Johannes Meyer (editor)

John Meyer (* 17th September 1799 in the forest ; † 7. September 1833 Trogen ; heimatberechtigt ibid ) was a Swiss doctor , publicist and Cantonal from the canton of Appenzell Outer Rhodes .

Life

Johannes Meyer was the son of Ulrich Meyer and Ursula Walser. In 1823 he married Katharina Barbara Zuberbühler, daughter of Sebastian Zuberbühler, interrogator and land developer. His brother-in-law was Johann Ulrich Zuberbühler .

Meyer first attended the village school in Wald and took private lessons from the pastor there . Then he completed his training as a doctor with Johannes Georg Schläpfer. From 1819 to 1821 he studied medicine in Tübingen and Paris . From 1821 he ran a doctor's practice in Wald and from 1822 in Trogen.

In 1825 Meyer gave up the medical practice again and became the publisher of the Appenzellisches monthly newspaper , which commented on cantonal political and cultural problems and in 1827 published the state accounts for the first time. In 1828 he and his brother-in-law Johann Ulrich Zuberbühler opened a printing company with an affiliated publishing house in Trogen . In July of the same year, the Appenzeller Zeitung was founded , which, edited by Meyer , was devoted to national and international topics in advance. In 1829 he completed his concept of publishing a newspaper for every political level with the weekly for Trogen . In view of the press censorship exercised in almost all cantons , the Appenzeller Zeitung quickly became the mouthpiece of radical liberals from all over Switzerland. As early as August 1828, the Diet discussed its ban. Out of outrage against “the systematic agitation” of the newspaper, the canton of St. Gallen wanted to prohibit Meyer from entering its territory in October 1828 . Meyer reacted to a ban on the Appenzeller newspaper by the canton of Bern in 1830 by publishing an extra newspaper for Bern entitled Der Segen Abrahams . The publisher was also of importance, as it enabled Thomas Bornhauser to print his views on the Thurgau constitutional revision in 1830 .

From 1824 to 1828 Meyer worked as a councilor and community clerk in Trogen. He then worked from 1828 to 1832 as a community Captain and Ausserrhoden cantonal parliament . In 1831 he was a member of the cantonal audit council and the cantonal medical commission. Meyer served as governor from 1832 to 1833. With his uncompromising attitude, he was one of the pioneers of Swiss freedom of expression and freedom of the press , and his reputation as mayor of the local government gave him important support in his home country.

literature

• Meyer's estate in the holdings of the Appenzell Ausserrhoden Cantonal Library .
• Walter Schläpfer: Press history of the canton of Appenzell Ausserrhoden. Herisau: Schläpfer 1978, pp. 32-74.

Web links

• Thomas Fuchs: Johannes Meyer. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland . December 29, 2017 , accessed June 29, 2020 .

This version of the article is based on the entry by Thomas Fuchs in the Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz (HLS), which, according to the HLS's usage information, is under the Creative Commons - Attribution - Distribution under the same conditions 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) license . If the article has been revised and expanded to such an extent that it differs significantly from the HLS article, this module will be removed. The original text and a reference to the license can also be found in the version history of the article.