Johannes Tobler (calendar maker)

Johannes Tobler (born September 3, 1696 in Rehetobel ; † March 15, 1765 in New Windsor ; resident in Rehetobel) was a politician , calendar maker and publicist from the canton of Appenzell Ausserrhoden .

Life

Johann Tobler was the son of Ulrich Tobler and Elsbeth Schläpfer. On 1718 he married Anna Zellweger, daughter of Bartholome Zellweger. He attended the Rehetobel village school. Then he devoted himself to self-study in mathematics and astronomy . Since Tobler often found the astronomical calculations in the calendars incorrect, he decided in 1721 to publish one himself. In 1722, the first number of the writing calendar , which was to be published annually from now on , the later Appenzell calendar appeared . Besides seemed Tobler 1723-1728 as a councilor and 1728 to 1730 as a community Captain of Rehetobel. From 1730 to 1731 he served as the Ausserrhoder regional ensign and from 1731 to 1733 as the governor. As the leading head of the Linden party , he was forced by the opposing party to resign from the state government in the disputes over land trade in 1733. The Rehetobler elected him again by a large majority as mayor. But Tobler had to renounce this office under pressure from the new Harten government in 1734. As the publisher of the Appenzell calendar , political opponents hit him with high taxation, censorship and house searches to such an extent that he, like his father , decided to emigrate to America in 1736 . In Carolina , Tobler co-founded the New Windsor community in 1737 and, after initial difficulties, was able to establish himself successfully as a plantation owner and entrepreneur. He remained involved in the publication of the Appenzell calendar until 1754. From around 1750 he served as the Royal Great Britain Justice of the Peace. From 1752 he published the very popular The South Carolina Almanack . It was the first publication of its kind in the southern states . From 1756 he also published the Pennsylvania Almanack .

literature

• Walter Schläpfer: History of the Rehetobel Community 1669–1969. Herisau: Schläpfer 1969, pp. 59-66.
• Peter Witschi: Appenzeller all over the world. Herisau: Schläpfer 1994. ISBN 3-85882-091-1 , 138 f., 263 f.
• Heiko Diekmann: Call of the New World. Göttingen: Universitätsverlag 2005.
• Leo Schelbert and Hedwig Rappolt: Everything is very different here. Olten: Walter-Verlag 1977, pp. 95-98 and pp. 112-118.
• Letters and letters in the Appenzell Ausserrhoden canton library .

Web links

• Thomas Fuchs: Johannes Tobler. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland . December 18, 2013 , accessed April 23, 2020 .

This version of the article is based on the entry by Thomas Fuchs in the Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz (HLS), which, according to theHLS'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.