Wilhelm Snell

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Wilhelm Snell
Natural law 1859, edition for foreign countries

Wilhelm Snell (born April 8, 1789 in Idstein , † May 8, 1851 in Bern ) was a professor of law , a radical liberal revolutionary and an important liberal politician in Switzerland during the 19th century.

life and work

Wilhelm Snell was a son of the Nassau administrative officer, teacher and politician Christian Wilhelm Snell and younger brother of Ludwig Snell (1785-1854), who also became a Swiss politician.

Snell studied law in Giessen with Karl Ludwig Wilhelm von Grolman (1775-1829). During the Wars of Liberation he became active in the German national movement. Since the turn of the year 1813/14 there was a political secret society in the Gießen-Mainz-Heidelberg area, based on the model of the Masonic lodges, mostly named after the most important members Hoffmann-Snell-Gruner-Bund, which sought a unified Germany under Prussian leadership. In addition to Snell, the brothers Friedrich Gottlieb and Carl Theodor Welcker as well as the former Gießen student and Butzbach school principal Friedrich Ludwig Weidig were involved in Gießen .

At the beginning of 1814, Wilhelm Snell and his brother Ludwig founded a German society in the newly formed Duchy of Nassau based on the ideas of Ernst Moritz Arndt , with whom Snell personally discussed this project. The first major meeting took place in Usingen in the summer of 1814 , where Welcker and Weidig also took part. Wilhelm Snell's founding speech, published later, calls for increased popular education, journalism, festivals and folk song events with the aim of establishing a German nation-state. On October 18, he appeared as an agitator at a memorial service for the Battle of the Nations near Leipzig on the Geisberg near Wiesbaden . A Snell leaflet entitled “Beherzigung vor dem Wiener Kongress” was largely confiscated by the Nassau government, but found a certain distribution. Among other things, Snell called for the foundation of a German society in the state capital Wiesbaden during the battle of the nations. This took place on November 8, 1814. Shortly afterwards, the Nassau government banned the German companies.

In the course of 1815, Snell seems to have moved away from Arndt's anti-French stance. Rather, he increasingly perceived the French Revolution as a model for a German way to a nation state and a constitution.

After graduating, Snell was an examining magistrate at the criminal court in Dillenburg . There he was active in the address movement in 1818 and formulated a petition from citizens from Dillenburg, Herborn and Haiger entitled to vote to the estates of the Duchy of Nassau , which the abolition of certain taxes and official duties, independence of the judiciary and the transfer of domains from personal property of the prince to that of the state. As a result, this publication was printed, distributed and discussed in political journalism in the Rhenish region. Two writings from mid-May 1818 and February 1819, the so-called “Examining Remarks”, called for the self-emancipation of the estates from the guardianship of the sovereign and a joint initiative with the estates of other German countries to form a nation state, and ultimately even a revolution. The authorship was never cleared beyond doubt, but was awarded to Snell. Therefore, at the instigation of the District President Carl Friedrich Emil von Ibell , he was removed from his position in May 1818.

Snell received a professorship in Dorpat in 1819 , but had to give it up after a denunciation by Ibel and in 1821 accepted a professorship at the University of Basel . In 1833 he went to the University of Zurich as a professor , and in 1834 to the newly founded University of Bern , where he became the first rector.

Since he worked here with his brother Ludwig Snell in the spirit of radical liberalism, he came into conflict with the ruling moderate liberal party and was deposed on an unfounded charge of treason without a judicial investigation and banished from the canton. He then turned to Baselland , where he was elected to the district administrator and became the main initiator of the 1845 free movement, but returned to Bern after the radical liberal reform of the Bern constitution of 1846.

He founded the “Young Law School” at the University of Bern. Together with his lectures, which have been incorporated into his work Natural Law, this shaped a whole generation of young lawyers in the 1830s and 1840s and thus had a decisive influence on the radical liberal movement in Switzerland . His students included his son-in-law Jakob Stämpfli , Jakob Dubs and Ulrich Ochsenbein , all three later federal councilors and his son-in-law Niklaus Niggeler , the creator of the Bernese civil code of 1847, editor of the Bernerzeitung and President of the National Council. Snell was an honorary member of the Helvetia student union and a leading member of the Swiss National Association founded in 1835 .

His opponent Jeremias Gotthelf called him a “strange rascal”, “drunk professor” and “revolutionary from the very beginning”. Snell and his brother and their supporters were popularly known as the "Snellen" in reference to the desired pace of liberal reforms.

Wilhelm Snell was particularly involved in the fight against the constant expansion of the state, which threatened the freedom of the individual. The power of government and the administration are to be restricted, since by their very nature they strive to expand the enjoyment of power (Natural Law 216). To this end, Snell promoted the restriction of administration through legislation and, in fiscal matters, through the courts, but indicated that the restriction could also take place through constitutional jurisdiction (Naturrecht 233).

Works

  • Natural law , "Natural law after the lectures of Dr. Wilhelm Snell, published posthumously by a friend of the eternal one". 1st edition Langnau im Emmental 1857, further editions Bern 1859, 1885.

literature

  • Christoph Zürcher: Snell, Wilhelm. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
  • Snell, Wilhelm. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 24, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2010,ISBN 978-3-428-11205-0, pp. 516-518 ( digitized version).
  • Wilhelm OechsliSnell, Wilhelm . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 34, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1892, pp. 512-514.
  • Wilhelm Snell's life and work . Dedicated by some friends to the memory of the deceased. Book printing of the Berner Zeitung, Bern 1851.
  • Peter Moraw : Brief History of the University of Giessen. Giessen 1990, ISBN 3-927835-00-5 .
  • Fernando Garzoni: The rule of law in Swiss state thinking in the 19th century; taking into account the development in English, North American, French and German state thinking. Zurich 1952, p. 125 ff.
  • Michael Lauener: Jeremias Gotthelf - preacher against the rule of law. Schulthess, Zurich 2011, ISBN 978-3-7255-6259-6 .
  • Michael Lauener: Jeremias Gotthelf's fight against the rule of law idea of ​​the young Wilhelm Snells law school , in: Thomas Vormbaum (ed.): Yearbook of Legal History 13 (2012). De Gruyter, Berlin / Boston 2013, pp. 388–434 (first in: Felix Hafner / Andreas Kley / Victor Monnier [eds.]: Commentationes Historiae Iuris Helveticae VIII / 2012. Staempfli Verlag, Bern 2012, pp. 83–128, ISBN 978-3-7272-8822-7 ).
  • Michael Lauener: Wilhelm Snell's political and legal thinking , in: Nicolas Gex / Lukas Künzler / Olivier Meuwly (eds.), Amitié et patrie. Research on radical movement / Regards sur le mouvement radical, 1820–1850 , in: Berner Zeitschrift für Geschichte [BEZG] 77/04, 2015, pp. 46–54.
  • Monika Dettwiler Rustici: Bernese wildfire. Zytglogge, 5th edition, Basel 2010, ISBN 978-3-7296-0560-2 . In this historical novel Wilhelm Snell, his daughters and students are central characters.
  • Wolf-Heino Struck : The pursuit of civil liberty and national unity from the point of view of the Duchy of Nassau . In: Nassauische Annalen , 77th Volume, 1966. pp. 142-216.

Web links

Commons : Wilhelm Snell  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ University of Bern: Opening speech by Wilhelm Snell
  2. ^ Basel-Landschaft, personal dictionary: Wilhelm Snell
  3. ^ Wilhelm Snell: Natural Law
  4. 2008 as an unchanged reprint in the "Elibron Classics series" of Adamant Media Corporation, New York. Unprinted lecture transcripts are in the Swiss Literary Archives in Bern, in the State Archives of the Canton of Bern, in the University Library of Bern and in the State Archives of the Canton of Basel-Stadt.
  5. Michael Lauener: Wilhelm Snells Political and Legal Thought 2015