Aargau monastery dispute

Catholics and liberals quarrel about the Aargau monasteries: Caricature from the satirical magazine Guckkasten from March 25, 1841

The Aargau monastery dispute was a dispute between the canton of Aargau and the Catholic-conservative cantons of Switzerland , which had its origins in the abolition of all Aargau monasteries in 1841. This conflict almost resulted in a war with Austria and finally culminated in the Sonderbund War of 1847.

prehistory

After the adoption of the Baden articles , the Aargau cantonal government, dominated by the (mostly reformed ) liberals, placed the monasteries under state administration in 1835, ordered the closure of monastery schools and imposed a ban on the admission of novices . The constitution of 1831 provided for a total revision within ten years. The new constitution, drawn up at the end of 1840, hardly differed from the old one and was rejected in a referendum. The Liberals were bothered by parity , the principle that the same number of Reformed as Catholics had to be represented in all authorities. The second draft was in their favor and was accepted on January 5, 1841 with 58%. The approval ranged from 0% in the Catholic constituency of Rohrdorf to 99% in the reformed constituency of Brugg .

Édouard Pingret : Capucin de la ville de Bade, lithograph by Godefroy Engelmann , 1824

Conservative Catholic circles - above all the Bünzer Committee , which had organized various popular assemblies against the new constitution - did not want to accept the result. The cantonal government gave the order to arrest the committee. Government councilor Franz Waller went to Muri on January 10th with the country hunters to make the arrests. However, an angry crowd arrested them in the office building and freed the arrested committee members. In Bremgarten , several hundred armed men surrounded the town hall and forced the release of further committee members. On January 11th, government troops marched into Freiamt . At Villmergen there was a battle in which two soldiers and seven insurgents died. Without knowing that the uprising in Freiamt had been quickly put down, riots also broke out in the districts of Baden and Zurzach , which however quickly subsided due to a lack of coordination. By the evening of January 12th, the government regained control of the situation.

The abolition of the monastery

On January 13, 1841 the liberal Catholic seminary director Augustin Keller called for the closure of all monasteries in a speech in the Grand Council . He described them as the "origin of all evil" and the mastermind behind the conservative attempted coup. His motion for the immediate abolition of the monasteries was accepted by 115 votes to 19, with 9 abstentions. Due to the hastily convened meeting, the vast majority of the major Catholic councils were unable to attend the meeting in the reformed Aarau , for example only one of the 16 members of the Muri district was present. The meeting should have taken place on January 12th, but due to the many (mainly Catholic) absences, there was no quorum. There was no cantonal appeal against the decision.

The government acted immediately and was not very squeamish about it. Nuns were given eight days to move out of the monasteries, religious even had to leave the canton within 48 hours. The Benedictine monasteries of Muri , Hermetschwil and Fahr , the Cistercian monasteries Wettingen and Gnadenthal , the Capuchin monasteries in Baden and Bremgarten and the Canons ' Monastery in Baden were closed . The canton withdrew the monastery assets totaling 6.5 million francs (this corresponded to seven times the annual tax revenue) and transferred the holdings of the monastery libraries to the canton library in Aarau. The state only partially replaced the poor in the monasteries, so that poverty increased in many communities affected by the abolition of the monastery. The government's promise to use the monastery property in full for church, school and poor purposes was not kept in reality, as a large part of it went into the state treasury under different titles (tax substitute capital, replacement of occupation costs).

Effects

It was not the abolition of the monasteries per se that was shocking for the Catholics (after the founding of the canton in 1803 several monasteries had already been secularized ), but the ruthlessness with which the cantonal government implemented this measure. The canton of Aargau had thus also violated the federal treaty of 1815, which guaranteed the continued existence of the monasteries. The abolition of the monastery also contributed significantly to the estrangement of the Freiamt from the canton. A considerable part of the rich cultural assets (especially the monastery treasure) of the monasteries, which could not be distributed to the parishes (because many refused to accept this in their eyes stolen property), were sold to traders all over the world .

The events also caused great displeasure in neighboring Catholic countries. Prince Metternich , the Austrian State Chancellor and guarantor of the order laid down at the Congress of Vienna , even had a plan drawn up for a military intervention. The fact that France wanted to avoid any conflict and that Austria had to deal with other problems also prevented military intervention.

On August 29, 1843, the Grand Council agreed to a compromise that the cantonal government had agreed to after lengthy negotiations. The four women's monasteries in Baden, Fahr, Gnadenthal and Hermetschwil were re-admitted, but the men's monasteries remained closed forever. The majority of the Diet declared the matter settled on August 31, 1843 by twelve votes. This originally purely Aargau conflict deepened the rifts between Catholics and Reformed throughout Switzerland even further. The tensions finally erupted in 1847 in the Sonderbund War , which subsequently led to the establishment of the modern Swiss federal state.

literature

• Christophe Seiler, Andreas Steigmeier: History of the Aargau - Illustrated overview from prehistoric times to the present . AT, Aarau 1991, ISBN 3-85502-410-3 .
• Nold Halder , Heinrich Staehelin, Willi Gautschi : History of the Canton of Aargau 1830–1885 . tape 2: 1830-1885 . Baden Verlag, Baden 1978, DNB  810599856 , OCLC 4931132 .
• Annina Sandmeier-Walt: The Aargauer Klosterstreit 1841 in pictorial representations (Murensia 3). Chronos Verlag, Zurich 2016, ISBN 978-3-0340-1359-8 ( digital edition ).

Web links

• Othmar Pfyl: Aargauer Klosterstreit. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland . September 22, 2000 .

Individual evidence

1. ^ The revision of the Swiss Federal Constitution. :  Deutsche Viertel-Jahrsschrift / Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift , year 1865, p. 264 (online at ANNO ).
2. ↑ Seiler, Steigmeier: History of the Aargau. P. 116.
3. ^ Staehelin: History of the Canton of Aargau 1830–1885. Pp. 89-91.
4. ^ Staehelin: History of the Canton of Aargau 1830–1885. Pp. 94-96.
5. ^ Staehelin: History of the Canton of Aargau 1830–1885. Pp. 97-98.
6. ↑ Seiler, Steigmeier: History of the Aargau. P. 118.
7. ^ Staehelin: History of the Canton of Aargau 1830–1885. P. 102.
8. ^ Staehelin: History of the Canton of Aargau 1830–1885. P. 103.
9. ↑ Swiss Confederation. In:  Oesterreichischer Beobachter , September 7, 1843, p. 987 (online at ANNO ).
10. ↑ abroad. In:  Illustrirte Zeitung , September 30, 1843, p. 8 (online at ANNO ).
11. ^ Staehelin: History of the Canton of Aargau 1830–1885. Pp. 107-108.
12. ↑ Swiss Confederation. In:  Oesterreichischer Beobachter , September 9, 1843, p. 996 (online at ANNO ).