Karl Huber (lawyer, 1915)

Karl Huber

Karl Huber (born October 18, 1915 in St. Gallen ; † September 16, 2002 in Köniz ; legal domicile in Häggenschwil ) was a Swiss lawyer . The member of the CVP was Federal Chancellor from 1968 to 1981 .

biography

After attending school in St. Gallen, Huber studied law at the University of Bern and obtained the degree of Dr. jur. After his military service, he joined the Department of Economic Affairs as a legal assistant in 1941 . From 1954 to 1967 he headed the department and from 1957 was also Secretary General of the Department of Economic Affairs during the negotiations on the establishment of EFTA . In 1967, Huber was elected Federal Chancellor, the first person since 1881 to have not previously worked in the Federal Chancellery . He held the office until 1981.

As a result of the so-called Mirage Affair , the Federal Chancellery was upgraded to a staff position of the Federal Council in 1968 through an administrative and government reform . Under Huber the decision-making process of the Federal Council was streamlined and rationalized. The Administrative Organization Act, which was passed in a referendum in 1977 , laid down the consultation procedure initially introduced internally in law. During his tenure, the parliamentary services were separated from the Federal Chancellery, even if only in organizational terms .

Huber was characterized by the fact that he was able to work solution-oriented across party disagreements and to bring about consensus solutions in the Federal Council. He tried to create an understandable legal language and a uniform structure of the legal acts. Huber was sometimes referred to as the eighth Federal Councilor , the historian Urs Altermatt calls him a gray eminence . The University of Friborg awarded Huber an honorary doctorate . On his 65th birthday, Hans Peter Fagagnini and Hans Wili published a commemorative publication entitled State reform where? out.

Web links

• Ralf Heckner: Karl Huber. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland ., 2008
• Biography on the website of the Federal Chancellery