Hermann Obrecht

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Hermann Obrecht

Hermann Franz Obrecht (born March 26, 1882 in Grenchen , † August 21, 1940 in Bern , entitled to residency in Grenchen) was a Swiss politician ( FDP ). After a short career as a teacher , journalist and civil servant , he was elected to the government council of the canton of Solothurn in 1909 at the age of only 27 and thereupon headed the finance and military directorate. He resigned in 1917 to enroll in the cantonal parliament , the council of the town of Solothurn and the National Council to be elected. Thanks to his excellent reputation as a financial and economic expert, he has served on the boards of various companies. Although he no longer belonged to the National Council since 1928, which elected him Federal Assembly in April 1935 in the Federal Council . As head of the Department of Economic Affairs Obrecht contributed significantly to gradually overcome the ruling in Switzerland economic crisis. The most important measure in September 1936 was the devaluation of the Swiss franc by 30 percent, which he supported . He also created the organizational conditions for the war economy during the Second World War . He resigned in late July 1940, a few weeks before his death.

biography

Job and family

He was the oldest of three children of the watchmaker and smallholder Matthäus Josef Obrecht and the home worker Anna Maria Lutiger. When he was twelve years old, his father died of tuberculosis after years of illness . Obrecht was now a half-orphan, but was able to complete the district school due to excellent academic performance and then switched to the teachers' seminar in Solothurn on the recommendation of the teaching staff . After graduating in the summer of 1901, he temporarily moved to Welschenrohr to teach at the primary school there. However, he practiced this profession for less than a year, because in the spring of 1902 he joined the cantonal administration as registrar of the Solothurn office. From 1904 he worked as a secretary in the finance department of the canton of Solothurn .

In 1907 he married Lina Emch, the daughter of a sawmill owner and carpenter. With her Obrecht had three children, including the later National Councilor and Councilor of States Karl Obrecht . From 1907 he also worked as a political editor for the Solothurner Zeitung, which had been founded by his friend Gottlieb Vogt. Obrecht also had a steep military career in the Swiss Army : from 1904 he was a lieutenant , from 1912 a captain , from 1918 a major and battalion commander. In 1924 he was promoted to lieutenant colonel and regimental commander and finally in 1930 to colonel and brigade commander.

Cantonal and federal politics

Without having previously held a political office, Obrecht was nominated as a candidate for the government council by the Solothurn FdP in 1909 and then elected without any problems. At the age of only 27, he was the youngest member of all cantonal governments in Switzerland. As head of the Finance and Military Directorate, he planned a cantonal old-age and disability insurance and had a fund raised for it. With a more generous social policy, he wanted in particular to slow down the rapid rise of the Social Democrats and to bind the workers more closely to the FdP. However, in view of the great social hardship during the First World War, he did not succeed . Ex officio he was a member of the bank council of the Swiss National Bank , and he also chaired the conference of finance directors.

In the spring of 1917, Obrecht surprisingly resigned as a councilor, especially since he was only 35 years old at the time. Instead, he ran for a seat on the Cantonal Council and was elected with the best result in his constituency. He was also elected a member of the Solothurn municipal council . Six months later he ran for parliamentary elections in 1917 and made it into the National Council . He was thus politically active at the federal level as well as cantonal and communal. Professionally, Obrecht was now a partner in the notary's office of his younger brother Werner and sat on the boards of various companies, including Metallwerke Dornach , Solothurner Kantonalbank and the Swiss Bank Corporation . He was also Chairman of the Board of Directors of the watch company ASUAG and the Solothurn weapons factory .

Because of his work at the Solothurn weapons factory, a joint venture between the armaments companies Rheinmetall and Hirtenberger , Obrecht had to put up with severe criticism, especially from the social democratic side, and was given the unflattering nickname “King of the Guns”. What the general public had no knowledge of at the time was the fact that the arms factory also served to circumvent the restrictions on war material production for the Weimar Republic and Austria imposed at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 . Under Obrecht's management, the company carried out two major contracts for Austria and Hungary up to 1935 , both of which massively violated the Saint-Germain Treaty . The Federal Council knew about it, but tolerated the breach of contract. In addition, Obrecht was in other stores of the Austrian armament industrialist Fritz Mandl involved in authoritarian states, even after the seizure of power of the Nazis .

Since the national strike of 1918 at the latest , Obrecht had been an unyielding opponent of the Social Democrats. Although he resigned as a National Councilor in 1928, he was still considered a proven financial and economic expert at the federal level. Edmund Schulthess announced his resignation from the Federal Council in March 1935. He would have loved to see Emil Keller as his successor , but behind the scenes various influential politicians campaigned massively for Obrecht, as they trusted him to solve the economic crisis of the time. These included the Catholic-conservative "kingmaker" Heinrich Walther and also Federal President Rudolf Minger . The FDP parliamentary group felt a bit taken by surprise, but nominated Obrecht anyway. In the Federal Council election on April 4, 1935, the latter prevailed in the first ballot with 125 of 205 valid votes; The SP opponent Henri Perret received 54 votes, and various other people received 26 votes.

Federal Council

As expected, Obrecht took over the management of the Department of Economic Affairs . In the following weeks he vigorously opposed the crisis initiative submitted by a left-wing action committee . This wanted to stimulate demand by supporting domestic incomes and thereby compensate for the loss of export income, and planned public investments were also to create new jobs. The Social Democrats reacted to the rejection by the people and the cantons on June 2, 1935 with a job creation initiative. In lengthy negotiations, Obrecht then succeeded in finding a compromise with the Social Democrats. A federal resolution to expand national defense, which also included measures to combat unemployment, was successful in the referendum on June 4, 1939.

On September 26, 1936, against the opposition of the National Bank and the Finance Department , the Federal Council decided to devalue the Swiss franc by 30 percent. Obrecht was in charge of this decision and was the first to convince Minger and, together with him, a majority of the college of the correctness of the measure. In November 1937, a federal law drafted by Obrecht to ensure national supplies, which organized the war economy on the basis of the militia system , met with general approval in all political camps ; this was intended to avoid the improvisations customary during the First World War. After the outbreak of the Second World War , the Federal Council was able to take state intervention measures based on the powers granted to it. Obrecht also created the legal basis for the introduction of the compensation scheme for soldiers during service, which came into force in 1940.

On March 16, 1939, immediately after the annexation of Austria , Obrecht gave a high -profile speech in front of the New Helvetic Society in Basel . In it, he took a clear position for an independent Switzerland and clearly rejected any approach to National Socialist or Fascist ideas. Above all, the phrase “We Swiss will not go abroad on pilgrimage first” was remembered. He was alluding to the audiences of Emil Hácha and Kurt Schuschnigg with Adolf Hitler , which in fact meant the end of Czechoslovakia and Austria. Obrecht was suddenly the most popular of all federal councilors and received the best result in the confirmatory election nine months later. In December 1939 he suffered a heart attack and then spent two months in a sanatorium in Lucerne (during this time he was represented by Minger). He was also hard hit by the death of his wife in April 1940. On June 20, he announced his resignation for the end of July. On the morning of August 21, 1940, he died at the age of 58 in his Bern apartment.

literature

Web links

Commons : Hermann Obrecht  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Böschenstein: The Federal Council Lexicon. P. 356.
  2. ↑ a b Böschenstein: The Federal Council Lexicon. Pp. 356-357.
  3. ↑ a b Böschenstein: The Federal Council Lexicon. P. 357.
  4. ↑ a b Ramón Bill: «King of the cannons» and symbols of resistance . In: Historischer Verein des Kantons Solothurn (Hrsg.): Yearbook for Solothurn history . tape 75 . Solothurn 2002, p. 353-355 .
  5. ^ Böschenstein: The Federal Council Lexicon. P. 358.
  6. ↑ Mauro Cerutti: Devaluation 1936. In: Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz .
  7. ^ Böschenstein: The Federal Council Lexicon. P. 359.
  8. ^ Böschenstein: The Federal Council Lexicon. Pp. 359-360.
predecessor Office successor
Edmund Schulthess Member of the Swiss Federal Council
1935–1940 		Walther Stampfli
personal data
SURNAME Obrecht, Hermann
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Obrecht, Hermann Franz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss politician (FDP)
DATE OF BIRTH March 26, 1882
PLACE OF BIRTH Grenchen
DATE OF DEATH August 21, 1940
Place of death Bern