Giuseppe Lepori

Giuseppe Lepori

Giuseppe Lepori (born June 2, 1902 in Massagno , † September 6, 1968 in Seravezza , from Oggio, municipality of Capriasca ) was a Swiss politician , Ticino State Councilor ( CVP ).

He was elected to the Federal Council on December 16, 1954 . On December 31, 1959, he handed over his post after he had announced his resignation on November 24. During his tenure, he was in charge of the Postal and Railway Department.

He was Vice President of the Federal Council in 1959.

origin

Giuseppe Lepori was born in 1902 as the second youngest of seven children in the municipality of Massagno, the son of Giovanni, a merchant, councilor in Vezia , and Chiara Fumasoli. His father ran a grocery store in Massagno and served in the community executive and as a justice of the peace. Lepori studied law at the University of Freiburg and graduated in 1925 with a licentiate. He spent the following winter in Munich to deepen his knowledge of the German language . 1926–1928 he worked as an editor on the Italian-language daily newspaper Giornale del Popolo . In 1927 Lepori was elected to the Grand Council of the Canton of Ticino, in 1940 he moved to the Council of State (executive).

Election to the Federal Council

In the election on December 16, 1954, three seats were to be filled. Karl Kobelt (FDP), Rodolphe Rubattel (FDP) and Josef Escher (CVP) left the Federal Council at the end of the year. Escher's seat for the CVP (then the Catholic Conservative Party of Switzerland ) was undisputed, so Thomas Holenstein was chosen as his successor. Paul Chaudet (FDP) was elected to succeed Rubattel . In electing Karl Kobelt's successor, the Social Democrats supported the Catholic-Conservative candidate, Giuseppe Lepori. In doing so, they followed a confidential agreement with the Catholic Conservatives, who in return promised the Social Democrats two seats in the next vacancy for the liberals to establish the magic formula . The FDP wanted to keep its seat and ported Alfred Schaller from Basel . Lepori was then elected in the second ballot with 128 of 232 valid votes.

Activity as Federal Councilor

Lepori took over the postal and railway department . In this function, his main focus was on the new mass medium of television . He managed to get parliament to approve the first transitional funding for the construction of the infrastructure. He countered the skeptics of the new technology that state television would be of central interest for Switzerland for “intellectual, political and economic self-assertion”.

In addition, he was responsible for the new railway law , which was passed by parliament on December 20, 1957.

Resignation and other activities

In the summer of 1959, Lepori suffered a stroke . His condition improved again afterwards, but on November 24 he submitted his resignation and announced that he would not be re-elected. In 1960 he would have become Federal President on a rotating basis .

After his resignation from the Federal Council, Lepori taught public law at the University of Freiburg for several years. In addition, as president of a legal commission, he worked out the draft for a new Ticino cantonal constitution, which was then adopted by the people on October 29, 1967.

He also led the negotiations between the Federal Council and the Holy See for the establishment of the new diocese of Lugano .

Works

• Questo Ticino. Esplorazioni nel tempo e nello spazio. Benjamin Laederer, Ginevra 1963.

literature

• Urs Altermatt (ed.): The Swiss Federal Councilors, a biographical lexicon. , Artemis Verlag Zurich and Munich, 1991, ISBN 3-7608-0702-X
• Emilio Foletti: I Lepori di Oggio a Massagno. In. Risveglio , nn. 7/8, 1986, pp. 229-232.
• Alberto Lepori: Giuseppe Lepori. In: Alberto Lepori, Fabrizio Panzera (ed.): Uomini nostri. Trenta biography di uomini politici. Armando Dadò Editore, Locarno 1989, pp. 21, 111-115.
• Alberto Lepori (ed.), Giuseppe Lepori (1902-1968). Scritti e discorsi. Biography e ritratti. , Armando Dadò Editore, Locarno 1978.
• Fabrizio Panzera: Giuseppe Lepori. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland . November 22, 2006 , accessed January 22, 2020 .; the same: Giuseppe Lepori in Consiglio Federale. In: Rivista di Lugano November 12, 1999, pp. 10-11.
• Giuseppe Lepori in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely accessible)
• Scuola media di Tesserete (ed.): Memorie di Giovanni Lepori, capriaschese. Fontana Edizioni, Pregassona 2009.
• Luciano Vaccaro, Giuseppe Chiesi, Fabrizio Panzera: Terre del Ticino. Diocesi di Lugano. Editrice La Scuola, Brescia 2003, pp. 171, 190n, 345, 352, 354, 377n.
• Various authors: Scritti di Giuseppe Lepori. Armando Dadò Editore, Locarno 1978.

Web links

Commons : Giuseppe Lepori  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Giuseppe Lepori Federal Councilor on admin.ch/gov/de/start/bundesrat/
• Giuseppe Lepori Federal Councilor on parlament.ch/de/biografie/

predecessor	Office	successor
Karl Kobelt	Member of the Swiss Federal Council 1954 - 1959	Hans-Peter Tschudi