Ernst Brenner

Ernst Brenner (1907)

Ernst Brenner (born December 9, 1856 in Basel , † March 11, 1911 in Menton , entitled to live in Basel) was a Swiss politician ( FDP ) and lawyer . After he was elected to the Grand Council of the Canton of Basel-Stadt in 1881 , he was elected to the Basel cantonal government in 1884 . In addition, from 1887 he represented his canton in the National Council . In 1894/95 he was President of the National Council , from 1896 party president of the FDP. Brenner was a member of the Federal Council from 1897 until his death . As Minister of Justice, he played a decisive role in the introduction of the civil code .

biography

Studies, work and family

His father, the carpet dealer Heinrich August Brenner, came from a long-established Basel family; his mother Sophie Faesch died shortly after giving birth. Brenner attended high school in Basel . During this time he was a member of the Paedagogia Basiliensis student association . He then studied law at the universities of Basel , Munich and Leipzig . In Basel he was one of the founding members of the radical democratic student union Gold-Helvetia . By transferring on February 7, 1877, he participated as Renonce in the reconstitution of the Corps Alamannia Basel , but left after about six weeks to return to Helvetia.

After passing his doctorate, he worked from 1879 to 1884 in the law firm of his uncle Karl Johann Brenner . In addition, he was involved in various institutions. He was President of the Federal Singers' Association and Vice President of the Federal Gymnastics Club , without having been a singer or active gymnast himself. He was also a member of the Basel Reform Association. In later years he headed the saffron guild . In 1883 he married Lina Sturzenegger from Trogen , with whom he had two daughters and a son. His son of the same name was later a legation counselor in Vienna; August Brenner , one of his nephews, was a member of the Basel cantonal government from 1919 to 1935.

Cantonal and federal politics

Brenner's political career began in 1881. At that time, he was elected to the Grand Council of the Canton of Basel-Stadt as a candidate for the left-wing liberal radicals . As early as 1884, when he was only 27 years old, he was elected to the government council . In the following twelve years he headed the Department of Justice and in 1897 the Department of Education. As Justice Director, he carried out a fundamental reorganization of the Basel judicial system. In 1887/888 and 1894/95 he served as district president. In the parliamentary elections in 1887 , Brenner was also elected to the National Council . Soon he was a member of several important commissions (revision of the constituency law, budget and business report, election files review, petitions). In 1894/95 he was President of the National Council , from 1891 to 1897 he also served as a substitute for the Federal Supreme Court . In 1895 the Federal Council elected him to represent the state on the Central Railway's administrative board . From 1896 he was party president of the FDP , which had been founded two years earlier .

With Emil Frey's appointment as director of the International Telegraph Union (now the International Telecommunication Union ), there was a vacancy in the Federal Council. In the faction's internal preliminary decision, three candidates were available, each representing one wing of the party. As a representative of the center, Brenner clearly prevailed against the progressive St. Gallen Theodor Curti and the liberal-conservative Basel government councilor Paul Speiser . Brenner was the official candidate of his own faction, but Speiser seemed to have more support in the other factions. In the replacement election on March 25, 1897, Brenner only prevailed in the fourth ballot. He received 96 of 179 valid votes; 81 votes were received for Speiser and two votes for other people. Brenner was thus the first Federal Councilor from the Canton of Basel-Stadt. Although Johann Jakob Stehlin from Basel was elected in 1855 , he did not accept the election.

Federal Council

Brenner (left) as Federal President, caricature from 1901

During his 14-year tenure, Brenner was head of the Justice and Police Department . Exceptions were the years 1901 and 1908, when he was Federal President and temporarily took over as head of the Political Department . His most important achievement was the introduction of the unified civil code (ZGB). This was commissioned by Eduard Müller and was largely developed by Eugen Huber . On November 13, 1898, the people and the cantons approved the constitutional basis for the unification of the law; the first preliminary draft of the Civil Code was available at the end of 1900. The parliamentary deliberations dragged on until 1907, after a four-year transition phase the Civil Code finally came into force at the beginning of 1912.

Under Brenner's leadership, a new railway liability law was drafted - a project that he himself had suggested as a National Councilor in 1891 after the devastating railway accident in Münchenstein . Further legislative revisions concerned, among other things, patent law, the acquisition and loss of Swiss citizenship, and insurance. He also prepared the reorganization of the Federal Supreme Court, the creation of an administrative court and Switzerland's accession to the Hague Conventions . In 1909 the University of Basel awarded him an honorary doctorate . He also intended to work out a uniform penal code as quickly as possible ; However, this project was not to be realized until 1942.

In the winter of 1911, Brenner , who was diabetic and suffered from kidney problems, went to Menton on the Côte d'Azur for a cure that lasted several weeks . Shortly after a visit from his colleague Adolf Deucher , he suffered a severe stroke , which he finally succumbed to. He was buried in the Bremgarten cemetery in Bern .

literature

• Georg Kreis : Ernst Brenner . In: Urs Altermatt (Ed.): Das Bundesratslexikon . NZZ Libro , Zurich 2019, ISBN 978-3-03810-218-2 , p. 222-226 .

Web links

• Katharina Huber: Brenner, Ernst. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
• Publications by and about Ernst Brenner (1856–1911) in the Helveticat catalog of the Swiss National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} circle: The Federal Council Lexicon. P. 222.
2. ^ Peter Platzer: The Corps Alamannia Basel . In: then and now . Volume 59, 2014, p. 434
3. ^ Circle: The Federal Council Lexicon. P. 223.
4. ^ Circle: The Federal Council Lexicon. Pp. 223-224.
5. ^ Circle: The Federal Council Lexicon. Pp. 224-225.
6. ^ Circle: The Federal Council Lexicon. P. 225.
7. ^ Circle: The Federal Council Lexicon. P. 226.

predecessor	Office	successor
Emil Frey	Member of the Swiss Federal Council 1897–1911	Arthur Hoffmann