[1] His father, Louis Wyrsch, was a Swiss mercenary in the service of the Dutch East Indies in Banjarmasin, southern Borneo, while his mother, Johanna van den Berg, was a Javanese native.

[3] His father tried to enable this, contacting a friend in Utrecht and writing to the people he knew in the Dutch army, in which Alois should have been recruited as a sergeant and not a soldier.

[3] After a journey of nine months through Germany and the Netherlands he returned to Switzerland, where he fought with his father in the Sonderbund War in 1847.

[2] Wyrsch's role in the Swiss Army made him rather popular and he entered politics.

[2] As a liberal politician, he faced difficulties in a majority-Catholic conservative canton, and after he supported a new constitution in 1872 he was voted out of office.

[2] Wyrsch's political career on the cantonal level remained successful, and he served as a member of the executive council of Nidwalden for twenty-seven years, including twelve as president.