Gallus Jakob Baumgartner
Gallus Jakob Baumgartner (born October 16, 1797 in Altstätten ; † July 12, 1869 in St. Gallen ) was a leading liberal and later conservative Swiss politician during the regeneration and emergence of the modern federal state.
Live and act
After attending the Catholic canton school in St. Gallen, Baumgartner was promoted as a talented but penniless boy by the then governor of the canton of St. Gallen , Karl Müller-Friedberg . He studied law in Freiburg and Vienna and initially worked as a tutor in Vienna and Hungary. In November 1819 he was arrested by the Austrian authorities because he had belonged to a private company of young Swiss people in Vienna in 1817. After pre-trial detention until August 1820, he was expelled from Austria.
In 1823 Baumgartner began a civil servant career in the canton of St. Gallen with the protection of Müller-Friedberg as a state archivist and as a legation secretary at the Swiss Federal Diet . In 1825 he was elected to the Grand Council (cantonal parliament) by indirect election, of which he was a member until 1869. The Great Council elected him in 1826 as first state clerk and in 1827 as legation councilor, i. H. cantonal representative at the federal assembly.
After the beginning of the regeneration after the July Revolution in France in 1830, Baumgartner turned against his conservative mentor Müller-Friedberg and published the negotiations of the Grand Council and the state accounts. He also published numerous critical articles and pamphlets in which he took radical liberal positions and called for a revision of the cantonal constitution. After the people's assemblies in Wattwil and Altstätten in December 1830, the Grand Council gave in and had a constitutional council elected by the people. Baumgartner became its first secretary and contributed significantly to the drafting of the liberal canton constitution of 1831 and was elected to the cantonal government. In 1832 he replaced Müller-Friedberg as Landammann.
Baumgartner had a very strong political position in the canton of St. Gallen and thanks to his great journalistic influence as editor of the “Erzählers”, a newspaper that was very influential in German-speaking Switzerland at the time. The canton of St. Gallen was sometimes referred to as the “canton Baumgartner”. Baumgartner represented decidedly anti-clerical, anti-aristocratic and radical-liberal positions, which he put forward with eloquent speeches at party congresses and public assemblies. As a champion of the liberal renewal, he pushed ahead with the attempt at a federal revision in 1832/33 and is considered the architect of the Siebner Concordat and the Baden Articles, with which the seven regenerated cantons tried to protect each other from reaction. Baumgartner remained the undisputed leader of the liberal movement in Switzerland until 1841.
In the canton of St. Gallen, Baumgartner pushed ahead with the development of a modern road and rail network and worked with engineer Alois Negrelli to correct the Rhine.
In the late 1830s there was a certain alienation between Baumgartner and the liberal movement because of the increasingly radical church policies of the liberals. Baumgartner also took increasingly authoritarian positions against more far-reaching democratic reforms. With the escalation of the Aargau monastery dispute , there was a final break. Badly offended, he resigned from the St. Gallen government in 1841 and moved to the political camp of the conservatives.
In 1843 Baumgartner was able to return to the cantonal government and now rose to become one of the leading figures in the conservative movement in Switzerland. He represented the positions of the Sonderbund , which is why he resigned in 1847 and temporarily left Switzerland. In the spring of 1848, however, he returned and took his seat on the Cantonal Council again. He was now living rather poorly from journalism and board memberships. Politically, he fought for a conservative revision of the cantonal constitution.
In 1857 he started his third political career as a Councilor of the Canton of St. Gallen. Finally, in 1859, he was elected to the cantonal government for the third time and for a further five years, where he tried in vain as a constitutional councilor to implement a Catholic-conservative revision of the cantonal constitution. Until his death, Baumgartner worked on various historical works about the time of regeneration and restoration in Switzerland. His son Alexander Baumgartner joined the Jesuit order.
Works
- Swiss mirror: three years under the Federal Constitution of 1848 . Zurich 1851. ( digitized version )
- Switzerland in its struggles and transformations from 1830 to 1850 , vol. 1. Zurich 1853 ( digitized version ); Vol. 2. Zurich 1854 ( digitized version ); Vol. 3. Zurich 1865 ( digitized version ); Vol. 4 Zurich 1866 ( digitized version )
- History of the Swiss Free State and Canton of St. Gallen. With special reference to the creation, effectiveness and decline of the princely monastery of St. Gallen . Vol. 1. Zurich / Stuttgart 1868 ( digitized version ); Vol. 2. Zurich / Stuttgart 1868 ( digitized version )
Archives
- Estate in the library and archive of the Swiss Jesuits in Zurich , KBSG, StASG
Fonts
- Letters from Landammann Gallus Jakob Baumgartner at the time of the Sonderbund 1844–1848 . Fehr, St. Gallen, 1934.
literature
- Wilhelm Ehrenzeller: Gallus Jakob Baumgartner and the canton of St. Gallen in the first years of the regeneration period 1831–1833 . Fehr, St. Gallen 1933.
- Wilhelm Ehrenzeller: Gallus Jakob Baumgartner and the st. Gallic constitutional revision of 1830/1831 . Fehr, St. Gallen 1932.
- Georg Hanselmann: The church policy of Gallus Jakob Baumgartner of St. Gallen in the years 1830-1840 . Lang, Bern 1975.
- Ernst Kind: Baumgartner, Gallus Jakob. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 1, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1953, ISBN 3-428-00182-6 , p. 666 ( digitized version ).
- Hermann Wartmann: Baumgartner, Gallus Jakob . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 2, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1875, pp. 165-168.
Web links
- Silvio Bucher: Baumgartner, Gallus Jakob. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
- Publications by and about Gallus Jakob Baumgartner in the Helveticat catalog of the Swiss National Library
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Baumgartner, Gallus Jakob |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Swiss politician |
| DATE OF BIRTH | October 16, 1797 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Altstätten |
| DATE OF DEATH | July 12, 1869 |
| Place of death | St. Gallen |