Karl Bürkli

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Portrait of Bürkli from the gallery of the Zurich workers' leaders

Karl Bürkli (born July 31, 1823 in Zurich ; † October 20, 1901 in Mettmenstetten ) was a Swiss early socialist and co-founder of consumer cooperatives .

Origin and first years

Karl Bürkli was born as the son of the silk manufacturer and Colonel Johann Georg Bürkli and Wilhelmine, a née Füssli. The boy, born in Zurich in 1823, dropped out of secondary school and completed an apprenticeship as a tanner from 1839 to 1842 . He then went hiking until 1848. In Paris he got to know the writings of Charles Fourier , who saw the solution to social problems in the creation of communes . The people should come together in communities of 2000 people and regulate living, work and consumption together. He called it " Phalanstères ", like ancient battle orders. Before 1848, Bürkli also traveled to Germany.

The cooperative

Together with Johann Jakob Treichler and other comrades, Bürkli founded the Konsumverein Zürich in 1851 , the first consumer association in Switzerland and throughout mainland Europe. According to the statutes, this wanted to eliminate the " commercial usury ". First the members of the cooperative bought a load of cigars, then a pile of shirt towels, and later oatmeal, barley, rice, peas, coffee, soap, candles and oil. Was sold without profit, only charged a commission fee.

The consumer association with its branches and offshoots was also a kind of early socialist party organization . The two most important functionaries of this society, Johann Jakob Treichler and Jakob Bürkli, were elected to the Cantonal Council; the “hun crowd of socialists is breaking into the canton,” wrote the Züricher Freitags-Zeitung in 1851.

In 1853 there were already five convenience stores. The number of members of the Zurich Association rose to 2450 by 1854. It was mostly workers from Zurich's industrial companies, especially from what later became Escher Wyss , who subscribed to the shares .

The Texas Expedition

Consumer association and local politics were not enough for Karl Bürkli; Following a widespread idea, he wanted to found a real Utopia in America , together with Fourierists from all over Europe. He brought together more than 100 people who wanted to emigrate in Switzerland and Europe.

The European board of directors for this expedition bought land in Texas near Dallas . In 1855 the troop left. At the travel destination, in Utopia (Texas) , everything looked different. The land had not yet been definitively acquired and the Mexican government was now planning a railway line for which the land under consideration had to be kept free. Because of the rail project, land prices rose. As an emergency solution, the emigrants bought ten square kilometers of land for expensive money, which, however, was not big enough for the planned "Phalange".

The decline was unstoppable. Controversy and bad harvests stunted idealism, resentment about the strange working hours in the Fourierist system of division of labor tore down, quarrels between nationalities broke out, those who found something better ran away. To make matters worse, the utopian settlement, in which all exploitation was to be ended, was located in the slave-holding area . The southerners made it clear to the newcomers that they could not differ on this matter; "Neutral is not enough, you have to be in Texas with body and soul for Negro slavery," as Bürkli wrote in a report on the expedition.

Bürkli, the founder of the commune, had no choice but to leave, he had lost a lot of money.

The later years

After returning to Switzerland in a roundabout way, Bürkli remained a popular fighter despite the failed adventure. In countless speeches and writings, he continued to advocate not only the cooperative idea, but also direct democracy and a public credit bank that was supposed to provide the cooperatives with cheap loans. He did not believe in state-owned companies, which should be dissolved in the future cooperative society. Bürkli was a driving force behind the resistance movement against the regime established by the Zurich patrician Alfred Escher . The fact that Zurich was given a democratic cantonal constitution in 1869 is also thanks to this early socialist free spirit. In the later years he worked as a landlord and owner of a private convenience store.

The historian Erich Gruner , author of a standard work on the labor movement in Switzerland, attests: "Bürkli is" - alongside Pierre Coullery - "the first autochthonous Swiss socialist who developed a typically Swiss socialist doctrine".

Works

  • Monarchical apple of paradise. 1865/66.
  • What is - what does socialism want, especially the Red or People's Republic. In: Free Voices. No. 10 (March 5, 1851), p. 38 ff., And No. 12 (March 19, 1851), p. 45 ff.
  • The socialist expedition to Texas. In: Eidgenössische Zeitung. No. 245 (September 4, 1858) and No. 246 (September 5, 1858).
  • A Republican on the labor issue. In: Democratic weekly paper . No. 49 supplement dated December 5, 1868 and No. 50 supplement dated December 12, 1868.
  • Direct Legislation by the People, versus representative Government, translated from the original Swiss Pamphlets by Eugene Oswald . Cherry & Fletcher, London 1869.
  • The real Winkelried, the tactics of the old Swiss. A contribution to the 500th anniversary of the Battle of Sempach. Commissionsverlag Schabelitz, Zurich 1886.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Heeb 1948, p. 92.
  2. ↑ Gruner 1968, p. 465.
personal data
SURNAME Bürkli, Karl
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss early socialist and co-founder of consumer cooperatives
DATE OF BIRTH July 31, 1823
PLACE OF BIRTH Zurich
DATE OF DEATH October 20, 1901
Place of death Mettmenstetten