In 1943 he secured election to the "Nationalrat" (lower house of the Swiss national parliament in Bern), representing the Free Democratic Party on behalf of his canton.
[1][2][3] Urs Dietschi was born into a well-established family in Olten (SO), a prosperous mid-sized town with a mixed economy on the western fringes of Middle Switzerland, in which he grew up.
The effects were felt in London, Paris and, especially, in Berlin, while south of Ticino, Italy had switched to what became an anti-democratic fascist political system as early as 1922.
[1] Later that same year he accepted a cantonal-level government position as a "legal secretary" to the Department for the military, police, justice and public instruction.
His departmental boss was the distinguished liberal jurist-politician Dr. Robert Schöpfer [arz; de], from whom he learned the discipline and systematic approach necessary for effective administration work.
[2] In 1929 Dietschi's professional focus switched again: between 1929 and 1937 he is described as a lawyer based in Olten, although by this time his energies were increasingly taken up by his political career.
In place of the "timeless" class-struggle which had become central to political though during the nineteenth century the "Young Liberals" called for a coming together of the three historically separated classes: the bourgeoisie, the [urban] workers and the peasantry.
In 1933 the movement pursued the logic of their ideas further, with demands that the changes they espoused needed to be enshrined and secured through a total revision of the Swiss constitution.
In the nearer term, however, the "Jungliberale Bewegung" was confronted after 1934 by the emergence of the "Tatgemeinschaft", another loosely defined but shrilly promoted grouping, drawing support from Catholic conservative and corporatist elements as well as from moderniser nationalists inspired by Mussolini and Hitler.
These, too, called for a total revision of the Swiss constitution, and the objectives of the two movements became for a time conflated in popular consciousness, despite their contrasting philosophical underpinnings.
Social, constitutional and cultural policy would be of particular interest to him, and the departmental responsibilities allocated to him provided plenty of opportunity for him to contribute constructively.
Although Switzerland was not among the belligerent nations during the war, the strategic, economic and political impact meant that there were very few government initiatives placed before the "Nationalrat" between 1939 and 1945 other than those necessitated by international developments.
He believed that the issues involved important responsibilities, that national legislators could not simply leave to cantonal authorities and private individuals.
[14][20] Born into the so-called Christian Catholic Church, which had emerged out of the deist currents of the Enlightenment, Dietschi was deeply committed to religious tolerance.
The resulting archive constitutes a source and important research tool for the history of the canton during the twentieth century and on that of the "Young liberal movement".