Ludwig Snell (politician)

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Ludwig Snell

Ludwig Snell (born April 6, 1785 in Idstein in the Principality of Nassau-Usingen ; † July 5, 1854 in Küsnacht ZH ) was a radical-liberal politician, constitutional lawyer, publicist and educator of the 19th century in Switzerland .

biography

Ludwig Snell was the son of a high school principal and studied theology with his older brother Wilhelm Snell at the University of Giessen from 1803 to 1806 . He then worked first as a private tutor and parish vicar, then as a teacher at the Idstein grammar school, which was headed by his father Christian Wilhelm Snell († 1834). When he moved the grammar school to Weilburg, he lost his position because of his membership in the German Society, which was inspired by Ernst Moritz Arndt , and alleged contacts with the Blacks in Giessen . In 1817 Snell was appointed rector of the Wetzlar grammar school by the Prussian government .

An appointment to the University of Dorpat failed in 1818 because the mail in question was inadvertently sent to his brother Wilhelm Snell, who took the position. In 1820 Ludwig Snell was suspended in the context of the so-called "demagogue incitement" without any specific accusations or a procedure with full salary and finally released in 1824 during a trip to England for "unauthorized removal". The actions of the Prussian state were probably related to the assassination attempt by Karl Löning, who was friends with the Snell family, on Carl Friedrich Emil von Ibell . This affair also cost Wilhelm Snell his job in Dorpat and he had to flee to Basel.

In 1827 Ludwig Snell moved to his brother Wilhelm, who had held a professorship in Basel since 1821 . He completed his habilitation and worked as a private lecturer at the University of Basel and began to publish writings on various topics. He frequented radical-liberal circles and his fundamental publications on liberal core issues, especially the freedom of the press in 1829, made him known throughout Switzerland as a liberal thinker ( → History of Switzerland in the Restoration Period ). He was considered the “most dangerous troublemaker in Switzerland”. After the outbreak of the July Revolution in Paris in 1830, Snell published the " Memorial von Küsnacht ", a draft for a liberal constitution for the canton of Zurich, and later the demands of the Memorial of Uster (→ Ustertag ), which made him a pioneer of liberal regeneration in Zurich has been. In 1831 he received the citizenship of Küsnacht ZH and took over the editing of the newly founded liberal newspaper " Schweizerischer Republikaner " and made it the most important mouthpiece of the liberal movement in Switzerland. As a publicist and politician in Zurich, where he sat on the Grand Council, Snell was one of the most important liberal politicians in Switzerland during these years. He and his also radical liberal brother and their supporters were jokingly referred to as the "Snellen", alluding to their will to reform. In Zurich in 1832, together with Johann Caspar von Orelli and David Ulrich, he laid the foundation stone for modern education with an elementary school, cantonal school and university, where he was professor for the history of philosophy.

After the implementation of the liberal constitution in Zurich, Ludwig Snell devoted himself to the liberal cause at the national level and was one of the most vehement advocates for federal reform and became the most important theoretician of the liberal party in Switzerland. He also supported the landscape of the canton of Basel in their struggle against the domination of the city and campaigned against conservative political Catholicism (→ ultramontanism ) with journalistic means . In 1834, Snell was appointed to the University of Bern as the first professor of political science and became politically active there for the radical-liberal National Party, but in 1836 he was wrongly suspected of being connected with the Young Switzerland movement , resigned his professorship and became the Banned from Canton Bern. Snell moved back to Eastern Switzerland and devoted himself again to constitutional law and especially to the relationship between church and state. His handbook of Swiss constitutional law in two volumes from this period is the most important publication on the cantonal and federal constitution before 1848.

In March 1839, Ludwig Snell took over the editing of the Swiss Republican again, which he had resigned in 1834, and thus became the center of the opposition liberal movement in Zurich on the occasion of the conservative overthrow in the Zurich coup in September 1839. The liberal turnaround in the elections of 1842 was due not least to his efforts. In the same year Snell resigned the editorial office of the Republican and devoted himself again to national politics. He took a pointed position in favor of the abolition of the monastery in Aargau , against the appointment of the Jesuits to Lucerne, and campaigned with his brother Wilhelm Snell for federal reform. In 1842 he received late satisfaction for his unjustified dismissal from the Prussian civil service in Wetzlar when, after King Friedrich Wilhelm IV ascended to the throne, the authorities of the Rhine Province decided to award him a pension. In 1852, however, this was deleted just as arbitrarily.

Snell died penniless in Küsnacht on July 5, 1854, where a memorial in his honor was inaugurated on the lake that same year. A path was also named after him there.

  • Memorial stone on the Horn in Küsnacht

  • blackboard

  • Ludwig-Snell-Weg on the Küsnachter Horn

Fonts

literature

Web links

Commons : Ludwig Snell  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Remarks

  1. ↑ Michael Silnizki: History of the learned law in Russia. Jurisprudence at the Universities of the Russian Empire 1700-1835 . (Ius Comune, Studies on European Legal History, 97 Frankfurt am Main 1997, p. 215f.)
  2. ^ Ferdinand Strobel : The Jesuits and Switzerland in the XIX. Century, A contribution to the genesis of the Swiss federal state . Olten / Freiburg i.Br. 1954, p. 130.
personal data
SURNAME Snell, Ludwig
BRIEF DESCRIPTION liberal Swiss publicist and politician
DATE OF BIRTH April 6, 1785
PLACE OF BIRTH Idstein
DATE OF DEATH July 5, 1854
Place of death Küsnacht ZH