Jacob Isler

This article describes the man born in 1758. For his similarly named grandson, see Jakob Isler .

Jacob Isler (born September 14, 1758 in Wohlen ; † September 27, 1837 there ; entitled to live in Wohlen) was a Swiss merchant in the straw industry and a politician . He is considered a pioneer of the international trade in straw hats and braids and was the first parish administrator in his home parish.

biography

The eldest son of the braid dealer Kleinpeter Isler and Anna Wohler received commercial training from his father. After that he initially ran a small trade in hardware , agricultural implements and cloth. Although the Free Offices , to which Wohlen belonged, were already known for their straw braids and straw hats , trade was limited to the neighboring regions. In 1783, Isler founded the first trading company with his father and seven other braid dealers, which expanded the sales area to all of Switzerland and southern Germany. Disagreement led to the dissolution of the company in 1787, whereupon Isler merged with Jacob Vock to form Isler & Vock .

With the help of his six sons, Isler expanded the trade in large parts of Europe after the turn of the century and thereby achieved great prosperity. Other traders followed his example, as a result of which Wohlen developed into a straw weaving center with international appeal. After Vock's departure in 1818, Jacob Isler & Co. was now a purely family company. Isler set up braiding schools in the surrounding communities in order to improve the quality of the straw braids that were manufactured at home and intended for further processing.

After the proclamation of the Helvetic Republic in April 1798, Isler belonged to the council of the municipality of Wohlen. With the entry into force of the mediation constitution in March 1803, Wohlen became part of the canton of Aargau . Isler was then for the first mayor elected and held that post until 1812 from. From 1808 to 1831 he was also a member of the Aargau Grand Council . In 1823 he retired from business life.

The company founded by Isler in 1787 developed into one of the leading companies in the industry and in 1927 took on the legal form of a stock corporation . It continued to exist as Jacob Isler & Co. AG until it was dissolved in 1991. In 1819 Isler had a representative residential and commercial building built on Kirchenplatz, which at the time was one of the largest and most luxurious buildings in Wohlens. Today it bears the name Emmanuel-Isler-Haus (after his grandson) and serves as a Roman Catholic parish hall.

literature

• Anne-Marie Dubler :  Isler, Jakob. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 10, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1974, ISBN 3-428-00191-5 , p. 197 ( digitized version ).
• Biographical Lexicon of the Canton of Aargau 1803–1957 . In: Historical Society of the Canton of Aargau (Ed.): Argovia . tape 68/69 . Verlag Sauerländer, Aarau 1958, p. 409-411 .
• Dieter Kuhn, Anton Wohler, Marcela Hohl, Birgit Littmann: Straw times - history and stories of the Aargau straw industry . AT Verlag, Aarau 1991, ISBN 3-85502-428-6 , p. 22-25 .

Web links

• Sarah Brian Scherer: Isler, Jacob. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Hutgeflechtfabrik Jacob Isler & Co. AG. In: Database on industrial culture in Aargau. Association of Aargau Museums and Collections, accessed on March 30, 2010 . 
2. ↑ Peter Felder: The art monuments of the canton Aargau . Ed .: Society for Swiss Art History. Volume IV (Bremgarten district). Birkhäuser Verlag, Basel 1967, ISBN 3-906131-07-6 , p. 427-428 .