Joseph Choquard

Joseph Choquard (born July 22, 1855 in Pruntrut ; † October 24, 1937 there ) was a Swiss entrepreneur and politician ( KVP ). From 1890 to 1895 and from 1901 to 1932 he was a member of the National Council.

biography

Choquard was the son of the owner of a dry goods store who originally came from the French border town of Delle . In his childhood he was therefore still a French citizen until the family naturalized in the municipality of Pleigne in 1871 . After attending the canton school in Pruntrut and a commercial apprenticeship in Basel , he lived in Alsace for a while until he got into the family business. He later founded a distillery and a brewery . From 1913 to 1930 he was the governor of the Pruntrut district , and he was also the editor of the Le Pays newspaper .

In 1881 Choquard was elected to the Grand Council of the Canton of Bern , to which he belonged until 1895. In the National Council elections in 1890 , he ran in the constituency of North Jura and achieved the best result. In 1895 he temporarily resigned his seat in the National Council until he was re-elected six years later. He was then re-elected eleven times in a row, and finally resigned in 1932. Choquard saw himself as an advocate of the interests of the Catholic minority in the canton of Bern and was an opponent of the radical liberals during the Kulturkampf . He promoted agriculture, industry and the expansion of the infrastructure. In addition, he was a member of the board of directors of various railways, industrial companies, the Berner Kantonalbank and the Bernische Kraftwerke .

Web links

• Peter Stettler: Choquard, Joseph. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .