Karl Pfyffer from Altishofen

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Karl Pfyffer von Altishofen (born December 25, 1771 in Lucerne ; † November 12, 1840 there ) was a Swiss military and statesman.

Life

Early life; Military career

Karl Pfyffer von Altishofen came from the old noble family Pfyffer von Altishofen in the city of Lucerne. He was the only child of Grand Councilor Josef Anton Leodegar Pfyffer and Maria Barbara Bachmann. He lost his father when he was six years old. Soon afterwards he came into the care of his uncle Benedikt Pfyffer von Altishofen, abbot of the Sankt Urban monastery. Colonel Niklaus von Bachmann an-der-Letz sent Pfyffer to the military school in Paris in 1782 . There Pfyffer had the young Napoleon Bonaparte as a classmate. Although he was unable to meet Colonel Bachmann's expectations with regard to his military training, he learned French thoroughly . Through his uncle, Gardemajor Karl von Bachmann, he was employed in 1787 as a lieutenant in the Swiss Guard in Paris. In 1789 the French Revolution broke out. Three years later, Pfyffer was shocked by the news of the sad fate of his countrymen in his homeland, where he had been on vacation, many of whom had died on August 10, 1792 after brave resistance in the defense of the Tuileries .

Thirst for action and bitterness against the French led Pfyffer to the decision to serve as captain in a Sardinian regiment set up by Count Zimmermann von Hilferdingen in 1793 with the permission of the Lucerne Council. This was already in July 1793 in Piedmont with the army of the Duke of Aosta . Pfyffer took part courageously and resolutely in Sardinia's unfortunate struggle against the overwhelming power of the French Republic . The General Joubert captured early December 1798 Piedmont, and the regiment Zimmermann came on December 8 of this year in French captivity. General Zimmermann and Captain Pfyffer did not want to enter French service and were allowed to return to Switzerland. In May 1800 General Bachmann an-der-Letz recruited a Swiss regiment to fight for Austria. Pfyffer now became a captain in this army division. On a cold December night in 1800, French troops had to be captured in the Upper Engadin , but Pfyffer received a saber blow in the head area while storming the ice ridge, the consequences of which were occasionally recurring headaches. After the Treaty of Lunéville (February 9, 1801), he rejected an offer to do military service for England and went back to Lucerne.

Political activities

Pfyffer was not politically active for the time being. Pfyffer remained inactive after the French had withdrawn from Switzerland in the summer of 1802 and the Stecklik War broke out and the Swiss government fled to the canton of Léman . He was then appointed cantonal colonel and federal war council and was commissioned to travel to Bern and deliver the canton's money continent to the federal war chest. On October 5, 1802, Napoleon's adjutant, General Jean Rapp , also came to Bern and demanded that the Bern government should dissolve and that the federal troops should abdicate. A delegation to which Pfyffer belonged brought this news to the Diet that was meeting in Canton Schwyz . Pfyffer had a favorable impression of the Schwyz people and the Diet. The Diet instructed Pfyffer to inform General Rapp of a declaration it had passed, but did not want to give him any written instructions. Rapp finally agreed that Pfyffer himself drafted a written declaration and handed it over to him, in which the resolution of the agenda was laid down. On October 14, 1802, General Michel Ney entered Switzerland with a force of 20,000 French from Alsace . Pfyffer was supposed to bring the news of the dissolution of the Diet and the dismissal of the Swiss federal troops to Ney in Bern, as well as negotiate several important points. Ney approved all articles that were reasonably consistent with his behavioral orders.

Pfyffer then returned to Lucerne. When the mediation constitution was introduced in 1803 , Pfyffers was elected to the Small Council. He also received the office of President of the War Chamber. In 1804 he was charged with high treason . Although he was acquitted, he lost his seat on the Small Council. The reason for this was probably his frank political statements. He remained a member of the Lucerne Grand Council from 1803 to 1830. Among several political pamphlets written by Pfyffer, his Récit de la conduite des Gardes Suisses à la journée du 10 août, printed in Geneva in 1819, is particularly interesting. In the Grand Council in 1829 he requested the revision of the constitution of 1814, which was rejected.

Cultural and scientific interests

Pfyffer did research in the fields of geology , zoology , art history and technology , informed scholars about his research results and became a member of the economic and technical society in Frankfurt am Main . He set up a natural history cabinet and was busy studying magnetism . In possession of an excellent collection of paintings, he also dealt a lot with art. 1819–1836 he served as President of the Lucerne Art Society. He commissioned the Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen to design a model for a dying lion that would immortalize the battle and heroic death of the Swiss Guard in 1792. Thorvaldsen's student Ahorn von Konstanz then made the colossal lion, carved into rock, in Pfyffer's garden from March 1820 to August 1821. The cost of the monument, which was not met with general enthusiasm, amounted to over 33,000 francs. In a garden house next to this work of art, Pfyffer kept several works of art, including a valuable embroidery, which he made by the Duchess of Angoulême , a daughter of King Louis XVI. , had been given.

Later life and death

Pfyffer has not held any public office since 1830, the year the constitution was changed. But he still dealt a lot with politics. For several years he edited the Waldstätter-Bote , which he founded in 1828 , one of the most violent opposition papers against the new political principles and governments. As a result, several press trials have been initiated against this journal. In 1832 Pfyffer was sentenced to 100 days' imprisonment for an article by the district judge Lusser. He went into exile, which he spent first in the seaside resort of Seewen in the canton of Schwyz and then in Altdorf. In 1833 he renounced the editing of his magazine and returned to his place of birth in 1834 after his pardon. Even now he had several essays published in the Waldstätter-Bote , in which he frankly and ruthlessly expressed his political views, not without great vehemence and bitterness against individual people.

Pfyffer remained healthy and cheerful until he was old. Without a previous illness, he died on November 12, 1840 at the age of almost 69 in Lucerne from the effects of a stroke . He had been a knight of the French Order of Saint Ludwig since 1816 and of the Piedmontese Order of Saint Lazarus since 1818.

literature

Remarks

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g Colonel Karl Pfyffer von Altishofen and the Lion Monument in Lucerne , in: Allgemeine Schweizerische Militärzeitung , 1891, Issue 35, pp. 279–283 ( PDF )
  2. ↑ a b c d e f Heinrich Döring: Pfyffer von Altishofen (Karl) , in: Allgemeine Encyclopädie der Wissenschaften und Künste , 3rd section, 21st part (1846), p. 335 f.
personal data
SURNAME Pfyffer von Altishofen, Karl
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss military and statesman
DATE OF BIRTH December 25, 1771
PLACE OF BIRTH Lucerne
DATE OF DEATH November 12, 1840
Place of death Lucerne