Beat Fidel Zurlauben

Beat Fidel Zurlauben († 1799): Last male descendant of the Zurlauben

Beat Fidel Anton Johann Dominik Zurlauben (born August 3, 1720 in Zug ; † March 13, 1799 ibid) was the last male descendant of the Zurlauben family . He was born as the first child of Captain Beat Ludwig Zurlauben (1692-1730) and Maria Anna Burz von Seethal from Zug in Switzerland .

• Activities:
  • Military: 1748 Brigadier, 1762 Maréchal de camp , 1780 Lieutenant General in French service,
  • Politics: Conseiller et Interprète du roi en langue germanique (1752), Zuger Grossrat.
  • Academies and societies: Knights of Lazarus (1761), commander of the Order of St. Louis (1780), member of the Paris Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (1749) as well as the academies of Besançon (1786) and Mannheim (1788) and the Accademia Etrusca , the Société militaire, the Helvetic Society and the Natural Research Society Zurich (1762), court lord of Hembrunn, Anglikon and Nesselnbach (1770), Hereditary Marshal von Muri (1777).
• Family: On November 26, 1754, he married Maria Barbara Helena Elisabeth Kolin. The marriage produced five children: Beat Jakob Johann (1755–1756), Maria Anna Elisabeth (1757–1829), Fidel Anton (* † 1760), Jakob Bernhard (1761–1767), Josepha Agatha (1765–1828), Rudolf Beat (1750–1776; officer in the French service).

As a general of the Swiss Guard, he devoted his life to the service of the French crown. He took part in the campaigns of the War of the Austrian Succession , recruited new mercenaries for the French king and devoted himself to the craft of war with great passion.

But behind the general Beat Fidel there was always a hardworking and tireless scholar. At the Paris Collège des Quatre Nations with Charles Rollin, Beat Fidel learned the craft of historian, which became more and more popular in the course of his life. His most important works include the Histoire militaire des Suisses au Service de la France or the anonymous Tableaux topographiques, pittoresques, physiques, historiques, moraux, politiques, littéraires de la Suisse. He was one of the most important employees of Martin Gerbert and his Germania Sacra .

Beat Fidel Zurlauben's efforts to get into political offices in addition to his military and scientific career were unsuccessful. For years Beat Fidel tried in vain to get the lucrative office of pension distributor in the city and office of Zug and to join the council. The political power of the once influential Zurlauben family in Zug had finally collapsed after the fall of their last political representative Fidel Zurlauben (1675–1731) in 1729.

After his death, Beat Fidel left behind an immense written legacy consisting of a good 50,000 manuscripts and 10,000 printed works and which, from 1803, formed the basis of the newly founded Aargau Cantonal Library in Aarau . A significant part of his estate is now the subject of the Zurlaubiana edition project .

literature

• Ursula Pia Jauch: Beat Fidel Zurlauben. Mercenary general & book lover, 1720–1799. Zurich 1999.
• Kurt-Werner Meier: The Zurlaubiana. Ownership analyzes. A Zug family collection. The foundation of the Aargau Cantonal Library. Aarau 1981.
• Daniel Schläppi: "The ambassadors will know how to behave in everything else". Actors in federal foreign policy in the 17th century: structures, goals and strategies using the example of the Zurlauben von Zug family . Bern 1998.
• Urs Amacher, Kurt-Werner Meier, Josef Schenker, Rainer Stöckli (arrangement): Collection Zurlauben. Regesta and registers for Acta Helvetica . Aarau 1976ff.
• Edgar Schwer:  Zurlauben, Beat Fidel. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 28, Bautz, Nordhausen 2007, ISBN 978-3-88309-413-7 , Sp. 1597-1600.

Web links

• Zurlaubiana
• Images and texts from Tableaux topographiques, pittoresques ... de la Suisse by Jean-Benjamin de Laborde and Beat-Fidel von Zurlauben can be found on the VIATIMAGES portal .
• Urs Amacher: Zurlauben, Beat Fidel Anton. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .