Charles Naine

Photograph by Charles Naine, ca.1900

Charles Naine (born June 27, 1874 in Nods , † December 29, 1926 in Préverenges ) was a Swiss social democratic politician and publicist .

Life

Charles Naine trained as a youth in La Chaux-de-Fonds to be a watchmaker and worked there in a watch factory in 1893 and 1894 and as a mechanic in Fontainemelon from 1895 to 1897 . He also studied law in Neuchâtel and graduated with a licentiate in 1899 . In La Chaux-de-Fonds Naine worked from 1901 to 1910 as a lawyer and as editor and administrator of the socialist magazine La Sentinelle . Study visits to Berlin (1900), Naples (1900) and Paris (1900/1901) influenced his understanding of socialism through his contacts with August Bebel , Karl Liebknecht , Filippo Turati , Jean Jaurès and Charles Gide .

Together with his schoolmate Ernest-Paul Graber , Naine built the Social Democratic Party of French-speaking Switzerland and played an active role in numerous strikes and protests. Both openly professed pacifism , which in 1903 earned Naine a conviction for refusing to serve in the military. In 1914, Naine and Graber, as the only members of the National Council, abstained from voting on the transfer of powers to the Federal Council in order not to have to indirectly approve the military loans and national defense . He also took an active part in pacifist congresses during the war and took part in the Zimmerwald Conference in 1915. Out of his pacifist and idealistic attitude, Naine rejected any violence to achieve socialist goals and was therefore considered a moderate representative of radicalized social democracy after the state strike. Together with Graber, he actively fought the communists and left deviants around Jules Humbert-Droz within the SP.

For the Social Democrats, Naine was elected to the Grand Council of the Canton of Neuchâtel in 1905 , of which he was a member until 1910. After being politically active in Lausanne , he was elected to the Grand Council of the Canton of Vaud in 1917 and headed the newspaper Le Droit du Peuple from 1919–1924 (see also People's Law ). In the parliamentary elections in 1911 , the Neuchâtel voters elected him as the canton's first Social Democrat in the National Council , of which he was a member until his death. Naine was considered an extremely talented speaker and active socialist from the very beginning in French-speaking Switzerland .

literature

• Rudolf Martin Högger: Charles Naine 1874–1926. A political biography . Dissertation University of Zurich. Juris, Zurich 1966.

Web links

• Marc Perrenoud: Naine, Charles. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .