Swiss nobility

From the 15th c. onwards, rising economic and political pressure from the city-states enticed more and more families of the traditional feudal nobility to seek membership in the higher echelons of the citizenry.

These late-mediaeval urban upper classes were already composed of wealthy commoners (merchants, landowners, and craftspeople) but also of aristocrats from nearby fiefdoms or the descendants of ministeriales (i.e. knightly, originally unfree nobles in the service of ecclesiastical or secular fiefs).

Non-noble families could still be ennobled by letters patent, be it through the favour of foreign monarchs (most notably the kings of France) or by the cities themselves.

In Bern a constitutional law created in 1643 the privileged class of families eligible to Great Council membership.

The city-state of Fribourg defined its patrician ruling class through the so-called Lettre des Deux-Cents in 1627, and closed their ranks to non-privileged families in 1684.

By confirming that all patrician families were noble either by origin or by being members of the privileged class, this "Règlement relativement à l'introduction de l'égalité des familles patriciennes et de leurs titulatures" (17 and 18 July 1782) is official confirmation of an existing status rather than a collective ennoblement.

In Lucerne at the end of the 17th century the patricians were named with the title "Junker" and regularly made use of their nobility when they were abroad, particularly when they served in the foreigner armies.

So the capacity passed to a number of privileged families which then formed a noble patrician class whose members were qualified Herren und Bürger.

In the cantons of Uri, Schwyz and Unterwald, the political evolution from the Middle Ages to the 19th century was realised in a relatively similar way, but did not lead to the constitution of a "patriciate" but rather to the formation of a relatively closed class of new families sharing political power with the ancient noble families.

In the cantons of Schaffhausen and Zug, political power belonged to the corporations, so there was no real hereditary prerogative for government positions.

Ticino, before becoming a Swiss canton in 1803, did not form a political and administrative unit and there is thus no "nobility of Tessin" in a strict sense, however some noble families originate from this area.

In the cantons the families descended from the "State's chief" and from the bailiffs formed in fact a class of "integration nobility".

As for the canton of Appenzell Innerrhoden, there are known direct male decedents of the most elite noble Swiss family currently living abroad.

The modern canton of Aargau was only created in 1789 under Napoleon, when the previously Austrian Fricktal was joined to the other districts that had been conquered by the Old Swiss Confederacy in 1415.

The governance of the latter two districts alternated between the individual member states of the Swiss Confederacy in the form of condominiums.

In contrast, many of the smaller fiefs held by lower nobility (e.g. Hallwyl castle, owned by the family of its founders; or Habsburg castle itself, held at the time of the conquest by the ministerialis Wernher von Wohlen) continued into the new order and were not directly affected by it; several nobles, such as the lords of Reinach on Wildenstein castle, were officially enfeoffed by the conquering cantons, so that the only alteration in their title to the land was a change of liege lord, in this case from the counts of Habsburg to the city-state of Bern.

The canton of Basel had in place of a nobility a patriciate called the Daig, that dominated its political life.

Its most prominent members were the families Bernoulli, Burckhardt, Faesch, Iselin, Koechlin, Liechtenhan, Merian,[4] Sarasin, Schlumberger, Vischer, and Von der Mühll.

[5] In St. Gallen some powerful families formed a kind of patriciat whose members belong to the adelige Stube zum Notenstein.