Hans Fassler

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Hans Fässler, 2017

Hans Fässler (born February 27, 1954 in St. Gallen ) is a Swiss historian , politician ( SP ), cabaret artist , political activist and English teacher. He is involved in political institutions as well as grassroots movements and writes articles for various newspapers, magazines and other publication organs.

biography

Hans Fässler was born in St. Gallen in 1954 and grew up in the Lachen district in the west of the city. His family came from the Glarnerland on his mother 's side and from the Appenzellerland on his father's side . He attended the Feldli primary school and the Schönau secondary school and then entered the cantonal school at Burggraben in 1969 , from which he graduated in 1973 with the Matura B. This was followed by studying English , general and British-American history at the University of Zurich , interrupted by a one-year language stay in Penarth ( South Wales ), and graduating with a licentiate and a secondary school teacher diploma . As a substitute and teacher for English and general subjects, Hans Fässler taught introductory, secondary and cantonal school classes as well as at the vocational and women's technical school in St. Gallen (vocational preparation year, adult courses).

1992–2018 he taught English at the Trogen Cantonal School . He is the father of two grown sons and is married for the second time. His leisure activities included volleyball (1st league with STV St.Gallen) and mountaineering (including the first ascent of the direct west face of the Öhrli in the Alpstein region).

historian

Jeannot Hilaire (historian and representative of Haiti at the UN in Geneva) and Hans Fässler in Trogen, 2003

Research on the political cabaret program “ Louverture dies 1803” for the 200th anniversary of the canton of St. Gallen (2003) led Hans Fässler to study the history of Haiti , slavery and Swiss involvement in it. This resulted in his book Reise in Schwarz-Weiss in 2005 . Swiss on-site appointments on slavery , translated into French in 2007 and published by Duboiris in Paris.

Since then, Hans Fässler has been campaigning for the topics of slavery, (post) colonial history , reparation and racism as a journalist and speaker . He tries to bring historical research results into current political debates and vice versa. For example, in connection with the debate about Switzerland as a colonial society without colonies, which began at the end of the 1990s, he initiated numerous political advances at federal, cantonal and municipal level. Political trips took him to Haiti ( Port-au-Prince ) in 2003 , to France in 2007 and 2008 (Atlantic and triangular trade ports La Rochelle , Nantes , Bordeaux ), in 2005 and 2008 to Senegal ( Dakar and Djilor), and in 2013 to French -Guayana ( Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni ) and 2019 to Antigua and Barbuda .

Since 2007 he has been working with the "Transatlantic Committee Démonter Louis Agassiz", which he founded, to reassess the Swiss glaciologist and natural scientist Louis Agassiz (1807–1873), including in the Swiss Alpine Club SAC, which Agassiz had made an honorary member in 1865. In doing so, he works closely with the Swiss-Haitian-Finnish artist Sasha Huber and the Friborg Romanist Hans Barth, who, among other things, carried out a revision of the Louis Agassiz entry in the Swiss Historical Lexicon . In 2012 the exhibition “Glacier Researcher, Racist: Louis Agassiz (1807–2012)”, conceived and researched together with the typographic designer Hannah Traber and Hans Barth, was shown for the first time in the Heimatmuseum in Grindelwald . The renaming of 'Espace Louis Agassiz' to 'Espace Tilo Frey ', which was decided by the City and University of Neuchâtel in September 2018 and carried out on June 6, 2019, goes back to the efforts of Fässler and Barth .

Since spring 2019, Hans Fässler has been offering city ​​tours in St. Gallen “In the footsteps of racism” and “Of 'race struggle' and class struggle”. In November 2019 he founded the "Swiss Committee on Reparations for Slavery" (SCORES), which consists of around 100 personalities from and in Switzerland who advocate reparation for slavery (including through Switzerland). In December 2019, he was able to publicly announce this foundation for the first time in a lecture at a UN conference in Geneva.

Politician

During his cantonal school days, Hans Fässler was active in a right-wing student group around Konrad Hummler , Adrian Rüesch and Valentin Landmann . In 1978 he joined a start-up of the "Young Socialists St.Gallen" (under JUSO ) into the Social Democratic Party of the city and 1979 in the union of the civil service VPOD one. From 1980 he was fiched by the intelligence service of the canton police ; Fichen also existed at the Federal Prosecutor's Office and the military security service. In 1984 he was elected to the Grand Council of the Canton of St. Gallen, of which he was a member until 1994.

From 1986 to 1993 Hans Fässler was party and parliamentary group secretary of the SP in the canton of St. Gallen. In 1986 a case against him for violating military secrets was dropped due to parliamentary immunity. He was acquitted in 1989 by the St. Gallen District Court of the charge of contravention of Art. 292 StGB in the context of an anti-apartheid bank piquette at the Rösslitor (UBS). 1990 led to a conviction (buses) for breach of the peace and assault at a sit-down protest against the parade ground Neuchlen-Anschwilen. Hans Fässler worked on the preamble to the St. Gallen cantonal constitution of 2001 as part of the working group conference. From 2005 to 2009 he was president of the teachers' union of the Trogen Cantonal School and member of the negotiating delegation of the Ausserrhoder Association Conference.

Outside the institutional framework, Hans Fässler was active in various political contexts: He was a co-initiator of the popular initiative “For a Switzerland without an army” and the municipal popular initiative “For a city without a car”. As a founding member of the "Gerechtigkeit für Paul Grüninger " association, he helped rehabilitate the St. Gallen refugee rescuer in the 1990s, which ultimately led to the establishment of the Paul Grüninger Foundation in 1998 . With the St. Gallen anti- apartheid movement in 2009, he pushed through the renaming of Krügerstrasse in St. Gallen's Vonwil district, which was reminiscent of the apartheid pioneer Paul “Ohm” Krüger . Today it is named after the Swiss author Friedrich Dürrenmatt .

Cabaret artist and singer

Hans Fässler in the rally for World Day of Peace of the United Nations in St. Gallen, 2014

In the 1970s, Hans Fässler performed as a guitarist, lyricist and singer with various folk groups ( Troubadix , Zupfgyge ) in small theaters, folk clubs and at festivals ( Lenzburg , Gurten ). In 1980 the first political one-man cabaret program "CCCP - Chalte Chrieg Cabaret program" followed. At the invitation of the clown Richard Hirzel ( “Pic”) , the play “Hinterm Böhmerwald” appeared on Swiss television (“Schauplatz” on January 9, 1987).

In 1986 the cabaret program "Speed ​​- Fascism - Autobahn " triggered a minor theater scandal on the occasion of the opening of the St. Gallen city motorway in the run-up to its performance in the studio stage of the city theater. In 1991, the premiere of “Not Quite a Hundred - Comments on the Army 95 ” followed at the cultural and educational event “Summer Universality” on Neuchlen-Anschwilen. In the years that followed, this program was performed more than fifty times throughout German-speaking Switzerland. “Old and new numbers for old and new friends / inn / en” was the name of the full-length program in 2000/2001. The political-historical cabaret program « Louverture dies 1803» then saw over 30 performances in 2003/2004. In addition to larger programs, Hans Fässler repeatedly performed with "utility cabaret" at rallies, congresses, meetings and general meetings. For a year he wrote the weekly column "Das Wort zum Freitag" under the pseudonym "Leo N. Hart" in the AZ of Eastern Switzerland . Fässler also wrote political poems, speeches, polemics and glosses and wrote texts for the Altstätter cabaret ensemble “Die Schimpfoniker”.

Since 2010 he has been traveling alone with guitar and vocals and sometimes accompanied by Werner Meier (violin), Jürg Surber (bass) and Jens Weber (tenor) in order to maintain the political songs under the title and motto “Despite all this” ( workers' songs , Revolutionary songs , protest songs , resistance songs ).

After a long break from cabaret (since “Louverture dies 1803”), Fässler returned to the audience on June 24, 2020 with a new full-length program. He read from his book “Not without my carbon shoe. A Toggenburg Passion », which puts the ski jumper Simon Ammann in the context of top-class sport, sponsoring , language change and culture in Toggenburg .

Publications (selection)

Books

Monographs
  • Non-economic functions of the market and marketplace in St. Gallen. In: St. Galler Kultur und Geschichte , Vol. 11, State and Stiftsarchiv St. Gallen (Ed.). St. Gallen 1981.
  • Behind the Bohemian Forest. Political songs and lyrics. Z&Z Verlag (self-published), St. Gallen 1983.
  • Travel in black and white. Swiss on-site meetings on slavery (foreword by Joseph Philippe Antonio, Haitian Foreign Minister 2001–2004). Rotpunktverlag , Zurich 2005, ISBN 978-3-85869303-7 .
  • Une Suisse esclavagiste. Voyage in un pays au-dessus de tout soupçon. (With a preface by Doudou Diène ). Duboiris, Paris 2007, ISBN 978-2-916872-04-9 .
Contributions
  • War preparations. A shorter satire with ten longer documents. In: Roman Brodmann , Andreas Gross , Marc Spescha (eds.): On the way to a Switzerland without an army. Z-VERLAG, Basel 1986, pp. 158–166.
  • Translations of two essays by the sociologist of religion Robert N. Bellah from American into German: Civil Religion in America and Religion and The Legitimation of the American Republic . In: Heinz Kleger, Alois Müller (ed.): Religion of the citizen. Civil religion in America and Europe. Kaiser Verlag, Munich 1986, pp. 19–63.
  • Democratic disobedience. A beginner's experience. In: Andreas Gross, Marc Spescha (ed.): Democratic disobedience for peace. On the right to resistance in Swiss democracy after the GSoA vote of November 26, 1989. Realotopia Verlag, Zurich 1990, pp. 85–90.
  • Lively restlessness / applause / cheerfulness . In: 80 Years of General Strike 1918–1998. Cantonal Trade Union Federation St. Gallen (Ed.) Sabon Verlag, St. Gallen 1998, ISBN 3-907928-19-9 , introduction and p. 7/8.
  • What's in a name? Louis Agassiz, his mountain and the politics of remembrance. In: Sasha Huber (Ed.): Rentyhorn. Kiasma, Helsinki 2010, ISBN 978-951-53-3267-7 , pp. 8-21.
  • Helmet off! Soldiers! Think! In: 1914–1918 / 19. Eastern Switzerland and the Great War. 154th New Year's Gazette of the Historical Association of the Canton of St. Gallen (ed.), Toggenburger Verlag, Wattwil 2014, ISSN 0257-6198, pp. 1–2.
  • Un colonel suisse au combat against les marrons au Suriname. In: Jean Moomou (ed.): Sociétés marronnes des Amériques. Mémoires, patrimoines, identités et histoire du XVIIe au XXe siècles. Ibis Rouge Editions, Matoury, Guyana, 2015, ISBN 978-2-84450-451-7 , pp. 61-67.

Magazines

Newspapers

literature

Web links

Commons : Hans Fässler  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Homepage «Louverture dies 1803»
  2. ↑ Patricia Purtschert, Barbara Lüthi, Francesca Falk (eds.): Postcolonial Switzerland - Forms and Consequences of Colonialism without Colonies. ( Memento of the original from November 12, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / patriciapurtschert.files.wordpress.com
  3. ^ Directory of parliamentary initiatives
  4. ↑ Celia Luterbacher: Swiss Alpine Club stirs debate over history's racist scientists. Swissinfo , September 29, 2017.
  5. ^ Heinz Balmer: Agassiz, Louis. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
  6. ^ Dani di Falco: Brown snow. In: Die Zeit , June 28, 2012.
  7. ↑ Place in Neuchâtel named after women's rights activist instead of racist. On: Swissinfo , June 6, 2019.
  8. ↑ Offers for city tours
  9. ↑ Material on the website of the Canton of SG
  10. ↑ SCORES name list
  11. ↑ English text of the presentation before the UN conference
  12. ↑ Hans Fässler: From spy chaffeur to PUK member. How Ernst Rüesch drove young informers to the scene. In: Jakob Tanner , Jürg Frischknecht, Paul Rechsteiner : Sniffing State of Switzerland. A hundred years are enough ( memento of the original dated November 13, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / buchundnetz.com archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . Limmat Verlag , Zurich 1990, pp. 79–84.
  13. ^ Speech by Hans Fässler on the occasion of the celebration of the renaming of Krügerstrasse on June 8, 2009 .
  14. ↑ Two songs on: Im Röseligarte - Swiss folk songs . Zytglogge Verlag , ISBN 978-3-7296-0755-2 .
  15. ^ Hermann Bauer: Considerable and Critical ... The ninety minutes of silence with Hans Fässler in the studio stage of the city theater. In: Die Ostschweiz , June 25, 1987.
  16. ↑ Homepage of the cabaret «Louverture dies 1803»
  17. ↑ Article by Ralf Streule in the St.Galler Tagblatt dated June 27, 2020
personal data
SURNAME Fassler, Hans
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss historian, politician (SP), cabaret artist, political activist and English teacher
DATE OF BIRTH February 27, 1954
PLACE OF BIRTH St. Gallen