Heinrich Escher (politician, 1626)

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Mayor Heinrich Escher

Heinrich Escher (born July 26, 1626 in Zurich ; † April 20, 1710 ibid) was a Swiss businessman, diplomat and mayor of Zurich.

Life

Heinrich Escher comes from the Zurich family Escher vom Glas . His parents were Cleophea Künzli, the daughter of the mayor Heinrich Künzli of Winterthur, and Hans Conrad Escher, a wealthy merchant, mayor at the city court and councilor. Escher attended the Latin school in Zurich from 1633 to 1640 , then the boarding school of Montauban until around 1642 . He then worked for a year and a half as an intern in trading houses in Lyon and Toulouse and joined his father's textile business in Zurich as a trained businessman . Around 1645 he married Regula Werdmüller (* 1625; † 1698), the daughter of the iron merchant Hans Jakob Werdmüller, at that time one of the richest citizens of the city of Zurich.

Heinrich Escher made chocolate famous in Switzerland after tasting drinking chocolate on a visit to Brussels in 1697 .

Political career

In 1652, at the beginning of his political career, Heinrich Escher became a representative of the " Zunft zur Meisen" in the Great Council (Zwölfer) and from 1663 to 1668 in the Small Council. In 1669 he was elected Vogt von Kyburg , in 1676 councilor of free choice, before he was mayor of the «Natalrat» from 1678 until his death (from Natale Domini , December 25th, serving half of the council).

In 1662 Escher took part in the establishment of the Commercial Directorate, a chamber of commerce that existed until the 19th century . As a representative of the merchants, he was, together with Mayor Johann Heinrich Waser, a member of the Zurich delegation for the renewal of Zurich's pay alliance with Louis XIV in Paris in 1663 , where he campaigned for the customs freedoms and trade privileges for merchants, which were soon dismantled by Colbert's mercantilist tariff reforms . After France threatened Geneva and the Waldensians and Huguenots who were admitted there , Escher and the Bernese Venner Niklaus Dachselhofer were sent to the court of Louis XIV to represent the interests of the Protestant estates in Zurich and Bern and the allied estate of Geneva. The building of the Hüningen fortress in 1679 and the capture of Strasbourg in 1681, which was allied with Zurich and Bern, increasingly strained the relationship with France, especially as Geneva and Mühlhausen were under further pressure. In addition, the federal troops in France were continuously worse off. Under Escher, Zurich therefore concluded a pay alliance with the Protestant Netherlands in 1693, with which France's monopoly on reformed mercenaries was broken. In the Basel riots in 1691, the federal locations were asked to mediate. Zurich and Mayor Escher would have preferred to keep the matter entirely in Reformed hands, out of concern that the Catholic towns could otherwise gain a weight that could also have a negative impact on peaceful disputes.

Heinrich Escher contributed significantly to a change in the relationship between the Protestant estates (cantons) of the Old Confederation and the Kingdom of France by turning the primacy of politics away from denomination as a determining factor to pragmatic and economic criteria in political action.

literature

  • Hans Camille Huber: Mayor Johann Heinrich Escher of Zurich (1626-1710) and federal politics in the age of Louis XIV. Affoltern am Albis 1936.
  • Conrad Escher. A Swiss embassy to the French court in 1687 and 1688. Zürcher Taschenbuch 1888. pp. 165–201.
  • Johann Caspar Zellweger . History of the diplomatic relations between Switzerland and France, from 1698 to 1784: an attempt to illustrate the influence of these relations on the moral, economic and political condition of Switzerland. St. Gallen 1848. p. 156 ff.
  • Gerold Meyer von Knonau:  Escher, Heinrich . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 6, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1877, p. 351 f.

Web links

Commons : Heinrich Escher  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. a b c Martin Lassner: Escher, Heinrich (from glass). In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
  2. Swissworld: Chocolate arrives in Switzerland (English)
  3. Thomas Maissen . The Birth of the Republic: Understanding of the State and Representation in the Early Modern Confederation. Göttingen 2006. p. 238 ff.
  4. ^ Ulrich Pfister: Trade privileges. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
  5. Meyer von Knonau, ADB vol. 6, p. 351 f.
  6. ^ Ulrich Im Hof , Handbook of Swiss History. Zurich 1977. Vol. II, p. 684 ff.
  7. Thomas Maissen. The Birth of the Republic: Understanding of the State and Representation in the Early Modern Confederation. Göttingen 2006. p. 356 ff.
  8. ^ Archives for Swiss History and Regional Studies, Volume 2.1829, p. 219 ff.
predecessor Office successor
Sigmund Spondli Mayor of Zurich
1678–1710
Johann Kaspar Escher