You are bidding on one“Home certificate for married men". Zurich from 1863.

Signed from the local council president Johann Heinrich Emanuel Mousson (1803-1869) and the municipal clerk Eugene Escher (1831-1900).

Johann Heinrich Emanuel Mousson (* 28. September 1803 in Lonay; † 25. December 1869 in Zurich), citizen of Morges, Bern and Zurich, was a conservative Swiss politician, mayor of the canton of Zurich (1840 to 1845) and mayor of Zurich (1863 to 1869).

Eugene Escher (* 10. May 1831 in Riesbach (today Zurich); † 25. May 1900 in Zurich) was a Swiss politician (FDP), lawyer and journalist. From 1868 to 1872 he was editor-in-chief of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ).

Issued for Hans Kaspar Heß, b. 1833. Also valid for his wife Anna Regula, née. Brighter.

Form filled out by hand, dated Zurich, 18. November 1863.

Format:35.3 x 22.4 cm.

Condition: Folded lengthwise and crosswise. Paper browned and slightly wrinkled, with edge damage and small tears in the fold. Please also note the pictures!

About Mousson & Escher (source: wikipedia):

Johann Heinrich Emanuel Mousson (*28. September 1803 in Lonay; † 25. December 1869 in Zurich), citizen of Morges, Bern and Zurich, was a conservative Swiss politician, mayor of the canton of Zurich (1840 to 1845) and mayor of Zurich (1863 to 1869).

Biography: Johann Heinrich Mousson was the older of two sons of the Federal Chancellor Jean-Marc Mousson and was born in his hometown of Lonay near Morges. Since his father had to move his residence whenever he changed suburbs, he received his education in Zurich and at the Bern Academy. From 1824 he studied law at the University of Göttingen in the Kingdom of Hanover. After completing his studies and staying in Paris, he began working in the federal chancellery in 1828 and was promoted to his father's private secretary in the same year. After his resignation in 1830, he moved up to the office of state clerk. However, he resigned from this office on the 5th. August 1833 because he did not agree with the actions of the liberal majority in the confusion surrounding the cantonal divisions in Basel and Schwyz.

Mousson then settled in Zurich, whose hereditary citizenship had been granted to his father. In the same year he was elected to the Grand Council. In 1834 he took over the commercial directorate, which was responsible for carrying out major construction projects in the city and canton of Zurich. In 1836 he became a member of the Grand City Council and the Zurich District Court. After the Zurich coup, the conservative-minded Mousson was elected on 20 In September 1839 he was elected to the government council of the canton of Zurich and in 1840 he moved up to the office of mayor of Zurich, the chairmanship of the government of the canton of Zurich, and became a member of the state council. From 1841 to 1845 he was President of the Legislative Council, and in 1844 Zurich envoy to the Diet.

As a conservative politician, he was close to the conservative thinker Johann Caspar Bluntschli. When Mousson's counterpart, Hans Konrad von Muralt, resigned in December 1844, the conservatives tried in vain to help Bluntschli succeed him. The liberal Ulrich Zehnder was elected in his place, which significantly weakened the position of the conservatives in the canton of Zurich. Mousson's position became increasingly impossible given the liberal majority in the Grand Council and the increasing tensions between liberal and conservative cantons in the Swiss Confederation.

When he was given instructions by the Grand Council to vote against the conservative canton of Lucerne on the Jesuit question for the extraordinary session in the spring of 1845, it was only with difficulty that Mousson was prevented from resigning immediately. As mayor of Zurich, he opened on the 25th. February 1845, the extraordinary Diet in Zurich and thereby assumed the dignity of President of the Federal Diet, which was associated with Zurich's takeover of the suburb.

When the elections in Zurich took place on the 2nd April 1845 resulted in a liberal majority in the government council, Mousson resigned on April 3rd. He resigned from his position as mayor of Zurich in April, but remained a member of the Grand Council until 1868.

Mousson now turned to politics in the city of Zurich and was elected on the 17th. May 1847 member of the inner city council and 1848 vice president of the city council. On the 1st In June 1863 he took over the office of mayor. From 1867 onwards he suffered from serious illness and first lost his voice and, in the spring of 1869, his eyesight. Since he wasn't recovering, he laid down on the 3rd. Resigned from all his offices in July 1869.

Eugene Escher (*10. May 1831 in Riesbach (today Zurich); † 25. May 1900 in Zurich) was a Swiss politician (FDP), lawyer and journalist. From 1868 to 1872 he was editor-in-chief of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ).

biography

Education: Eugen Escher was born in Zurich as the son of the mayor of Grüningen, who had recently lost his job for political reasons, lawyer and former NZZ editor Heinrich Escher, and Elisabetha Haupt. He attended primary and secondary school there and from 1842 the lower high school and from 1846 the upper high school. After graduating from high school, he went to Geneva for a year to practice French conversation. He also attended lectures by Philippe Camperio at the academy's law school and joined the Geneva section of the radical student association Helvetia.

From 1850 he studied at the Faculty of Political Science at the University of Zurich. He now stayed away from Helvetia, from which he had become estranged, but also did not join the competing Zofinger association. In 1851, with financial support from his wealthy uncle Salomon Escher, he went to Heidelberg to complete his law studies and heard lectures by Adolph von Vangerow on pandects. He completed the second semester of his stay abroad in Berlin, where he heard Carl Gustav Homeyer, Friedrich Julius Stahl, Friedrich Ludwig Keller and August Wilhelm Heffter.

After his return to Zurich, Escher wanted to do a doctorate, but his father, who saw this as a waste of money, discouraged him and instead sent him to Paris in 1852 for eight months to prepare for higher political or diplomatic work. At this time, Eugen Escher's sister Henriette visited him in London, again supported financially by his uncle. In mid-1853 Escher was back in Zurich, where he worked as an assistant at the district court. In 1855 he was able to give lectures on French law as a private lecturer at the University of Zurich, which gave him the impetus for his subsequent doctorate in absentia at the University of Jena; The uncle again covered the costs.[1]

Political career: At the end of 1854 Escher was elected district judge and at the end of 1856 the better-paid city clerk (head of the chancellery). In this position he tried to achieve more transparency and primarily used the Neue Zürcher Zeitung to achieve this. Shortly after his election, his “Zunft zur Meisen” delegated him to the Grand City Council (since 1934, Zurich Municipal Council), and soon afterwards he was elected to the Grand Council of the Canton of Zurich (from 1870, Cantonal Council), which he presided over in 1869. In the city council he was a member of the then very important building commission, which was largely responsible for the expansion of the city.[2] At the end of 1860 he was elected to the part-time position of federal court clerk.

The non-partisan “Zurich City Association” was founded in 1866 to allow free discussion of community affairs and elected its initiator Escher as president. His successor was Johann Heinrich Landolt, who later became president of the NZZ management committee.[2] According to Escher, the “city association” exerted a strong influence on the course of city affairs in the following two years, e.g. B. in sewerage and water supply. In 1867 the radicals broke up the association and Escher founded the “Political Community Association” that was directed against the Democrats.

Escher, who actually wanted to stay out of big politics, partly because of his father's bitter experiences, ultimately became more politicized through the conflict with the Winterthur democrats, who fought various construction projects in the city that, in their view, took advantage of the canton. At the instigation of Alfred Escher, he ran for the Council of States and was elected in 1863 at the expense of his opponent, the democratic mayor of Winterthur, Johann Jakob Sulzer.

He now also became active as a journalist, first in the Berner Sonntagspost, edited by Abraham Roth. To his disappointment, it didn't accomplish much. The Winterthur Democrats then tried to get him to join; But Escher remained with the liberals.[5] He now also began to publish, first during the session as a Council of States, in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, for which he had already written as a young man from Geneva, Paris and Germany[2]; the then editor-in-chief Peter Felber encouraged him to do so. The main focus was on the fight against the tax increase for the rich planned by the Democrats as part of a constitutional reform.[6] Escher was the best elected member of the Constitutional Council for the years 1868/1869. Despite everything, the constitutional reform was successful thanks to the coalition of Democrats and conservatives and ultimately the majority won by the Democrats in the referendum.

Escher, who was fiercely opposed by the Democrats, was no longer elected to the Council of States in 1869; instead, in a by-election in 1870, he took up the National Council mandate from the liberal Jakob Dubs, who was elected to the Federal Council. However, he did not feel comfortable in the National Council, also because, unlike him, his party colleague Alfred Escher advocated the centralizing revision of the Federal Constitution and a dispute arose between Alfred Escher and Jakob Dubs over the Savoy question. In view of the problems there, the absences from the editorial office no longer seemed feasible to him. He therefore resigned in 1871.[7]

Neue Zürcher Zeitung: During the heated time of the disputes with the Democrats over the reform of the Zurich constitution, Escher unexpectedly fell into charge of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung. Initially, the “Political Community Association” planned to publish a new newspaper, but Escher opposed this.[8] The leading Liberal representatives such as Federal Councilor Jakob Dubs, Deacon Heinrich Hirzel[9] and Nordostbahn director Georg Stoll[10] came up with the plan to buy the NZZ from the Orell Füssli publishing house and convert it into a stock corporation. Escher was asked whether, under these circumstances, he would be willing to take over the overall management of the NZZ and ensure its revival after it had lost much of its importance due to the rise of the Democrats. Escher agreed. At 6. In March 1868, the stock corporation was constituted and the administrative committee (board of directors) was elected with Georg Stoll as president and Heinrich Hirzel, Georg Mousson, Ulrich Meister, Heinrich Landolt, Ernst Sulzberger and Conrad Bürkli as members. Escher resigned from his position as city clerk and was immediately awarded the Gold Medal of Merit for his outstanding achievements.

Escher resigned on the 31st. He joined the NZZ in March 1868 and took over as editor-in-chief on March 1st. May 1868.[11] From the previous editors, he took over the previous editor-in-chief Peter Felber, relegating him to the position of domestic and features editor and August Härlin as court reporter, while he dismissed Daniel Fehr and Hermann Freiherr Marschall von Biberstein.[12] In Fehr's place, he hired the Schwyz advocate Vital Stutzer, but fired him after six months and replaced him with the senior teacher at the industrial school Rudolf Honegger. Escher greatly expanded the foreign editorial team; He hired the editor of the Heidelberg Journal Ferdinand Rauchfuss as director. He also wanted to expand the trade reports and the features section. Escher himself initially primarily took care of the Constitutional Council's negotiations. He considered it a success that in the referendum on 18 In April 1868 only 35,000 voters voted for the draft constitution instead of 50,000 as a year ago, and 22,000 now voted against it.

However, Escher discovered that running the NZZ was far more difficult than he had imagined. Soon there were contradictory demands in the Liberal Party, where the newspaper was too lukewarm for some, especially the Young Liberals, and too polemical for others, and therefore competing local papers were founded. In addition, according to Escher, individual shareholders of the “most conservative stripe” believed that investing in the newspaper entitled them to see their special wishes printed in the paper. The financial circumstances were also far from sufficient to be able to carry out the planned reforms. Escher at least managed to negotiate a more favorable contract with “Orell Füssli”, which was still responsible for printing and shipping, and to significantly increase advertising revenue through a lease agreement with the advertising agency Haasenstein & Vogler.[14] In 1870 he was able to introduce twice-a-day editions[2] and slightly increase the subscription price.

While relations with the Administrative Committee were very harmonious, there were internal difficulties with the editorial team, especially with Ferdinand Rauchfuss, who did not like Escher's reports on the Constitutional Council, which in his opinion were too extensive, because they limited the space available to him. Rauchfuss's criticism, but also the fact that Escher had to revoke his signature authority, which he had introduced on his own authority, on the instructions of the administrative committee, which Rauchfuss perceived as a setback, soon led to great tension until Escher finally dismissed him at the end of September 1870. whereby he accused him of “not even halfway understanding the Swiss way and view of political processes”. When Rauchfuss took advantage of Escher's absence due to the National Council mandate and spoke extremely disparagingly about Napoleon III in the newspaper after the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War. Escher dismissed him without notice at the end of July 1870 when he said[16] what angered France's Zurich friends. His successor was August Gredig from Graubünden. Rauchfuss defended himself in the Tagblatt, in the advertising section of the Landbote and in his self-published work Dr. Eugen Escher as editor-in-chief of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung. A necessary defense in which he accused Escher of his “clerical nature” and mediocrity as well as his lack of collegiality and which he delivered Allen national and state councilors, the Zurich cantonal councils and the editors of all well-known Swiss newspapers. Escher vigorously replicated the public polemic in the NZZ.

After all the difficulties, Escher's decision to trade in the secure position of city clerk for the management of the NZZ appeared more and more questionable, and he now even doubted whether he was up to the task he had taken on. The Franco-Prussian War briefly gave the newspaper new importance, and Escher even considered acquiring its majority, buying up shares until he was one of the newspaper's main shareholders. But he was now looking for something else to do. His last significant journalistic achievement is his articles on the Tonhalle riot, in which he denied that “hatred of Germans” had manifested itself.[17] Shortly afterwards, Alfred Escher offered him the opportunity to succeed him as director of the Swiss Northeastern Railway (NOB), which he accepted with relief. After his resignation as editor-in-chief, he also joined the NZZ's administrative committee as a major shareholder in 1872 and also looked after a successor, which he found in the person of Hans Weber, who had become known as the federal prosecutor in the "Tonhalle riot". From 1873 until his resignation in 1877, he chaired the administrative committee and often intervened directly in the editorial team, to their displeasure.[18]

Economic career: In 1872, Escher initially became director of the legal service and financial administration of the Swiss Northeastern Railway (NOB) in place of Alfred Escher, who had transferred to the Gotthard Railway Directorate, before taking over the commercial services associated with a lot of travel instead of the legal service the following year. He had to deal with the NOB crisis from 1876 to 1878, which arose because of the introduction of a large number of new unprofitable lines. To do this, the NOB had to take on outside capital, which led to massive indebtedness. The financial difficulties brought the railway to the edge of the abyss. The blame for this was also placed on Eugen Escher, who was inexperienced in raising capital, and management of the financial administration was transferred directly to the new president, Heinrich Studer. The crisis led to Escher's resignation from the NZZ administrative committee in 1877. Embittered by the informal acceptance of his resignation, he refrained from working for the NZZ even in the form of correspondence.

In 1889, despite the discussions that had taken place 12 years earlier, Escher was elected president of the Nordostbahn. However, new difficulties arose in 1894. The banker and “Railway King”[2] Adolf Guyer-Zeller, who had become rich through Gotthard Railway and Nordostbahn shares, sought to take over the Nordostbahn and accused the management of wanting to make it easier for the federal government to acquire the Nordostbahn by keeping dividends artificially low in the hope of positions in the Federal Railway Administration, which was then being expanded. Escher was then voted out of office as president of the board at the general meeting and resigned, seriously offended.

He then tried to work as an independent asset manager and as a representative of the shipping company Schenker & Co., which he knew from the NOB, in Vienna, both without success. His hope of being elected to the board of directors of the Schweizerische Kreditanstalt also did not come true.

It was only his election to a commission set up by the Federal Council in 1985, which was supposed to carry out the preparatory work for the repurchase of the Swiss main railways, that Escher once again found satisfactory work, during which he wrote railway and other transport reports, including for foreign countries . The Federal Council also delegated him to the board of directors of various railway companies. Escher went from being a former supporter of private railways to a staunch supporter of the nationalization of the Swiss railways. In the obituary in the NZZ it is described as a stroke of luck for the federal government "that such outstanding forces[21] were thrown into its hands by the opposing party at the right time."[22] The buyback was approved by voters in the referendum vote on June 20th. February 1898 with 68% yes votes and 15 out of 22 states clearly supported.[23] Escher thus experienced a final satisfaction towards Guyer-Zeller: at his suggestion, the Federal Council determined the lines to be purchased from the NOB (494 km) and those to be continued to be operated by it (270 km).[24]

Private: Escher had been married to Johanna née Hanhart since 1858, a daughter of the wealthy Dietiker industrialist Jean Hanhart-Solivo.[25]

Death: Shortly after his biggest victory in the vote on March 20th. In February 1898, following the nationalization of the railways, Escher became violently ill with attacks of sciatica and gout. The last two years of his life were marred by physical suffering until shortly after his 69th birthday. birthday died.

Honors

1868: Golden Medal of Merit from the city of Zurich for excellent achievements and merits

Publications

Contributions to the knowledge of civil justice in France. Orell Füssli, Zurich 1854.

CV in quiet and turbulent times (1831–1898). Written down for relatives and friends. Printing office of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Zurich 1907 (also appeared in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung in 21 episodes from 7. August 1907 to 31. August 1907, Morgenblatt, p. 1).