Carl Stucki

Carl (actually Karl ) Theodor Stucki , also Charles Stucki, (born April 24, 1889 in Gaiserwald ; † February 8, 1963 in Bern ) was a Swiss diplomat who worked in the Federal Political Department (now the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs ) and in Austria , Greece and Korea worked. In his younger years he worked as a Germanist .

The attribute "small", with which his name was given by contemporaries ("the little Stucki"), served to distinguish it from his colleague Walter Stucki ("the big Stucki").

Youth and education

Stucki was born in the Fürstenland of St. Gallen , but from his father's side was a citizen of the Bernese municipality of Otterbach near Oberdiessbach (today part of Linden ). After attending grammar school in St. Gallen , he studied German philology at the universities of Munich , Berlin and - from 1911 - Zurich . His doctorate took place under Albert Bachmann with a thesis on the highest Alemannic dialect of Jaun in the canton of Friborg (partial print 1916, complete print 1917).

Act

As a Germanist

In 1914, Stucki succeeded Wilhelm Wigets as editor at the Schweizerischer Idiotikon , where his doctoral supervisor was editor-in-chief. During the First World War , Stucki was only able to work for the dictionary to a limited extent due to active military service on the one hand and reduced subsidies on the other, and in 1919 he resigned from the editorial office because the executive committee of the Idiotikon could not meet its wage demands.

Although no longer professionally working as a Germanist, Stucki then wrote a Swiss-German grammar on behalf of Orell-Füssli-Verlag , which was intended to make it easier for French- and Italian-speaking Swiss and foreigners in German-speaking Switzerland to understand and learn the Alemannic dialect. This publication, conceived synchronously and in contrast to the written German language, was the first of its kind. It would take about twenty more years before Arthur Baur wrote his Practical Language Teaching of Swiss German , which was essentially followed by numerous other dialect textbooks only after the turn of the millennium. and around thirty years, until Albert Weber's Zurich German Grammar, the first comprehensive dialect grammar , appeared, which would prove to be groundbreaking for other Swiss German dialect grammars .

In the diplomatic service

In 1919 Stucki found a new job in what was then the Federal Political Department, the Swiss Foreign Ministry. First he worked - as a trained Germanist - in the press department of the department. In 1925/6 he was the Swiss Legation Secretary in Vienna . In 1928 he became chief of protocol and head of the consular service. In 1929 he was promoted to second and in 1933 to first section head. From 1942 he worked as deputy head of the Department for Foreign Affairs and as head of the political section.

From 1946 until his retirement in 1954, Stucki was the Swiss envoy with the title of "Minister" in Athens . In 1955 he was called back from retirement and worked for half a year in South Korea as interim head of the neutral monitoring commission for observance of the armistice ( Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission ) after the Korean War .

In 1959 Stucki was commissioned to compile a confidential collection of documents on the history of international relations in Switzerland; the focus was on the United States in the 20th century.

family

Stucki married Clotilde (called Colette) de Weck, an employee in the Federal Political Department and daughter of a Freiburg chief bailiff (governor) and later armory inspector Maurice de Weck.

German publications

• Place and field names of St. Gallen and the surrounding area. In: The city of St. Gallen and its surroundings. A local lore. Edited by the municipal teaching staff. Fehr, St. Gallen 1916, pp. 265-314.
• The dialect of Jaun in the canton of Friborg. Phonology and Inflection. Diss. Univ. Zurich. Huber, Frauenfeld 1917 (contributions to Swiss German grammar X).
• Epilogue in: Swiss German Proverbs. Rascher, Zurich 1918.
• Article in the Schweizerisches Idiotikon, Volume VIII (completed 1920).
• Swiss German. Outline of a grammar with theory of sounds and forms. Orell Füssli, Zurich 1921.

Literature and web links

• Marc Perrenoud: Stucki, Carl Theodor. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
• Carl Stucki in the database Dodis the Diplomatic Documents of Switzerland .
• Carl Stucki in the Munzinger archive .
• Annual reports 1914–1919 of the Swiss Idiotikon.
• Matriculation edition of the University of Zurich.

proof

1. ↑ Schweizerisches Idiotikon: Swiss German teaching material.