Hans-Rudolf Merz

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Hans-Rudolf Merz (2010)

Hans-Rudolf Merz (born November 10, 1942 in Herisau ; resident in Beinwil am See ) is a Swiss politician ( FDP ). From 2003 to 2010 he was Federal Councilor and Head of the Federal Department of Finance (FDF). During 2009 he was President of the Federal Republic .

education

After Merz attended the Trogen Cantonal School , he studied economics at the University of St. Gallen (HSG), worked there as an assistant and received his doctorate in 1971 .

job

From 1977 to 2003 he worked as an independent management consultant in Europe, North and South America, South Africa and the Arab world. At the same time he was a member of the board of directors of several Swiss companies. As a consultant, he mainly dealt with the recruitment and development of top management as well as with corporate development. His professional involvement with the apartheid regime in South Africa, such as being on the board of directors of the Herisau company Huber + Suhner, which supplied gas masks to the government in the Cape, or advising Stephan Schmidheiny's asbestos company Everit, he commented in 2002 with “who often and often abroad works, knows that as a businessman you have to hold back in political matters and concentrate on your professional tasks. ”Further statements on the apartheid regime cost him the promising candidacy for the FDP presidium in the same year. The results of a National Fund study on the processing of relations between Switzerland and South Africa were not commented on by the Federal Council, in which Merz and Christoph Blocher and the founder of the apartheid-friendly working group southern Africa sat, despite the parliamentary pressure across the parties .

In 1992 Merz was elected to the board of directors of Ausserrhodener Kantonalbank , which at that time was already in trouble. The following year he was elected Chairman of the Board of Directors. In his first annual report, he drafted a paper on the “vision of a regional universal bank”, a small bank that offers all banking services. In 1994, the cantonal bank was partially privatized by converting it into a stock corporation, in which the canton of Appenzell Ausserrhoden retained the majority. The population of the canton had to vote on the partial privatization, as it was the canton's legislature as a rural municipality . On December 22, 1995, the Ausserrhodener Kantonalbank was bought by the Swiss Bank Corporation (today's UBS ).

Offices and political functions

Secretary of the FDP Canton of St. Gallen

Merz was politically active early on. Shortly after the Warsaw Pact Army put down the Prague democracy movements in August 1968, he helped an artist friend of mine to flee from Prague to Switzerland in a rental car . After completing his studies, Hans-Rudolf Merz worked from 1969 to 1974 as secretary of the Free Democratic Party of the Canton of St. Gallen . He also worked as managing director of the Appenzell Ausserrhoden industrial association. He later chaired the interim residents' council of Herisau and managed the operation of the Herisau sports center.

Council of States of the Canton of Appenzell Ausserrhoden

After a long time without political activity, Merz ran for the seat of the Council of States of the canton of Appenzell Ausserrhoden. The official candidate of the FDP was Landammann Hans Höhener. Merz, however, was supported by the Swiss People's Party . On April 27, 1997, Merz emerged victorious in the last rural community in the canton of Appenzell Ausserrhoden. He presided over the Finance Commission in the Council of States and was a member of the Foreign Policy and Security Policy Commission. He was also a member of the OSCE delegation.

Missed FDP presidency

In 2002, Merz entered the race for party presidium as a representative of the freedom of law. The public reaction to the statements "There were also many people who saw apartheid under the aspect of education and not of race" in the Tages-Anzeiger and "For me, apartheid was not an issue at the time" in the SonntagsBlick prompted Merz, who was considered the crown favorite however, withdraw his candidacy.

Federal Council

Federal Councilor Hans-Rudolf Merz during the parade for his federal presidential election in Herisau

After the parliamentary elections on October 19, 2003, the general election of the Federal Council followed on December 10, 2003 . One seat had to be reassigned because Kaspar Villiger had resigned. The FDP's claim to the successor was undisputed, so Christine Beerli and Hans-Rudolf Merz were nominated as Villiger's successors. The Swiss Green Party recommended Christine Beerli for election. The other groups left the choice between the two candidates open. Merz was elected in the second ballot with 127 to 96 votes. This and the fact that Ruth Metzler was voted out of office a few hours earlier led to criticism of the unequal treatment of women.

In the 2007 Federal Council elections on December 12, 2007, Merz was confirmed for a further term with the best result of all candidates. He received 213 of 233 valid votes in the Federal Assembly . On December 13, 2007, Hans-Rudolf Merz was elected Vice President of the Federal Council for 2008 with 193 of 211 valid votes.

On December 10, 2008, the United Federal Assembly elected Hans-Rudolf Merz as Federal President for 2009 with 185 out of 209 valid votes in the 2008 Federal Council election . The election ceremony took place in Herisau.

On August 6, 2010, Hans-Rudolf Merz announced his resignation from the Federal Council in Bern, whose date he specified on September 28, 2010 to October 28, 2010. His seat was taken over on November 1, 2010 by Johann Schneider-Ammann (FDP), who was newly elected to the Federal Council in the replacement election on September 22, 2010, and Eveline, the head of the Federal Police and Justice Department, took over the post of head of the Federal Department of Finance after an official rogue Widmer Smurf .

Family and personal

Hans-Rudolf Merz was married to the artist Roswitha Merz-Schüller. She fell ill with Alzheimer's disease in 2010 and died in March 2016. He lives in Herisau and has three grown sons with his late wife.

He speaks German, French, Spanish, English, Italian and Russian.

On the evening of September 20, 2008, Merz suffered cardiovascular arrest and was taken to Herisau Hospital, where he was reanimated and then transferred to the St. Gallen Cantonal Hospital . That same evening, Thierry Carrel placed five bypasses in Bern's Inselspital . After his recovery and a cure, Merz took over the Federal Department of Finance again on November 3, 2008. It wasn't until 2016 that Merz said in an interview: “In my opinion, the cardiac arrest came from a momentary overload due to the UBS rescue. On the day it happened, I learned that the Swiss National Bank and, in the worst case, the federal government would have to provide guarantees for 60 billion francs ”.

Trivia

Merz received special attention from a speech in the National Council on September 20, 2010 a few weeks before his end of office, during which he had a laughing fit. Specifically, it was about a statement on a request from the National Council member Jean-Pierre Grin-Hofmann . He wanted to know whether a certain exception in the customs tariff was formulated clearly enough to prevent abuse. In particular, it was about reduced tariffs for imported meat with added spices. The answer to this request was not formulated by Federal Councilor Merz himself, but by an employee of the finance department and was written in pronounced official German , with long, interlaced sentences and a number of abbreviations. The speech created general amusement in the hall.

Publications

  • Financial and administrative assets from a public and economic perspective, with special consideration of the state accounts of the cantons. St. Gallen 1971 ( dissertation )
  • Up to the national league. 40 years of SC Herisau. Schläpfer, Herisau 1982
  • The Extraordinary Leader: Essay on Elativity and Elative Personality. Rüegger, Grüsch 1987, ISBN 3-7253-0297-9
  • The Landammann and other stories from the Appenzell region. Schläpfer, Herisau 1992, ISBN 3-85882-072-5

literature

Web links

Commons : Hans-Rudolf Merz  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Blocher and Merz: Two old friends of South Africa's work, November 11, 2005
  2. ^ Provide comprehensive information on contacts with apartheid. Tages-Anzeiger , December 7, 2005
  3. ^ The finance minister's little banking secrecy: Why Hans-Rudolf Merz would like to keep his Appenzell banking business secret , WOZ , December 4, 2008
  4. ^ Federal Councilor Merz as a refugee , NZZ Online , August 18, 2009.
  5. ^ The career of Hans-Rudolf Merz to listen to , DRS1
  6. ^ The Schmidheinys (part 2): Profits without a conscience , balance sheet , April 30, 2003
  7. ↑ Elected to the Federal Council as a lateral entrant at the age of 61 - A portrait of Federal Councilor Hans-Rudolf Merz , NZZ , September 21, 2008
  8. ↑ Hans-Rudolf Merz is Federal President for 2009 , NZZ , December 10, 2008
  9. ^ Resignation of Federal Councilor Hans-Rudolf Merz on October , The Federal Authorities of the Swiss Confederation ( admin.ch ), 6 August 2010
  10. ↑ The handover at the head of the FDF will take place on October 28 ( memento of January 3, 2014 in the Internet Archive ), The Federal Authorities of the Swiss Confederation ( admin.ch ), September 28, 2010
  11. ↑ Former Federal Councilor Hans-Rudolf Merz: "That simply knocked me out" In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung of August 3, 2016
  12. ↑ Katharina Fontana: Former Federal Councilor Hans-Rudolf Merz: "That simply knocked me away" . In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . ISSN  0376-6829 ( nzz.ch [accessed on August 4, 2016]).
  13. ↑ One man and two lives: Hans-Rudolf Merz - Federal President of the Year 2009 , NZZ , December 30, 2008
  14. ↑ Merz out of mortal danger , TA , September 21, 2008
  15. ^ Federal Councilor Hans-Rudolf Merz back in office , Swiss Federal Chancellery , November 3, 2008
  16. ↑ Katharina Fontana: Former Federal Councilor Hans-Rudolf Merz: "That simply knocked me away" . In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . August 3, 2016, ISSN  0376-6829 ( nzz.ch [accessed on August 3, 2017]).
  17. ↑ https://www.parlament.ch/de/ratsbetrieb/amtliches-bulletin/amtliches-bulletin-die-verhandlungen?SubjectId=18161 | Minutes of the National Council meeting of September 20, 2010
predecessor Office successor
Kaspar Villiger Member of the Swiss Federal Council
2004–2010 		Johann Schneider-Ammann
personal data
SURNAME Merz, Hans-Rudolf
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss politician (FDP)
DATE OF BIRTH November 10, 1942
PLACE OF BIRTH Herisau