History of Zurich

Political power lay with these abbeys during medieval times, until the guild revolt in the 14th century which led to the joining of the Swiss Confederacy.

Zurich was the focus of the Swiss Reformation led by Huldrych Zwingli, and it came to riches with silk industry in Early Modern times.

[1][2][3] In 2004, traces of a previously unknown pre-Roman Celtic (La Tène culture) settlement were discovered, the center of which lay on the Lindenhof hill respectively the area around the Münsterhof square besides the Limmat.

In 1890, so-called Potin lumps were found, whose largest weights 59.2 kilograms (131 lb) at the Prehistoric pile dwelling settlement Alpenquai.

A female who died in about 200 BC found buried in a carved tree trunk during a construction project at the Kern school complex in March 2017 in Aussersihl.

A sheepskin coat, a belt chain, a fancy wool dress, a scarf and a pendant made of glass and amber beads were also discovered with the woman.

Following Constantine's reform of the Empire in 318, the border between the praetorian prefectures of Gaul and Italy was just east of Turicum crossing the Linth between Lake Zurich and Walensee.

Roman Turicum was not fortified, but there was a small garrison at the tax-collecting point, set up not exactly on the border, but downstream of Lake Zurich, where the goods entering Gaul were loaded onto larger ships.

The earliest record of the town's name is preserved on a 2nd-century tombstone found in the 18th century on Lindenhof, referring to the Roman castle as "STA(tio) TUR(i)CEN(sis)".

In 1045, King Henry III granted the convent the right to hold markets, collect tolls, and mint coins, and thus effectively made the abbess the ruler of the city.

In 870 the sovereign placed his powers over all four in the hands of a single official (the Reichsvogt), and the union was still further strengthened by the wall built round the four settlements in the 10th century as a safeguard against Saracen marauders and feudal barons.

In 1218 the Reichsvogtei passed back into the hands of the king, who appointed one of the burghers as his deputy, the town thus becoming a free imperial city under the nominal rule of a distant sovereign.

This council (all powerful since 1304) was made up of the representatives of certain knightly and rich mercantile families (the patricians), who excluded the craftsmen from all share in the government, though it was to these last that the town was largely indebted for its rising wealth and importance.

Out of this change arose a quarrel with one of the branches of the Habsburg family, in consequence of which Brun was induced to throw in the lot of Zurich with the Swiss Confederation (May 1351).

During the later half of the 15th century, Zurich managed to substantially increase the territory under its control, gaining the Thurgau (1460), Winterthur (1467), Stein am Rhein (1459/84) and Eglisau (1496).

No doubt her trade connections with Italy led her to pursue a southern policy, traces of which are seen as early as 1331 in an attack on the Valle Leventina and in 1478, when Zurich men were in the van at the fight of Giornico, won by a handful of Confederates over 12,000 Milanese troops.

(Derived from Free Public Domain: Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition) This transfer of all power to the guilds had been one of the aims of the burgomaster Hans Waldmann (1483–89), who wished to make Zurich a great commercial centre.

His main ideas were embodied, however, in the constitution of 1498, by which the patricians became the first of the guilds, and which remained in force till 1798; some special rights were also given to the subjects in country districts.

It was the prominent part taken by Zurich in adopting and propagating (against the strenuous opposition of the Constafel) the principles of the Reformation (the Fraumünster Abbey being suppressed in 1524) which finally secured for it the lead in the Confederation.

Katharina von Zimmern (1478-1547), the last abbess of the Fraumünster Abbey, supported the peaceful introduction of the reformation in Zurich.

Early in the 18th century a determined effort was made to crush by means of heavy duties the flourishing rival silk trade in Winterthur.

The first symptoms of active discontent appeared later among the dwellers by the lake, who founded in 1794 a club at Stäfa and claimed the restoration of the liberties of 1489 and 1531, a movement which was put down by force of arms in 1795.

The old system of government perished in Zurich, as elsewhere in Switzerland, with the French invasion in the spring of 1798, and under the Helvetic constitution the country districts obtained political liberty.

In the first battle (4 June) the French under General André Masséna, on the defensive, were attacked by the Austrians under the Archduke Charles, Massena retiring behind the Limmat before the engagement had reached a decisive stage.

The Ötenbach monastery, founded 1285, fell victim to the increasingly grand city planning in 1902, with the entire Lindenhof hill it was built on removed to make way for the new Uraniastrasse and administration buildings.

The town was the Federal capital for 1839–40, and consequently the victory of the Conservative party there in 1839 (due to indignation at the nomination by the Radical government to a theological chair in the university of David Strauss, the author of the famous Life of Jesus) caused a great stir throughout Switzerland.

First of all in 1860 the town schools, opened to "settlers" only on paying high fees, were made accessible to all, next in 1875 ten years' residence ipso facto conferred the right of burghership.

In 1934, the city borders were again extended, to the inclusion of the former villages, by that time de facto suburbs, of Albisrieden, Altstetten, Höngg, Affoltern, Seebach, Oerlikon, Schwamendingen and Witikon (kleine Eingemeindung).

In 1982, communal elections resulted in the first conservative majority in 53 years (president Thomas Wagner 1982–1990), but in the early 1980s, Emilie Lieberherr and Ursula Koch where the first female politicians in Zurich's executive authority Stadtrat,[27] both representing the social-democratic SP political party.

The introduction of liberal laws (Gastgewerbegesetz 1997) favoured the development of Zurich's role as regional center of nightlife; also during the 1990s, a liberalisation of zoning laws (Bau- und Zonenordnung 1992; Stadtforum 1996) led to a renewal of construction activity (Technopark 1991–93, Steinfels-Areal 1993, Zürich West 1998), Growing suburbanization since the 1960s had resulted in congestions due to commuting, partly eased with the Zurich S-Bahn, introduced 1990.