Hans Konrad Sonderegger

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Hans Konrad Sonderegger (born October 10, 1891 in Heiden ; † September 3, 1944 in Scuol ) was a Swiss theologian , lawyer , editor , member of the National Council , Council of States and leading representative of free economics .

Life

His father Wilhelm Sonderegger -Rhyner (1862-1904) was a teacher and Councilor , his younger brother René Sonderegger worked as a journalist and politician.

After primary school in Heiden, Hans Konrad Sonderegger attended the canton school in the Konvikt von Trogen from 1907 to 1911 . From 1911 to 1916 he studied Protestant theology at the universities of Basel , Bern and Marburg . After completing his studies, he was a Protestant pastor in the Romanesque parishes of Lavin and Guarda for four years . Sonderegger learned Romansh very quickly. To preserve this language, he helped found the first Ladin newspaper Gazetta Ladina in 1917 , in which he regularly published Romance articles. In 1918 he married Maria Clavuot from Lavin; they had four children. In the Lower Engadine , Werner Zimmermann introduced him to Silvio Gesell's free economics apprenticeship . From 1920 to 1923 Sonderegger studied law in Zurich and Bern and obtained the Dr. iur. and the bar exam. The family moved to Teufen in 1924 , where Sonderegger worked as a lawyer, and in 1927 to Heiden, where he ran a law firm.

Since meeting Werner Zimmermann, he has been involved in the free economy movement. He also spread these ideas as an employee of the Säntis , the Swiss observer and as a co-editor of the Baselland Landschäftler . In 1931 he joined the Swiss Free Trade Union and soon became its leading representative. In 1936 he founded his own newspaper, The Democrat , in order to be able to spread his educational concerns in a kind of adult education center.

As a politician, Sonderegger was a member of the Appenzell Ausserrhoden Higher Court (1929–1932), President of the Supervisory Authority for Debt Collection and Bankruptcy, Cantonal Council (from 1933), Council of States (1934–1935) and City Council in Heiden. From 1939 to 1943 he represented the canton of Basel-Landschaft in the National Council. In Bern he was the victim of a mud fight on the part of the liberal , after which he resigned from all offices in 1943. His rehabilitation took place a year after his death.

Create

Sonderegger was often ahead of his time and for this reason, too, his concerns and work were not always understood: A few years before the start of the Second World War, he drew attention to the constant danger of instrumentalizing the Red Cross for the wars of Christian states and recalled the goals Henry Dunants, who recognized his calling in Solferino to overcome the war completely. The Red Cross was only intended to be the practical beginning of the general elimination of the war. Like Gesell - in contrast to Karl Marx - he saw the roots of social injustice and war not in private ownership of the means of production, but in the income from land and capital that had been legitimized since the French Revolution. These two "great troublemakers" should be eliminated through a reform of money and land law.

“My life is in my essays, my tireless struggle. (...) my work goes beyond economics. It is an expression of a comprehensive, free-economic approach to life, free from all narrowness and pettiness, free especially from any consideration for my personal life. I follow Gesell, whose deepest essence is not understood at all by most (not even by the free economists themselves). It is ridiculous to reproach me for preaching the glorification of the brower's ego; others have done that, whose philosophical education was exhausted in Stirner and Mackay . That a straight line from Plato's harmonious personality to Kant's autonomy of will - which concept most do not understand - and his categorical imperative leads to Proudhon and Gesell, who both wanted to create the economic preconditions for the free personality and thus the community, that is, the free economist a person is of a very specific mental attitude and this attitude also determines the position on the small questions of life: not even all members of the BV have understood this. (...) I am not just an economic reformer and enlightener, but a free economist in the spiritual sense, i.e. an opponent of every petty official spirit. (...) I always take the same spiritual standpoint: order, but no paralysis, use of all forces, but no scheme, let the living act and watch what emerges from it. Because you are there again and again and can see to the right if something is wrong with it. "

Publications

  • The criminal treatment of women. A contribution to the exploitation of the psychology of the sexes through criminal law . Speaker, Eggerling & Co., Chur 1924 (= Diss.iur., Bern 1924)
  • The rescue of Austria. The Wörgler example (with Hans Burgstaller). Upwards, Wörgl 1933
  • The speech by Council of States Dr. Sonderegger and the answer to the speech by Federal Councilor Dr. Meyer on the free money system and the gold standard . Pestalozzi Fellenberg House, Bern 1934
  • What is money Pestalozzi Fellenberg House, Bern 1934
  • Economy and mind . Lecture on May 23, 1933 in Zurich, in: Der Demokratie , No. 108–118 / 1938
  • We'll stay the old ones ...! Cantonal self-help or increasing crisis? Report on the negotiations of the Cantonal Council of Appenzell a. Rh.Pestalozzi-Fellenberg-Haus, Bern 1939
  • Legacy and Commitment. Essays on current affairs . Curia, Chur 1969
  • From the coming peace. The economic and legal foundations of international peace . Wirz, Aarau 1994, ISBN 3-85983-042-2 (first print of the text written in 1942)

literature

  • The Sonderegger von Heiden brothers . In: Appenzellische Jahrbücher 143 (2016), pages 12-100. With contributions by Yves Demuth, Heidi Eisenhut, Hanspeter Spörri and Christof Wamister. Web access via e-periodica.ch.
  • Hans Konrad Sonderegger (son): HKS - Hans Konrad Sonderegger. The fighter for freedom, justice and human dignity . Häberli: Hombrechtikon 1991.
  • Hans Amann: Wilhelm Sonderegger - the right hand of Henry Dunant . Heiden: Henry Dunant Museum 1999.

Web links

Proof of quotation

  1. ↑ Quoted from: HKS - The Fighter for Freedom, Law and Human Dignity , 1991, p. 167/168
personal data
SURNAME Sonderegger, Hans Konrad
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss pastor, lawyer and free economist
DATE OF BIRTH October 10, 1891
PLACE OF BIRTH Heiden AR
DATE OF DEATH September 3, 1944
Place of death Scuol