Philipp Etter

Philipp Etter (around 1930)

Radio address on August 28, 1939

Philipp Etter with his wife and ten children

Philipp Etter (born December 21, 1891 in Menzingen , † December 23, 1977 in Bern ) was a Swiss politician ( SKVP ) from the canton of Zug . As Federal Councilor , he was Interior Minister and held the office of Federal President four times .

Career

The trained lawyer was admitted to the bar in the canton of Schwyz . From 1918 to 1922 he was in the Cantonal Council of Zug and from 1922 to 1928 in the Government Council, until 1927 as Cantonal Education and Military Director and then as Landammann . From 1930 to 1934 he held a seat on the Council of States .

As early as 1933, after Hitler came to power, he advertised in the nine-part essay The Fatherland Renewal and Us, among other things, for Catholic-corporatist politics in Austria, which had a dictatorial touch. His condemnation of the atrocities of the Nazis, which became known in the name of the policy of neutrality, remained controversial throughout his life.

The United Federal Assembly elected Philipp Etter to succeed Jean-Marie Musy on March 28, 1934 in the first ballot in the Federal Council . On May 1, 1934, he took over the Federal Department of Home Affairs from Albert Meyer . Parliament confirmed him in office in 1935, 1939, 1943, 1947, 1951 and 1955. He was Vice President of the Federal Council in 1938, 1941, 1946 and 1952, and Federal President in 1939, 1942, 1947 and 1953 . In this capacity he opened the assembly for the election of General Guisan on August 28, 1939 .

After the resignation of Federal Councilor Marcel Pilet-Golaz , he was the longest-serving member of the government from 1945-1959 ("L'Etternelle"). In consultation with Martin Rosenberg , the general secretary of his party, in 1955 he renounced the vice-presidency of 1956 and thus the office of Federal President in 1957 in order to be able to bring about a double vacancy if a free-minded Federal Councilor resigned . This scenario did not arise until four years later. Together with Hans Streuli , on November 19, 1959, he announced his resignation on December 31, 1959.

Like his wife Maria Etter-Hegglin, who died in 1972, Philipp Etter was buried in the Bremgarten cemetery in Bern . The couple's remains were exhumed in 2008 and transferred to Menzingen, where they have been in a family grave ever since.

Election results in the Federal Assembly

• 1934: Election to the Federal Council with 115 votes (absolute majority: 104 votes)
• 1935: Re-election as Federal Council with 124 votes (absolute majority: 98 votes)
• 1937: Election of Vice President of the Federal Council with 148 votes (absolute majority: 85 votes)
• 1938: Election to the Federal President with 150 votes (absolute majority: 81 votes)
• 1939: Re-election as Federal Council with 144 votes (absolute majority: 87 votes)
• 1940: Election of Vice President of the Federal Council with 126 votes (absolute majority: 76 votes)
• 1941: Election to the Federal President with 152 votes (absolute majority: 87 votes)
• 1943: Re-election as Federal Council with 163 votes (absolute majority: 91 votes)
• 1945: Election as Vice President of the Federal Council with 159 votes (absolute majority: 93 votes)
• 1946: Election to the Federal President with 148 votes (absolute majority: 93 votes)
• 1947: Re-election as Federal Council with 167 votes (absolute majority: 93 votes)
• 1951: Re-election as Federal Council with 167 votes (absolute majority: 88 votes)
• 1951: Elected Vice President of the Federal Council with 153 votes (absolute majority: 87 votes)
• 1952: Election to the Federal President with 156 votes (absolute majority: 88 votes)
• 1955: Re-election as Federal Council with 154 votes (absolute majority: 86 votes)

literature

• Josef Widmer: Etter, Philipp. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
• Philipp Etter in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely accessible)
• Georg Kreis : Philipp Etter - "fully on federal soil" . In: Aram Mattioli (Ed.): Intellectuals from the right: Ideology and politics in Switzerland 1918–1939 . Chronos Zurich 1995. pp. 201-217
• Thomas Zaugg: Federal Councilor Philipp Etter (1891–1977). A political biography . NZZ Libro , Zurich 2020.

Web links

• Philipp Etter in the database Dodis the Diplomatic Documents of Switzerland
• Literature by and about Philipp Etter in the catalog of the German National Library
• Newspaper article about Philipp Etter in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .
• Philipp Etter in the doku-zug.ch database
• Philipp Etter in History of Social Security in Switzerland
• Fabian Renz: The patriotic non-Swiss. In: Tages-Anzeiger from August 28, 2013

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Federal Assembly (Switzerland): Speech by the Federal President and extraordinary meeting of the Federal Councils and election of the general. Swiss National Sound Archives , August 28, 1939, accessed on October 26, 2019 . 
2. ↑ Neue Zuger Zeitung No. 132, June 10, 2008.
3. ↑ Rolf App: The rescue of his honor. In: St. Galler Tagblatt of March 14, 2020.
4. ^ Georg circle : Changes of an authoritarian statesman. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung from March 27, 2020.
5. ↑ Josef Lang : Help for the strongest army. In: The weekly newspaper from May 14, 2020.
6. ↑ Jakob Tanner : “In Switzerland, too, the past is used as an echo room for propaganda - and from this it sounds as glorious as one calls into it”. In: The weekly newspaper from June 4, 2020.
7. ^ Thomas Zaugg: The reproach of revisionism ends the writing of history. In: Swiss month from July 2020.

predecessor	Office	successor
Jean-Marie Musy	Member of the Swiss Federal Council 1934 - 1959	Jean Bourgknecht