Ernst Laur

Ernst Laur

Ernst Laur (born March 27, 1871 in Basel , † May 30, 1964 in Effingen ; legal resident in Basel) was a Swiss agronomist . He was director of the Swiss Farmers' Association for almost four decades .

Life

Laur came from Basel. His parents were Arnold Laur, Basel's hospital administrator, and Zélie Meyer. He grew up with five siblings in a strictly religious family and attended the Untergymnasium in Basel, which is said to have been four unpleasant years for him. He then spent a year in the French-speaking Switzerland and entered in 1886 on the recommendation of a friend of his father in the Agricultural School Strickhof in Zurich. There he obtained his diploma in 1888. After internships on farms (in France and at the Rheinau insane asylum ), he studied agronomy at what is now ETH Zurich from 1890 . At what was then the Polytechnic, he received his diploma as an engineer-agronomist in 1893, as one of only two Swiss of his year.

Laur returned to Basel for a short time, attended lectures at the University of Basel , gave lectures as a hiking teacher in the canton of Zurich and in autumn 1893 became administrator of the Paradies monastery near Schaffhausen . From autumn 1894 he taught at the agricultural school in Brugg . In 1895 Ernst Laur and Sophie Schaffner - daughter of the landlord Johann Jakob Schaffner - married, who owned the home law in Brugg and Effingen . Laur had four children. In 1896 he received his doctorate in Leipzig . His lively publication and lecture activities made him known nationwide, which helped him in 1898 when he was elected as the head of the newly created Swiss Farmers ' Secretariat and at the same time as managing director of the Swiss Farmers' Association , which he later became director. From 1901 he taught at the Eidgenössisches Polytechnikum as a private lecturer for agricultural policy, from 1908 to 1937 as a full professor for agriculture with a focus on business administration.

In 1939, a traffic accident forced Laur to resign from the board of directors of the SBV and from his professorship. From 1904 to 1945, as a delegate of the Federal Council for trade agreements, together with representatives from industry, he helped shape Swiss customs policy. From 1948 to 1950 he presided over the European Agricultural Union (Confédération Européenne de l'Agriculture).

He was buried with his wife at the Reformed Church in Bözen . The coats of arms of the respective hometowns of the couple are depicted on the back of the tombstone.

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  Gravestone: front.

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  Back of the gravestone:
  Coats of arms of Basel Stadt, Brugg and Effingen

Act

Through his triple function (at the same time association director, farmer secretary and professor), Laur was one of the most influential personalities in public life in Switzerland in the first decades of the 20th century. The farmer's secretariat, subsidized by the federal government, was expanded under him into a scientific department. Their statistical surveys supported the interest group of the farmers' association (SBV) and provided material for the official agricultural policy of Switzerland as well as the basis for Laur's business studies. As a professor at ETH, he trained the future agricultural science elite, who then worked in the farmers' secretariat or represented the agricultural lobby in the National Council . His professorship also strengthened Laur's reputation in the national and international professional world and with the authorities. Through the person of Laur, the SBV was connected to the traditional costume movement (STV, Schweizerische Trachtenvereinigung ) that arose in the twenties of the 20th century and wanted to introduce traditional women's costumes as clothing for women in rural areas. Laur's textbooks have been translated into numerous languages ​​and had multiple editions. In the states of Eastern and Central Europe that emerged after the First World War , Laur was regarded as a model and guarantor of the down-to-earth peasantry towards the large landowners.

Agricultural policy

Especially in his function as head of the umbrella association of agricultural organizations, Laur quickly acquired the reputation of the undisputed Swiss farmer's leader. When he succeeded in getting the farmers' organizations in the mood for a moderate protective tariff policy on the occasion of the conflict over the customs tariff in 1902, he turned the SBV into an economic and political power factor.

For the public, Laur was seen as an advocate of the national conservative peasantry, which played an important role during the Second World War in the context of intellectual national defense and the election plan . These views, which Laur, as a gifted speaker, represented with great eloquence, contrasted with his sober personal assessments that agriculture could only maintain its place in modern industrial society with a controlled structural change. The farms should be renewed according to economic criteria. In 1907, Laur's main work on agricultural management was published. In addition to modernizing farms, the state should take appropriate measures to protect agriculture against foreign competition. Laur's demand for the maintenance of a healthy farming class was laid down as a principle in the Agriculture Act in 1951, flanked by measures such as price guarantees, import restrictions, import bans, takeover obligations, tariff levies, export subsidies, consumption reductions and cultivation premiums. This agricultural legacy of Laur's legacy has had repercussions that continue to our time.

Without ever having exercised a parliamentary mandate, Laur had significant political influence. In particular, he was able to help shape customs policy as the Federal Council's delegate for trade agreements (1904–45). The First World War brought associations such as the SBV an increase in power. In the food supply they took on executive functions. Accordingly, the role Laur played in the war economy was an important one. While it was still the undisputed influence of Switzerland's agricultural policy in the first decades of the 20th century, its influence diminished from the beginning of the crisis in the 1930s. A new generation of agricultural scientists in the federal administration (including Friedrich Traugott Wahlen and Ernst Feisst , for example ) pushed back Laur's influence in part, as they were more oriented towards the national supply.

Laur was a proponent of Switzerland joining the League of Nations . In view of the narrow result of the vote on the bill in 1920 in some rural German-speaking cantons, many yes votes are likely to be due to Laur's influence. In his vision, Laur saw the “mighty goddess of peace ” move into Geneva and “carry the Swiss cross on a golden headband”.

estate

Bust of Ernst Laur (ETH)

Laur's estate, some of which is kept in the ETH Zurich archive, contains the extensive handwritten notes from Laur's lectures on farm management, his theses on the national and economic foundations of Switzerland, considerations on supplementary lessons in colonial studies and the expansion of the curriculum at the Agronomy department of the ETH. There are letters from Laur to his professor colleagues in various other estates. The school council archive, in which the business documents of the ETH management are kept, contains information about Laur's teaching and research activities.

Others

Laur's grandfather was the Swiss composer Ferdinand Samuel Laur .

Publications (selection)

• Agricultural business studies for rural conditions: textbook for teaching at agricultural schools and for the practical farmer. Emil Wirz, Aarau 1907, 335 pp.
• The military strength of the Swiss people and the peasant class: Written for the new Helvetic Society, Zurich Group (= writings for Swiss art and art. Vol. 8). Rascher, Zurich 1915, 21 pp.
• Industry and Agriculture: Lecture given in the New Helvetic Society, Zurich Group (= Fonts for Swiss Art and Art. Vol. 6). Rascher, Zurich 1915, 27 pp.
• Peasant policy. Emil Wirz, Aarau 1919, 156 pp.
• Switzerland and the League of Nations. A guide for the Swiss people. Effingerhof, Brugg 1919, 16 pp.
• An example of practical help from mountain farmers: The Swiss Heimatwerk . Benteli, Bern 1934.
• Memories of a Swiss farmer's guide: A contribution to Swiss economic history, dedicated to the Swiss farmers' association. Book publisher Verbandsdruckerei, Bern 1942, 340 pp.

literature

• Anton Czettler:  Laur, Ernst. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 13, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1982, ISBN 3-428-00194-X , pp. 718-720 ( digitized version ).
• Werner Baumann: Farmers and Citizens 'Block: Ernst Laur and the Swiss Farmers' Association 1897–1918. Orell Füssli, Zurich 1993, ISBN 3-280-02306-8 .
• Hartmut Brandt: From Thaer to Tschajanow: Economics of labor-intensive farming. Wissenschaftsverlag Vauk, Kiel 1994, ISBN 3-8175-0083-1 .
• Werner Baumann, Peter Moser: Farmers in the Industrial State: Agricultural Policy Concepts and Peasant Movements in Switzerland 1918–1968. Orell Füssli, Zurich 1999, ISBN 3-280-02812-4 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Ernst Laur in the catalog of the German National Library
• Newspaper article about Ernst Laur in the press kit of the 20th century of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .
• Werner Baumann: Laur, Ernst. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
• Urs Paul Engeler : The dance around the calf: The farmer as picture book Swiss - a fiction , NZZ Folio , 9/1994
• Ernst Laur (1871–1964): On the 40th anniversary of Ernst Laur's death (March 27, 1871 to May 30, 1964), agricultural politician and professor of agronomy , ETH Library
• Ernst Laur in the archive database of the Swiss Federal Archives
• Werner Baumann: Ernst Laur at the Basel History Association

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Ernst Laur (1871–1964): On the 40th anniversary of the death of Ernst Laur (March 27, 1871 to May 30, 1964), agricultural politician and professor of agronomy ( Memento of the original from June 11, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link became automatic used and not yet tested. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , ETH Library, accessed on November 6, 2011.  
2. ↑ Carlo Moos: The League of Nations discussion as a paradigm for UN membership: Synthesis report ( NRP 42 Synthesis. Vol. 22). Schweizerischer Nationalfonds, Bern 2000, ISBN 3-907148-11-8 ( PDF; 283 kB  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice . ) P. 7.