Stäfner trade
The Stäfner Handel was a dispute in the canton of Zurich about the economic and political disadvantage of the landscape compared to the city in the years 1794 and 1795, triggered by a planned memorial (a petition) to the Zurich authorities. Memorial and Stäfner Handel marked a turning point in the discussion about the reformability of the Old Confederation between the French and Helvetic Revolution .
Memorial
In the communities along Lake Zurich , a wealthy and culturally aspiring upper class had formed during the 18th century thanks to the flourishing textile industry (cotton and silk production). This came together in amateur theaters and music societies as well as reading circles and got a sharpened eye for the political and economic advantages that the urban elite had gained. The communal self-responsibility and independence, which in spite of all absolutist influences never completely disappeared, developed a great mobilizing power first under the influence of Enlightenment ideas and then the slogans of the French Revolution . Members of the reading societies researched extensively for revoked but documented rights of the Zurich rural population of the pre- and post-Reformation period, which were recorded as “old freedoms” in Waldmann's letters of 1489 and the Kappel letters of 1532. With reference to these old freedoms, the stove builder Heinrich Nehracher , the surgeon Johann Kaspar Pfenninger , the baker Heinrich Ryffel and the surgeon Andreas Staub formulated a petition to the Zurich Council entitled “Memorial”.
The memorial was a self-confident enumeration of political and economic demands, in which the ideas or battle concepts of the pre-absolutist "old freedoms" and of the "inalienable human rights " were combined. The authors put it:
The love of freedom as well as the hatred of all kinds of despotism is peculiar to humanity. All enlightened peoples from rise to fall paid homage to this. […] Generated by free fathers, we are to be free sons. This is what history speaks for, this is what the documents testify, […] as such, that nation respects us, which currently plays the role on the big picture on the political scene, which our fathers once played on a small scale.
In seven points the authors dealt with the equality of all citizens, freedom of trade and education, the replacement of feudal burdens and the restoration of the old community rights. First and foremost was the demand for a constitution.
The memorial was completed at Pentecost 1794 and then circulated in copies. In November 1794 it was read and discussed for the first time in front of the initiated in Stäfa - at that time the most important rural community in the canton in terms of economy and population. A real secret conference of the communities along Lake Zurich , sent by delegates, took place on November 19, 1794 in Meilen . However, the government also learned of the memorial and arrested Pfenninger and Ryffel, which made the matter public. Official embassies to the maritime communities and patriarchal statements from the church pulpits were intended to calm the situation by branding the authors of the memorial as troublemakers and the memorial itself as a criminal attempt at rioting. Nehracher, Pfenninger and Staub were expelled from the country for several years in January 1795, and more than sixty people involved received fines and fines. The memorial, which had not yet been officially presented to the government, was burned .
Stäfner trade
The intransigence of the government and the penalties led to a wave of solidarity and politicization on the landscape opposite the city. The resulting events became known as the "Stäfner Handel". Inquiries were received from the Zurich municipalities as to where complaints could be made; in Stäfa, the residents erected a freedom tree on the night of March 21st to March 22nd, 1795 . The found Waldmannsche Spruchbriefe from 1489 and the Kappelerbriefe from 1532 were read out in front of the congregation in Stäfa. There was also unrest in other communities, and Stäfner delegations solicited support for their concerns in the supposedly more democratic central Switzerland , albeit without success. Meanwhile, rumors spread in the city of Zurich that the rural population would take up arms. At the end of June 1795 the government pronounced the ban on Stäfa and banned trade with the place, including the sale of bread, poor relief and health care. On July 4, 1795, 4,000 men were mobilized, who from the following day occupied Stäfa and the maritime communities for two months. A wave of arrests against the political leaders of the sea communities rolled off, the interrogations took place under torture. About the "old freedoms" in the documents, the government proclaimed that even the ancestors no longer invoked them, "but gratefully and frugally enjoyed the purposeful rights and precious benefits", "which the gracious authorities, out of heartfelt benevolence , Your whole country from time to time »allotted.
The verdicts were passed in September 1795. Six main defendants, above all the textile manufacturer Johann Jakob Bodmer (1737-1806) as the elected political liaison Stäfas, received a death sentence converted into life imprisonment, which Bodmer carried out symbolically by raising and lowering the sword over his neck. The authorities imposed ban, fines, pillory and honor sentences on more than two hundred country people. The community of Stäfa, whose music and reading society were banned, lost all self-administration rights; the military roster housing costs she had to pay ruined her economically. In addition to her, the municipalities of Erlenbach , Hirzel , Horgen , Küsnacht , Meilen and Thalwil as well as the bailiwicks Greifensee , Grüningen and Knonau had to pay homage to the city of Zurich in an act of submission.
consequences
The political, economic and cultural punishment meant and aimed primarily at the effective elimination of rural competition by the city. The Stäfner trade became important as a harbinger of the Helvetic Revolution and as a “ cause célèbre ” for an irreversibly politicized public; the event met with a great response in the entire German-language journalism. The rigorous approach led the reformers to believe that the authorities would not offer a hand to more democratic structures, but would use all means to maintain the status quo. According to the Stäfner Handel, it seemed to the publicist Paul Usteri "morally impossible [...] that reasonable and necessary Reformations should emanate from our existing governments". Since the Zurich authorities had rejected any appeal to earlier documentary rights, the conviction also spread that legitimacy could no longer be a support for dealing with the regents.
literature
- Holger Böning : The dream of freedom and equality: Helvetic revolution and republic (1798–1803). Orell Füssli, Zurich 1998, ISBN 3-280-02808-6 , pp. 79-94.
- Christoph Mörgeli : Memorial and Stäfner Handel 1794/1795 . Stäfa municipality, Stäfa 1995.
Web links
- Bruno Schmid: Stäfnerhandel. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .