Die Tat was a social liberal Swiss newspaper published by Migros from 1935 to 1978, first as a weekly, then as an evening daily and finally as a morning tabloid.

While the weekly newspaper was the party organ of the Alliance of Independents, the daily paper quickly emancipated from it and also gained a high reputation outside Switzerland, in particular thanks to its weekend supplement Die literarische Tat under the direction of Max Rychner and Erwin Jaeckle and the collaboration of numerous well-known journalists.

The decline of the political press in the 1970s, combined with a lack of advertising revenue due to its proximity to Migros, led to the closure of the dailyu newspaper at the end of March 1977.

It referred to the seven members of the "Association of Independents" who had won a seat on the National Council in 1935: Franklin Bircher, Gottlieb Duttweiler, Ulrich Eggenberger,[2] Heinrich Schnyder,[3] Willy Stäubli,[4] Fritz Wüthrich[5] and Balthasar Zimmermann.

"[6] He also stated as a motive for founding the newspaper the resistance to National Socialism in Switzerland, which Die Tat opposed without compromise from the very beginning.

—Gottlieb Duttweiler: Die Tat, October 2, 1959The editor in-chief was initially Hermann Walder,[7] the lawyer for Migros, followed by Eugen Theodor Rimli from November 19, 1937, and Willy Aerni, the managing director of the Alliance of Independents (LdU) founded at the end of 1936, from April 28, 1939.

Walder moved to the editorial board of Die Tat, where he remained until the separation from Duttweiler in October 1943, and Rimli continued to write articles for the newspaper after his resignation as editor in-chief (in 1940/1941 he was editor-in-chief of the short-lived first tabloid newspaper in Switzerland, Actualis, after which he founded Fraumünster Publishing House Zurich, later renamed Stauffacher-Publishing House, and published Illustrierte Weltgeschichte and Illustrierte Welt-Kunstgeschichte).

The first editorial team[12] consisted of Max Rychner (feuilleton, but de facto abroad until 1943 due to absences for military service, then feuilleton until 1962), Herbert von Moos[13] (abroad, previously Schweizer Zeitung and Schweizerische Republikanische Blätter, also popular editor of the "Völkerbundschronik" at Radio Beromünster, from May 1937 "Die Welt von Genf aus gesehen", from 19.

September 1939 called "Weltchronik", under pressure from the German legation and Federal Councillor Marcel Pilet-Golaz because of his emphatically anti-Nazi stance, but formally dismissed for "negligence" at Radio Beromünster[14] and resigned in December 1940 "for health reasons"[15]), Felix Moeschlin (president of the Swiss Writers' Association, domestic affairs, until 1942, then president of the editorial commission), Karl Gnädinger (writer, local affairs, pseudonym "Nepomuk", until his accidental death in 1943) and Charles La Roche (economist, economics, until 1940, then replaced by Hans Munz).

At the end of 1941, the Tat editorial office, administration and print shop moved into new premises on Limmatstrasse in the Migros-Genossenschafts-Bund (MGB), which was founded the same year.

From July 31, 1943, the newspaper was published with a new typeface, the titles in Antiqua instead of sans-serif and with black negative bars as column headers in the political section.

Duttweiler had initially intended him to be editor-in-chief, but Jaeckle wanted to work on his habilitation and suggested Max Rychner instead, a colleague of his at the feuilleton Der Bund at the time.

Just as Jaeckle had uncompromisingly opposed National Socialism, after the war he fought against the proscription of what he saw as alleged National Socialist sympathizers such as Hans Konrad Sonderegger, Gustav Däniker, Eugen Bircher and Robert F. Denzler[25] or Grock as well as "purges" or expulsions of Germans such as Bernard von Brentano[26] and insisted on strict adherence to the law.

[31] However, he was successful with his demand that Swiss soldiers be issued with sealed pocket ammunition for storage at home so that they would be ready to fight immediately in the event of war.

[35] After leaving the National Council in 1962, Erwin Jaeckle rarely expressed his political views and, following the resignation of Max Rychner in the same year, devoted himself increasingly to the management of Literarische Tat, his literary passions and genealogical studies of his family.

Charles Linsmayer and Alfred A. Häsler asked the publisher in a petition signed by 153 personalities from the worlds of culture, science, politics and business, including Friedrich Traugott Wahlen, Hans-Peter Tschudi and Siegfried Unseld, to at least continue Literarische Tat in a suitable manner.

[39] To this end, Arnold recruited a largely new, much larger team under editor-in-chief Roger Schawinski, including Kurt W. Zimmermann, Urs P. Gasche, Peter Knechtli (Basel), Hanspeter Thür (advice), Fredy Hämmerli and Gerd Klinner, who had already been editor of the daily paper from 1969 to 1972.

The original plan was to publish the new Tat as early as the end of 1976, also as an daily newspaper, but Schawinski, who had been working for Migros since the beginning of 1977, successfully resisted this move.

[41] The newspaper subsequently became known, among other things, for uncovering the so-called Chiasso scandal at Schweizerische Kreditanstalt SKA (now Credit Suisse), which Tat' called "SKAndal".

In addition, the annual deficits of 8 to 12 million Swiss francs far exceeded the targets and a balanced account, as demanded by Arnold for a period that had now been extended to five years, no longer seemed achievable.

[43] Arnold finally demanded that Schawinski dismiss two or three activists from the works group of the left-wing SJU union, including Hanspeter Bürgin in particular,[44] whom he considered to be mainly responsible for the newspaper's economically critical, sharp course.

The latter reacted on 22 September 1978 "in complete misjudgement of its position of power" (Schawinski)[46] with a strike in which all 56 editorial employees organized in the SJU took part and protested against Vögeli's appointment, which had been made without consulting them.

[49] This meant that on Saturday, September 23, 1978, for the first time in Swiss press history, a newspaper was not published due to a strike by the editorial staff.

[50] Migros gave the editorial staff a written ultimatum to resume work by Friday evening, which was later extended to Saturday noon.

In an "open letter to Swiss newspaper readers" published in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung on September 27, 1978, among others, Arnold justified Migros' actions.

On October 19, 1978, Migros reached an agreement with the VPOD trade union, to which SJU belonged as one of its sections, to pay the wages of the editors who had been dismissed without notice until the end of the year and to waive claims for damages.

For its part, the VPOD agreed to withdraw the initiated judicial assessment of the justification of the dismissals without notice and to discontinue the strike newspaper Die Wut, in which Arnold's address and telephone number had been published.