in the city until 1881 . Hitler's seizure of power later did not go unnoticed by St. Gallen. The NSDAP local group St. Gallen recruited its members mainly from the numerous German immigrants in and around the city. After 1933, the party organized various political activities in the city to cement indoctrination on Hitler's agenda. On January 29, 1936, the NSDAP was even able to rent the large hall in the Schützengarten . The group was finally banned by the Federal Council in 1945 after several attempts at the cantonal and communal level failed due to a lack of political competence.
In order to stop the wave of emigration, intensive image cultivation was carried out in the 1920s, as has been repeated since the 18th century. However, there was still a strong emphasis on perseverance in the hope that the embroidery industry would recover as it did 100 years before. Since the city had "no lovely location", it was presented as cozy, livable and lovable.
Only after 1950 did the embroidery industry begin to recover slightly. Powerful automatic embroidery machines make these a highly specialized branch of the textile industry today. St. Gallen embroidery is still one of the most popular materials for expensive Parisian haute couture creations .
The further emigration was stopped only after the Second World War by the increasing diversification of the economy. Large companies in the metal and machine industries have now joined the predominant textile industry. In addition, the longer the more, service companies such as banks and insurance companies came to the fore as employers.
During the cultivation battles of World War I and II, every square meter of fertile soil was turned into arable land. Potatoes were even planted on the monastery square in the city.
The time after 1945
Economic boom
As a result of the economic upswing that began in the 1950s, construction activity increased again significantly, especially in the outlying districts. Various new quarters were created, including the industrial areas of Winkeln, associated housing estates in Russen and in Kreuzbühl, other settlements north of the Rosenberg, in Oberhofstetten and elsewhere. In addition, some infrastructure projects have now become possible that were postponed during the emergency. In the period after 1945 at least half a dozen new school buildings were opened and as many churches were built (→ List of sacred buildings in the city of St. Gallen ).
The massive increase in individual traffic into the city soon pushed the streets to their capacity limits. A generous widening or expansion of the main thoroughfares through the city center was out of the question because of the narrow topography between Freudenberg and Rosenberg. In addition to the N1 , which, according to a decision by the Federal Council of January 20, 1971, should lead through the center of the city, the VBSG attached great importance to the development of an efficient local transport system .
New offers and new responsibilities
With the implementation of new infrastructure projects, including the new city theater (as a replacement for the old, dilapidated and now too small theater building at the place on the market square, where a McDonald’s branch is today), the costs also increased. To do this, the city had to pay ever larger sums of money to the museums and other institutions that were run by the community until the end of 1978, because they were no longer able to do so. At the beginning of 1979 the museums were transferred to a foundation financed by the city, while the Vadiana city library was transferred to the canton. Because the finances of the political community no longer looked as rosy as they did less than fifty years ago, the city in turn sought further support from the canton. He now made significant contributions to the university , which had moved from the city center to its current location on the Rosenberg in the early 1960s due to acute space shortages. Since 1985 responsibility has been exclusively with the canton, as it has taken over all operating contributions since that year. This is a consequence of the financial equalization , which has contributed considerably to the relief of the city treasury (see also next section).
Population development in the 20th century
Since the city merger, the majority of the population in Gallusstadt has remained stable. After a slight increase into the 1960s, the permanent resident population at the beginning of 2000 was 69,768 people, only slightly higher than 80 years earlier, but well below the value in the 1960s. The decrease trend in the city of St. Gallen is above average compared to other cities in the Swiss plateau. However, the resident population in the vicinity of the city has increased significantly. It is noticeable that the proportion of foreigners increased from 15 (1966) to 28 percent (2011). The number of immigrants from the former Yugoslavia rose the most .
The Yugoslav wars in the 1990s are likely to be responsible for this population development (previously in the 1960s and 1970s it was Italian foreign workers who long made up the second largest group of foreigners). Many refugees sought protection in the eastern Swiss metropolis from the turmoil of the war in their homeland. Immigration from this cultural area led and still leads to cultural conflicts in the city, especially in schools. The crime rate increased. While these immigrants (and also the increasing drug crime) incurred considerable additional costs in the city (social benefits, medical care, integration efforts - police supervision, prosecution, prison system), many people from the middle and upper classes moved from the city to the surrounding communities such as Gaiserwald , Mörschwil or Trogen , in order to be able to save significant taxes, often combined with the construction of a condominium in a quiet location. Some quarters with a particularly high proportion of foreigners still have the reputation of a " ghetto ", but this does not allow any statements about increased crime or a reduced quality of life in these quarters. Despite intensive efforts to integrate, politically right-wing positions in the city and canton could not be entirely prevented.
As a result of these migratory movements , the city came into considerable financial difficulties around the turn of the millennium, so that debt and taxes rose in equal parts, which in turn increased the incentive to move away as soon as there was enough money. The preferred destinations of the migrants are close enough to the city to still be able to benefit from what the center has to offer (cinemas, theater, music, but also work). The vicious circle was broken by agreeing compensation payments for the center services with the surrounding communities and the canton (→ financial compensation ). It was also supported by the fact that the economy picked up again significantly in the period up to 2007, which improved the tax revenues of municipal companies. Since 1999 the urban debt has been falling again more or less continuously.
See also
- Prince Abbey of St. Gallen , Collegiate Church of St. Gallen , list of the abbots of St. Gallen Monastery
- Canton of St. Gallen , history of the canton of St. Gallen
- Diocese of St. Gallen , list of the bishops of St. Gallen
literature
- Gallus Jakob Baumgartner: The history of the Swiss Free State and Canton of St. Gallen, with special reference to the creation, effectiveness and decline of the princely monastery of St. Gallen . Zurich / Stuttgart 1868 ( Volume 1 online , Volume 2 online ).
- Nathalie Bodenmüller, Dorothee Guggenheimer, Johannes Huber, Marcel Mayer, Stefan Sonderegger, Daniel Studer, Rolf Wirth: St. Gallen City Guide with Abbey District. 4th modified and expanded edition, St. Gallen-Bodensee Tourismus / Typotron, St. Gallen 2010 (first edition 2007), ISBN 978-3-908151-44-9 .
- Silvio Bucher, Office for Cultural Maintenance of the Canton of St. Gallen (Hrsg.): The Canton of St. Gallen. Landscape community home. 3rd, revised edition. Office for Cultural Maintenance, St. Gallen 1994, ISBN 3-85819-112-0 .
- Bruno Broder, Heinz Eggmann, René Wagner, Silvia Widmer-Trachsel: City of St. Gallen . A geographic-historical local lore. School administration St. Gallen / Kantonaler Lehrmittelverlag, St. Gallen 1970 (without ISBN).
- Ernst Ehrenzeller, Walter and Verena Spühl Foundation (ed.): History of the city of St. Gallen . VGS, St. Gallen 1988, ISBN 3-7291-1047-0 .
- Gottlieb Felder, municipal teaching staff with the support of the authorities and with the participation of numerous experts (ed.): The city of St. Gallen and its surroundings . Nature and history, life and facilities in the past and present [a local history]. Fehr, St. Gallen [1916].
- Sabine Schreiber: Hirschfeld, Strauss, Malinsky. Jewish life in St. Gallen 1803 to 1933. In: Contributions to the history and culture of the Jews in Switzerland . Series of publications of the Swiss Association of Israelites, Volume 11. Chronos , Zurich 2006, ISBN 978-3-0340-0777-1 (also dissertation at the University of Zurich 2005/2006).
- Hans Stricker: Our city of St. Gallen. A geographic-historical local lore. 2nd, revised edition. School administration, St. Gallen 1979 (first edition 1970, without ISBN).
- Ernst Ziegler; Historical Association of the Canton of St. Gallen: On the history of the monastery and city of St. Gallen. A historical potpourri. In: New Year's Gazette of the Historical Association of the Canton of St. Gallen No. 143, VGS, Verlags-Gemeinschaft St. Gallen, St. Gallen 2003 (without ISBN).
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Monks and knights seek protection from sitters. St. Galler Tagblatt, Noemi Heule, 2018, accessed on May 16, 2020 .
- ↑ Hartmann, Geschichte, p. 62f. - S. Bucher, Pest, p. 15; in Ehrenzeller, History of the City of St. Gallen
- ^ Jewish history / synagogue in St. Gallen. Alemannia Judaica - Working Group for Research into the History of Jews in Southern Germany and the Adjoining Region, 2003, accessed on October 30, 2008 .
- ↑ Jörg Krummenacher: Skulls of the St. Gallen monastery founders emerge from the past | NZZ . In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . ( nzz.ch [accessed December 7, 2019]).
- ^ Emil Egli : Swiss Reformation History. Volume I, Zurich 1910, page 346.
- ^ Alfred Ehrensperger : The service in the city of St. Gallen, in the monastery and in the prince-abbot areas before, during and after the Reformation. Theological Publishing House Zurich, 2012, ISBN 978-3-290-17628-0
- ↑ Erwin Poeschel: Die Kunstdenkmäler des Kantons St. Gallen, Volume 11: The City of St. Gallen. In: Ehrenzeller: History of the City of St. Gallen. Basel 1957.
- ^ According to Hartmann, Geschichte, and Naef, Chronik, Wild, Auszüge, in: Ehrenzeller: History of the City of St. Gallen.
- ↑ Quoted in the context of Ehrenzeller, Geschichte der Stadt St. Gallen, page 266
- ↑ Georg Leonhard Hartmann, 1828 in his "Description of the City of St. Gallen"
- ↑ Tagblatt dated January 7, 2004 ( Memento of the original from September 23, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ The History of the Canton of St. Gallen, page 33
- ↑ Yearbook of the City of St. Gallen 2012 ( Memento of the original from July 28, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ 2007 crime statistics
- ↑ 20min.ch on May 11, 2006: Lachen and St. Fiden are the “ghettos” of St. Gallen
- ↑ tagblatt.ch on JULY 24, 2014: «The ghetto is within us»
- ↑ St. Gallen History 2003, Volume 8; Max Lemmenmeier: boom and medium-sized social order
- ↑ Bill of the City of St. Gallen 2007
Remarks
- ↑ Besides Vadian, these were his cousin Jörg von Watt, the town clerk Augustin Fechter and Dominik Zili
