Hans Bachmann (journalist)

Hans Bachmann (born July 17, 1902 in Dagmersellen ; † March 30, 1982 in Lucerne ; resident in Winikon and Lucerne) was a Swiss journalist , lawyer and politician ( FDP ). From 1959 to 1967 he was editor-in-chief of the liberal daily Luzerner Tagblatt .

Life

Bachmann grew up in a rural and agricultural milieu. With his origins as a «cheese boy from the country», he was an exception in the bourgeois Lucerne press.

Bachmann studied law in Geneva , Heidelberg and Bern and in 1928 at the University of Bern with a dissertation ff The mistake under Article 23. Of the Swiss Code of Obligations doctorate . He then worked as a lawyer in Lucerne from 1928 to 1940 . He was also a part-time judge at the Lucerne Criminal Court from 1932 to 1937 . From 1940 to 1954 he was a full-time judge at the Higher Court of the Canton of Lucerne .

In 1934 the Lucerne Liberals advocated the porting of Bachmann, who was already a substitute judge, for the seat at the federal court that had become vacant due to the death of César von Arx . The project immediately arose sharp criticism with reference to the violent temperament of Bachmann, who had previously only been noticed by his militant opposition to the Catholic conservatives in Lucerne. The parliamentary group of the Federal Assembly renounced its porting.

From 1941 he was a member of the management of the Free Democratic Party of Switzerland and President of the Liberal Press Association.

During the Second World War , from 1943 to 1945, Bachmann was press chief of the press control censorship office of Territorial Command 8 in Lucerne, succeeding Siegfried Frey, who was elected director of the Swiss Dispatch Agency (sda).

Bachmann was elected to the central board of the Swiss Newspaper Publishers Association (today: Association of Swiss Media ) in 1949 , member of the executive committee in 1953 and president of the association in 1955. As such, he was particularly committed to advertising-free television in Switzerland. After his resignation in 1960, he was made an honorary member. He was also a member of the board of directors of the Fédération internationale des éditeurs de journaux (FIEJ; today WAN-IFRA ) and from 1961 to 1979 auditor of the sda. He was also a member of the Keller & Co. AG welfare fund from 1949 to 1973, a member of the Liberal Cooperative of Lucerne until 1970, a member of the Foundation of the Swiss Newspaper Publishers Association to Safeguard the Swiss Press in 1970 and a member of the Board of Trustees of the Liberales Heim Luzern Foundation in 1977.

Luzerner Tagblatt

The general downturn in business during the 1930s and the Second World War brought the Luzerner Tagblatt publishing company , Buchdruckerei Keller & Co. AG (from 1965: Keller & Co. AG, printing and publishing house) into major difficulties. In 1939, a capital cut had to be made, in which the share capital was written down to 50% and increased with the help of a liberal cooperative. After the restructuring had been carried out, Chief Justice Bachmann was elected to the Board of Directors as an advisor on questions of financial reconstruction and a year later he was elected Chairman of the Board.

In 1943 Bachmann left the post as chief judge and joined the Lucerne daily newspaper as a domestic editor . The renovation of 1939 was ruined by the poor business performance in the war years and had to be repeated on a larger scale in 1945 with a capital cut to as much as 20% of the share capital this time. Bachmann won his previous client, the Lucerne cider maker Jakob Ottiger, as an investor to take over the majority of the shares, while he himself sold his house and put the proceeds into the company. Ottiger was elected Chairman of the Board of Directors and Bachmann was elected Director as the successor to Otto Sidler, who had moved to the Neue Zürcher Zeitung . Bachmann also remained a member of the Board of Directors and the editorial team.

In 1959, after Ottiger's death, Bachmann again took over the chairmanship of the board of directors and in the same year, after Fritz Keller's resignation, he also took over the post of editor-in-chief, thus ensuring truly “patriarchal leadership”. In 1960 he gave up the office of director, successor was Hans Rudolf Kunz. Bachmann's dominant personality shaped the image and content of the newspaper during the sixties; a revitalization and the desired expansion of the newspaper did not succeed because of the insufficient financial resources of the publisher. In 1966 he gave up the office of Chairman of the Board of Directors and was appointed Delegate of the Board of Directors. His successor as President was Vice President Alfred Ackermann , who had taken over the majority of Ottiger's shares shortly before his death.

In 1967 Bachmann resigned as editor-in-chief when he reached retirement age, but remained a member of the board of directors until 1974. In 1971, after the death of Hans Rudolf Kunz, he took over the management again on an interim basis until mid-1972 (successor was Hans Rudolf Schneebeli, from 1976, nominal 1977 Walter Iten), and in 1978 he was re-elected as a member of the Board of Directors without signature. The head of Landis & Gyr , National Councilor Andreas Brunner , had meanwhile taken over the majority of the shares in trust for five years, but sold it on to the advertisement broker Publicitas in 1974 .

At the end of the seventies, when Publicitas wanted to part with the majority of the shares, the newspaper faced the abyss again, and it threatened the takeover by Zollikofer AG in St. Gallen and the conversion to a head page of the St. Galler Tagblatt . Bachmann, together with Hermann Heller, a member of the executive editorial committee, succeeded in preventing this by, as the president of an action committee, succeeded in bringing popular shares to free-spirited citizens for 1.4 million francs, thereby triggering the majority of shares in Publicitas in 1978.

In 1991 the Luzerner Tagblatt merged with the Catholic fatherland to form the Luzerner Zeitung and in 1996 this merged with the Luzerner Neusten Nachrichten to form the Neue Luzerner Zeitung (since 2016 the Luzerner Zeitung ).

Publications

• The error according to Article 23 ff. Of the Swiss Code of Obligations (= treatises on Swiss law. New series. Issue 31). Stämpfli, Bern 1928 (also Diss. Univ. Bern).

Private

Bachmann was married to Julia nee König. He died as a result of an accident.

literature

• Konrad Suter: Press History of the Canton of Lucerne from 1945 to 1970 (= Urs Altermatt (Ed.): Religion - Politics - Society in Switzerland. Vol. 16). Universitätsverlag Freiburg / Paulusdruckerei, Freiburg 1996, ISBN 3-7278-1088-2 (also Lic . Univ. Freiburg)
• Max Huber: History of the political press in the canton of Lucerne 1914–1945 (= Lucerne Historical Publications. Vol. 25). Rex, Luzern / Stuttgart 1989, ISBN 3-7252-0529-9 (also Diss. Univ. Zurich).
• Hermann Jäger: Confident new start at the Luzerner Tagblatt. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . July 18, 1978, p. 20.
• Liberal press. Two resignations. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . August 8, 1967, morning edition, sheet 2.
• Change and inventory - 190 years of Keller & Co. AG. Festschrift. Lucerne 1988.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Suter: Press History of the Canton of Lucerne from 1945 to 1970. 1996, p. 96.
2. ↑ L'Association suisse des éditeurs de journaux adopte une résolution sur la publicité. In: Journal de Genève . July 4, 1955, p. 2.
3. ^ Liberal press. Two resignations. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . August 8, 1967, morning edition, sheet 2.
4. ↑ Une candidature combattue. In: Gazette de Lausanne . February 26, 1934.
5. ↑ Short messages. In: Die Tat 1 May 1944, p. 3.
6. ↑ Rolf Siegrist: † Dr. Hans Bachmann. In: Luzerner Tagblatt. March 31, 1980, p. 10.
7. ^ "Société d'encouragement à une télévision non publicitaire" constituée par les éditeurs de journaux. In: Gazette de Lausanne . July 15, 1957, p. 5.
8. ↑ Huber: History of the political press in the canton of Lucerne 1914–1945. 1989, p. 80.
9. ↑ To the outgoing editor-in-chief. In: Luzerner Tagblatt. July 31, 1967, p. 3.
10. ↑ Markus Lischer: Jakob Ottiger. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
11. ^ Suter: Press History of the Canton of Lucerne from 1945 to 1970. 1996, p. 98.
12. ↑ Bills of exchange and inventory. 1988, p. 98.
13. ^ Suter: Press History of the Canton of Lucerne from 1945 to 1970. 1996, p. 102 f.
14. ↑ Bills of exchange and inventory. 1988, p. 69 ff.