Godwalt Niederer

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Godwalt Niederer

Gottwalt Niederer (born December 19, 1837 in Urnäsch ; † December 15, 1899 in Herisau ; entitled to live in Speicher ) was a Swiss journalist . From July 23, 1877 to September 15, 1878 he was interim editor-in-chief of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung .

Life

Niederer was born as the first child of a schoolmaster family of fourteen, runner-up (messenger) Johann Ulrich Niederer (1811-1892) from Urnäsch. After secondary school , which he attended in Herisau, he would have liked to study, but the modest financial situation of his parents did not allow this. Instead, the publisher of the Appenzeller Zeitung , Michael Schläpfer, took him for board and lodging as a typesetter - apprentice in his print shop. The extremely intensive activity of Niederer made it possible to shorten the apprenticeship period, but also led to health problems, and on the advice of his doctor, Niederer went abroad from 1858 to change the air. Initially, he worked in various places in German-speaking Switzerland . a. in Bern and Basel , then he moved to Germany and worked a. a. in Leipzig and Berlin . After three eventful years of wandering , he moved on to Denmark , Sweden and Russia , where he found work at the Journal de St-Pétersbourg and his partner and married in 1862. Homesick, Niederer returned home to Trogen in 1863 , where he took up the position of lawyer .

Niederer's father acquired the Neue Appenzeller Zeitung in Herisau in 1864 for his sons Gottwalt and Benoni (1845–1880), who were trained as typesetters and printers . At the turn of the year 1865/1866, the brothers opened a printing press in the Taube inn in Teufen under the name of their father . From 1866 onwards they printed the annual accounts of the municipality and published the Neue Appenzeller Zeitung from April 1866 .

Neue Zürcher Zeitung and poor statistics

Gottwalt Niederer, however, soon withdrew and in 1866 became clerk of the court in Herisau. The modest salary was not enough to maintain the family, however, and he also worked as a correspondent for the Appenzeller Zeitung , the Bund and, from 1866, also the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ). Their editor-in-chief, Eugen Escher , offered Niederer in 1871 to report on the negotiations in the Council of States and then also in the National Council during the next Federal Assembly . Niederer did his job so well that from then on, until the appointment of the Bern correspondent Rudolf Salzmann in 1874, he was permanent reporter for the NZZ on the sessions in Bern. Niederer then took over reporting on the Zurich Cantonal Council meetings .

After 1871 a larger work on the Swiss and European arms being in the Sunday newspaper of the League had published, he became in 1872 the Federal Council instructed to draw up a comprehensive statistics on the arms being of all cantons and the corresponding services and assets of all 3,034 municipalities, including the voluntary poor relief . The work took on such proportions , also because of some uncooperative state chancelleries , that Niederer had to give up the position of higher court clerk. On the other hand, at the end of 1875 he was invited by the NZZ to work on the editorial team, giving him enough time to continue working on the statistics on the poor. Had after a commission of experts examined the finished work and very well located, the 406 pages was published in 1878 in the publishing house Orell Füssli strong, on behalf of the Swiss Statistical Society published book The Poor Relief Swiss arms legislation and statistical representation of official and voluntary poor relief , the about the Was taken into account beyond the borders of Switzerland and served as the basis for its own legislation in other countries.

When Eugen Huber replaced Hans Weber as editor-in-chief at the beginning of 1876 , Niederer took over the “Confederation and Cantons” section from him. With his technical and administrative background, he also became Huber's right-hand man in operational and administrative issues that were a burden for Huber. In mid-1877, Huber resigned unexpectedly after only one year of managing the editorial team because of differences with the Free Party . The good work Niederer had done so far and the name he had gotten himself mainly with his poor statistics, moved the board of directors of the NZZ (the "committee") in September 1877 to appoint him as Huber's interim successor due to the lack of other candidates, initially with a contract up to At the end of 1877 and after Huber could not find a definitive successor, it was extended until mid-1878.

As the chief editor in charge, he redesigned the editorial section and expanded it to include local, regional and economic issues. For the New Year of 1878 he introduced an expanded commercial section with its own editorial team, “Commerce and Transport”, and created more space for it with a larger format. He also introduced numerous technical innovations, in particular with regard to the telegraph connections. In terms of economic policy, unlike Huber, he supported a Manchester-liberal course and pleaded against the factory law, which in his view would lead to excessive further demands of the working class. He also ensured that he could contractually obligate the university's constitutional law teacher, Gustav Vogt , to deliver editorials. Writing such essays was not his thing.

The reforms had the desired impact, increasing subscriber numbers and improving the newspaper's financial position. Niederer also received praise for his commitment, together with Gustav Vogt, for the hard-fought Gotthard Railway . Niederer therefore expected that his provisional arrangement as editor-in-chief would be converted into a permanent position, even when the provisional arrangement continued in mid-1878. In reality, however, the committee was already negotiating with Gustav Vogt about taking over the position of editor-in-chief at that time. Vogt had already been asked about Weber and Huber's resignations, but at that time preferred the office of university rector . The corresponding term of office had now expired and Vogt agreed.

Dismissal and withdrawal

Niederer had a few supporters in the committee, but others saw the "Setter" in this post as out of place, and in particular Committee President Conrad Escher was his opponent after Niederer stood against his candidacy in the government elections of 1878. The unsuspecting Niederer learned from the Winterthurer Nachrichten on July 17, 1878 , that he would soon be replaced as editor-in-chief by Gustav Vogt, which happened on September 15, 1878. The Niederer, outraged by the action, was fired at the request of Gustav Vogt at the end of 1878. Then he turned down all offers for further loose cooperation and withdrew with his family to Trogen in resentment. There he opened a post office and moved to Herisau in 1890, where he took over an agency for Mobiliar Insurance and became editor of the Appenzeller Zeitung . In 1893 he was elected to the criminal court and the municipal court in Trogen, where he was court president from 1896 . From 1894 until his death he was also a debt enforcement officer .

The affair boiled up again for a moment when the board of directors also dismissed the foreign editor August Gredig at the beginning of 1880 and Niederer commented on his negative experiences with the committee and Gustav Vogt and their attempts to influence them in the Züricher Post , the newspaper of the democrats. The committee rejected this in the NZZ and claimed - according to the historian Leo Weisz "unjustly and superfluously" - that it had dismissed Niederer for inadequate performance. On the other hand, Niederer protested indignantly and pointed to the praise he had received during his work and the economic success he had achieved, in complete contrast to the situation since Vogt's leadership. But he doesn't want to have anything more to do with these people. That was the end of the matter.

The historian and political scientist Erich Gruner described the period from 1872 to 1885 of the four NZZ editors-in-chief Hans Weber , Eugen Huber , Gottwalt Niederer and Gustav Vogt as "an outright stormy year for the NZZ" and as one "filled with human smallness, ill will, envy, and narrow-mindedness History "in an atmosphere full of hatred and base instincts." Leo Weisz presented (in his book Die Neue Zürcher Zeitung on the way to the liberal location 1872–1885 ) “the central figure Gustav Vogt in all his brutality, vendor and wind vane”.

Not for profit society

In the fall of 1876 Niederer was elected to the permanent central commission of the Swiss non-profit society. In the autumn of 1877, the Central Commission had to collect the gifts for the fire victims in Airolo and Marchissy , the determination of the damage, the classification of the fire victims and the distribution of the received funds of around 400,000 francs, an elaborate job that Niederer managed practically alone . He was then active in the central commission until 1881 and headed the company's cooking school commission until 1893, when it was merged with the education commission.

death

Niederer died of a stroke shortly before his 62nd birthday. All of Herisau accompanied him to the grave; in Zurich he was forgotten.

Publications

  • About the relationship between civil and territorial poor relief. Presentation to the Appenzell non-profit society, presented at its annual meeting on June 9, 1873. J. Herzog, Zurich 1873
  • The poor system of Swiss poor law and statistical representation of official and voluntary poor relief. Edited on behalf of the Swiss Statistical Society. Orell Füssli, Zurich 1878 (French Statistique du paupérisme en Suisse pendant l'année 1870 ).

literature

  • Thomas Maissen : 225 years of the “Neue Zürcher Zeitung”. The history of the NZZ, 1780–2005. Verlag Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Zurich 2005, ISBN 3-03823-134-7 .
  • Leo Weisz : The Neue Zürcher Zeitung on the way to the liberal location 1872–1885. Verlag Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Zurich 1966, p. 169 ff. (= Personality and Newspaper. Vol. III; limited preview in the Google book search).

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Rudolf Vierhaus (ed.): German Biographical Encyclopedia. Vol. 7, Menghin – Pötel. 2nd, revised and expanded edition. Saur, Munich 2007, p. 453 ( limited preview in the Google book search).
  2. ^ Weisz: The Neue Zürcher Zeitung on the way to the liberal location 1872–1885. 2005, p. 171 f.
  3. ↑ Thomas Fuchs: From the "Freimüthigen Appenzeller" to the "Säntis". In: Tüüfner Poscht. No. 2, March 2010.
  4. ^ Weisz: The Neue Zürcher Zeitung on the way to the liberal location 1872–1885. 2005, pp. 173-176.
  5. ^ Maissen: 225 years of the "Neue Zürcher Zeitung". 2005, p. 53.
  6. ^ Maissen: 225 years of the "Neue Zürcher Zeitung". 2005, p. 54.
  7. ↑ Markus Bürgi: Escher, Conrad. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
  8. ^ Weisz: The Neue Zürcher Zeitung on the way to the liberal location 1872–1885. 2005, p. 207 f.
  9. ↑ Erich Gruner: Literature on social and party history. In: Swiss History Journal. 16. Vol., H. 4, 1966, p. 559 f. (Archived at E-Periodica of ETH Zurich ; PDF; 14.51 MB).
  10. ^ Weisz: The Neue Zürcher Zeitung on the way to the liberal location 1872–1885. 2005, pp. 175, 209.
  11. ^ Weisz: The Neue Zürcher Zeitung on the way to the liberal location 1872–1885. 2005, p. 207.
personal data
SURNAME Niederer, Gottwalt
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss journalist
DATE OF BIRTH December 19, 1837
PLACE OF BIRTH Urnaesch
DATE OF DEATH December 15, 1899
Place of death Herisau