Joseph Piller

Joseph Piller

Joseph Piller (born July 31, 1890 in Freiburg im Üechtland ; † February 13, 1954 there ) was a Swiss lawyer and politician .

Live and act

Catholic by birth and of Bonnefontaine origin, his parents were Pierre-Athanase Piller, civil servant, and Eugénie nee. Clement. Joseph Piller married Marie-Anne Wassmer, daughter of the businessman Edouard Wassmer. Her son Joseph-Daniel became a public prosecutor for the canton of Friborg .

After primary school and the St. Michael College in Freiburg im Üechtland , Joseph Piller moved to the Einsiedeln College, where he passed the Matura (1910). He completed his legal studies at the University of Freiburg (1910–1913) with a licentiate and then took two more semesters in law in Munich and Paris (1914). Although the progress of his studies was impaired by the mobilization, he was able to take his doctorate in law in 1917 . After an internship with lawyer Louis Bourgknecht , he was admitted to the bar in 1918. In the military, he was most recently in command of the Mountain Battalion 17 with the rank of major (1927-1930) and was also a military auditor .

At first Joseph Piller worked as a lawyer and journalist, but in 1919 he was appointed to the chair for public law at the University of Freiburg as an associate professor. He also taught administrative and church law. In 1924 he was promoted to full professor. He has written numerous scientific articles and the Eléments de droit et d'instruction civique à l'usage des écoles du canton de Friborg . In 1923 he was commissioned to draft a preliminary draft for the Freiburg Criminal Code together with Professor Alfred von Overbeck , and in 1926 he worked out the cantonal code of criminal procedure.

In 1926 Piller was elected to the federal court . He kept his courses at the University of Freiburg, but waived any salary. Initially a member of the Second Civil Department (Swiss Civil Code, Family Law), he moved to the Chamber for Public and Administrative Law in 1928.

When the State Councilor Ernest Perrier resigned from the government in 1932, Federal Councilor Jean-Marie Musy got in touch with Piller. The lawyer had long been interested in the university and was elected to the board of the university association in 1920. He advocated the introduction of a second year of medicine (1924) and began to raise funds for it. Since the university suffered from an acute lack of space in the Lyceum of St. Michael's College, he and the councilors Perrier and Bays were commissioned in 1926 to convince the Freiburg municipal council to cede the grounds of the Miséricorde cemetery, which they succeeded in 1928. On December 16, 1928, Piller was elected President of the University Association.

Piller was in charge of education from 1933 to 1946. Under his direction, the general regulations for primary schools were passed in 1942. He successfully defended the law of February 7, 1945 on compulsory health insurance for secondary school students and vocational schools. He modernized the teachers' college and moved it from Hauterive FR (the abbey was returned to the monks) in the canton capital. He also headed the International Association for Home Economics (1933–1954).

However, the University of Freiburg benefited most from the energy of its professor on leave (1933–1947). The decree of May 14, 1937, which instructed the State Council to introduce the medical preparatory course, went back to him, with the state paying one tenth (50,000 francs) of the building required for this, while the University Association took over most of the costs thanks to its reserves. In this way the state received the institutes of chemistry, botany and anatomy. On November 22, 1939, a loan of 597,000 francs (20% of the cost) was approved to help the university association erect the Miséricorde buildings. The State Council was authorized to grant the association a loan of up to CHF 2 million. However, the construction costs exploded: initially estimated at 1.6 million Swiss francs, they finally came to 5.7 million, whereby the additional costs were largely due to geological surprises. Piller was accused of megalomania. He was wrongly accused of supporting alleged Nazi professors at the university.

As a reserved person with an authoritarian appearance who hid behind apparent coldness and biting irony, Joseph Piller was not a tribune like Georges Python . He discreetly supported social works. His unpopularity left him indifferent, and his poor re-election in 1936 and 1941 did not seem to shake him. In the climate of renewal that characterized the post-war period, he was overthrown in 1946 after moves by the conservative Maxime Quartenoud and the liberal Pierre Glasson .

The Grand Council elected Piller to the Council of States , in which he represented the canton from 1935 to 1947 and again from 1950 to 1954. In 1945/46 he was President of the Council of States. He was a member of the Federal Grain Commission and the Board of Directors of the Swiss Federal Railways .

Piller embodied an important current of the Freiburg Conservative People's Party. He defended the idea of ​​the "Mission of Freiburg", a small Catholic community that advocated the spread of "truth" in Switzerland and saw itself as a bridge between cultures. He was a federalist (opposed to the civil code) and defended the primacy of corporations in the 1930s (two related publications). As a proponent of material progress, he campaigned for the construction of the Rossens dam (1943).

With the resumption of his teaching activity (1947-1954) Piller held courses and lectures in Canada in 1953 . After an airplane accident, he made poor recovery from a concussion and died of an embolism on February 14, 1954 in his home in Cormanon ( Villars-sur-Glâne ).

literature

• Jean-Pierre Dorand: Piller, Joseph. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
• Georges Andrey , John Clerc, Jean-Pierre Dorand et Nicolas Gex: The Freiburg Council of State: 1848–2011. History, organization, members . Editions La Sarine, Freiburg 2012, ISBN 978-2-88355-153-4 .