Alexis-Marie Piaget

Alexis-Marie Piaget (1848)

Alexis-Marie Piaget (born July 18, 1802 in Lyon , † July 1, 1870 in Neuchâtel ) was a Swiss politician . He was one of the driving forces behind the anti- Prussian revolution of 1848 in the canton of Neuchâtel and headed the provisional transitional government. He then served as a State Councilor until 1869 and had a decisive influence on the Neuchâtel legislation. From 1854 to 1869 he was a member of the National Council.

biography

Piaget was the son of a merchant from Les Bayards who was often in France on business . He spent his childhood in Lyon. He studied at the university there and also in Paris . In 1821 he graduated from the baccalaureate in humanities and in 1824 in law. He broke off a legal internship in Lyon in 1828 and then worked as a printer and lithographer . In the same year he took over the management of a lithographic studio in Paris, in 1830 he was directly involved in the July Revolution . Piaget left France in 1835 and returned to his closer home. He settled in La Chaux-de-Fonds , where he worked as a lawyer and was involved in liberal circles.

In 1847 Piaget was elected to the Corps législatif , the parliament of the Prussian canton of Neuchâtel. After the republican militias led by Fritz Courvoisier and Ami Girard occupied Neuchâtel Castle on March 1, 1848 and deposed the governor Ernst von Pfuel's government , Piaget took over the chairmanship of the ten-member provisional interim government. Three weeks later, the people elected him to the Constitutional Council , which almost exclusively consisted of Republicans. Piaget is considered to be the main author of the liberal Neuchâtel cantonal constitution of 1848, which placed the state on a completely new basis.

Also in 1848, after the constitution was passed by the people, the moderate radical Piaget was elected to the Grand Council and the Council of State . He presided over the cantonal government until 1860 and again in 1863 and 1869. During this time, he headed the Department of Justice and later the Department of Foreign Affairs. Piaget ran successfully in the National Council elections in 1854 , and was re-elected four times in a row. He survived the royalist coup attempt in 1856 ( Neuchâtel trade ) and in 1857 he was involved in the conclusion of the Paris Treaty , with which the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm IV finally waived all claims in the canton of Neuchâtel. Piaget was represented in the Grand Council until 1858, and in 1869 he resigned as State Councilor and National Councilor.

Piaget developed extensive legislative activity. Between 1848 and 1850 he wrote the laws on mortgage lending and in 1851/52 those on the secularization of civil status and the reorganization of the judiciary. He was also involved in the drafting of the penal code in 1855. The civil code that he edited between 1853 and 1855 was the first official and written standardization of private law in Neuchâtel . It remained in force until 1912 when it was replaced by the Swiss Civil Code .

literature

• Pierre-Yves Chatelain: Biographies Neuchâteloises . tape 2 . Editions Gilles Attinger, Hauterive 1998, ISBN 978-2-88256-099-5 , p. 259-262 .

Web links

• Isabelle Jeannin-Jaquet: Piaget, Alexis-Marie. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .