Giovanni Battista Quadri

Giovanni Battista Quadri (born January 19, 1777 in Lugano , † August 30, 1839 in Magliaso ) was a Swiss lawyer , military , politician and Ticino State Councilor and Landammann .

biography

Giovanni Battista Quadri was born the son of the officer in the service of the Empire Giuseppe Quadri of Magliaso and the noble Marianna Torriani. After the Collegio Elvetico in Milan , he studied law at the University of Pavia without completing his studies. He then became a lawyer (1797) and notary (1810) in Lugano. As a member of the patriotic-pro-cisalpine party, after the unrest in Lugano on February 15, 1798, he defended the main characters before the Swiss Grand Council. Later he was Peter Ochs' personal secretary and an official at the prefecture in Lugano. After the anti-French riots of April 1799, he fled abroad and served in the French army in Italy from 1800 to 1802 . As a battalion commander and adjutant of the French General Antoine de Béthencourt in the canton of Valais and in northern Italy , two made campaigns in northern Italy with and served under Joachim Murat in Tuscany , as well as under Jean-de-Dieu Soult in Naples .

On his return to Ticino, he was one of the promoters of the Pian Povrò assembly and was appointed President of the Provisional Government of the Canton of Lugano (1802) and Delegate of the Council of Paris (not admitted because not recognized by the Swiss authorities). He was then a member of the Ticino Grand Council from 1803 to 1834 (from 1830 he was arbitrarily prevented from attending the meetings) and of the Council of State (1803-1807, 1814-1830, six times Landamano reggente), government commissioner for the Lugano district (1807-1809, controversial resignation), justice of the peace and appeal judge. He was regional president and Landamano reggente several times : in 1816, 1820, 1822, 1825, 1827, 1828, six times a member of the parliament.

He often represented the canton of Ticino at foreign courts, especially in Piedmont and Austria , to conclude surrenders and trade agreements. 1815–1830 rendered the greatest service to his canton, giving him codes of law on criminal law, civil and criminal justice proceedings, reorganizing the courts, standardizing measures and weights and building various new roads.

He was the main representative of the so-called Regiment der Landammänner, which is characterized by the primacy of the executive over the legislature. Later the liberal political movement led to the constitutional reform of 1830 (La Riforma). In 1827 Quadri escaped various attacks. In 1830 he was charged with misusing and evading state funds, but acquitted three years later. As returned by owner in Magliaso, he was from 1833 to 1837 the magazine L'Indipendente out

literature

• Raffaello Ceschi: Il Cantone Ticino nella crisi del 1814. Bellinzona, 1968, pp. 58-60.
• Francesca Mariani Altobello: Giovanni Battista Quadri. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland . June 30, 2010 , accessed January 22, 2020 .
• Giuseppe Martinola : La missione di Giovanni Battista Quadri a Parigi. Istituto Editoriale Ticinese, Bellinzona 1954.
• Enrico Talamona: Il Landamano Giovanni Battista Quadri dei Vigotti. Tipografia Sanvito, Lugano 1928.
• Bollettino Storico della Svizzera Italiana, (1939), pp. 18-20; (1965), pp. 147-169; (1966), pp. 5-30; (1969), pp. 5-18; (1972), pp. 193-196; (1979), pp. 5-14.
• Antonio Gili (Ed.): Lugano dopo il 1798. L'ex-baliaggio tra 1798 e 1803. catalogo della mostra, Edizioni Città di Lugano 1999, pp. 213-235 (with genealogy).

Web links

• Giovanni Battista Quadri on portalestoria.net/.
• L'invenzione del Ticino (Italian) on lanostrastoria.ch/medias

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Celestino Trezzini : Giovanni Battista Quadri. Digitized In: Historical-Biographical Lexicon of Switzerland . Volume 5, Pictet - Resti, Attinger Verlag, Neuchâtel 1929, pp. 506, 507.