Veronika Good

Veronika Gut (born May 6, 1757 in Stans ; † April 28, 1829 there ) was a supporter of the Nidwalden resistance against the Helvetic and the ideals associated with it. Their work had a decisive influence on the political events in Nidwalden from 1798 to 1815.

Worked 1798–1815

In 1798, Veronika Gut was already widowed and lived with her six children on her farm in Spichermatt in Stans. Their views were critical of reform and Catholic. When Nidwalden's refusal to swear an oath on the Helvetian constitution broke out into a warlike conflict with the French army, they donated 600 guilders to the war chest.

After the " French attack " and the introduction of the new order, Veronika Gut was arrested as a resilient rebel and brought to justice. In addition to a fine, she was sentenced to stand in front of the church for a quarter of an hour on Sundays with a slip of paper that read "Liar disturbing the peace." In addition, she should wear a black hood for a year. Since honorable women wore white bonnets at that time, wearing a black bonnet represented a humiliation. Veronika Gut, however, transformed the punishment intended as a humiliation into an award by wearing the bonnet with such obvious pride that the order was soon given to her should take this off in order not to provoke further the anger of the government.

Veronika Gut's rebellious behavior was only possible because she enjoyed strong support from the conservative Nidwalden population. The traumatized Nidwalden reacted to the French intruders with undisguised defiance. In 1803 Guts was arrested again for rabble in the election of a replacement for an anti-revolutionary fugitive chaplain, against whose removal she resisted. After Napoleon's loss of influence in 1813, Veronika Gut established a patriotic party. In her new house on Nägeligasse in Stans, she held secret meetings in the evenings, in which she stood out as the spokesperson. If, as a woman, she was not allowed to get into political positions and to speak at official events, she was nevertheless able to exert a decisive influence on the mood and thus indirectly on political decisions. In line with her role as spokesperson, the assemblies were called Froneggrat, and her house was dubbed “the second town hall”. The stubborn resistance that Nidwalden brought to both the French occupying power and later also the Swiss daily statute can be traced back to the Froneggrat. Only when Nidwalden agreed to the federal treaty after the occupation of the country by federal troops did the influence of Veronika Gut end.

family

In 1798 Veronika Gut was already the widow of Leonz Joller and a mother of seven. Her 17-year-old son Leonz died in battle during the French attack. While fleeing from allegedly approaching French troops, her four daughters Agatha, Franziska, Josefa and Anna fell into the Engelberger Aa in 1801 and drowned. Veronika Gut was married to Melchior Odermatt for the second time. Together with him, who was a councilor of war, she was active again politically during the mediation period (1803-1813). But she remained known under her single name throughout her life. Her grandson was the publicist Melchior Joller .

reception

In 1941 Franz Odermatt (1867–1952) processed the life story in the novel Veronika Gut literarily. The Veronika-Gut-Weg in Stans is named after her. Since the 1990s, it has increasingly been the subject of gender research . The association Frauenspuren in Nidwalden and Engelberg dedicated a station to her on its village tours and portrayed her in the publication Frauenleben in Stans. Searching for traces through the centuries . In 1998, in the anniversary year of the 200th anniversary of Helvetik , the Association for Women’s City Tour Basel ran under the title What women do when men found states. Basel women and a woman from Nidwalden 1798/1848 Veronika Gut opened a station. In 2006, Alex Capus dedicated a chapter in his publication 13 True Stories to the “god-fearing farmer's wife Veronika Gut”. In 2017 the Landschaftstheater Ballenberg performed the play Veronika Gut - Aufruhr in Nidwalden .

literature

Franz Joseph Gut: The causes and consequences of the raid in Nidwalden in 1798. Stans 1862; New edition Kägiswil 1989.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Marie Odermatt-Lussy: The fatherland woman Veronika Guet . In: Nidwalden calendar . tape 1967 , no. 108 . Stans 1967, p. 82 .
2. ↑ Trial files, Nidwalden State Archives, boxes 205 / 44c and 225/50.
3. ^ Gabriela Niederberger: Special case: Nidwalden. 1798–1815: The resistance of the Nidwalden men and women against the modern trend under the sign of reaction . Licentiate thesis, Uni Basel 1998, p. 49 .
4. ↑ Peter Steiner: Good, Veronika. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
5. ↑ Good, Veronika, Swiss freedom heroine from Nidwalden. In: Swiss Lexicon of Women in Two Volumes, Zurich 1953, Vol. 1, pp. 1310/1311
6. ↑ Stan's baptismal and death books, Nidwalden State Archives.
7. ^ Franz Odermatt: Veronika Gut . Benziger, Einsiedeln 1941.
8. ↑ Traces of women in Nidwalden and Engelberg. Retrieved August 14, 2016 . 
9. ↑ Gabriela Niederberger: "Like the women of these mountains, she is as courageous as men." The resistance work of Veronika Gut from 1798 to 1815 . In: Frauenspuren in Nidwalden and Engelberg (Hrsg.): Frauenleben in Stans. Searching for traces through the centuries . Stans 1998, ISBN 3-9521568-0-9 , pp. 17-23 .
10. ↑ Women's city tour Basel. Retrieved May 18, 2016 . 
11. ↑ Alex Capus: The Spook of Stans. How the god-fearing farmer's wife Veronika Gut became an arms smuggler after the French attack in 1798, and how it began to be haunted after her death. In: 13 true stories . dtv, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-423-13470-4 , p. 21-34 .
12. ^ Ballenberg Landscape Theater. Retrieved August 14, 2016 .