Johann kasper bluntschli biography of michael

JOHANN KASPAR BLUNTSCHLI (1808-1881), Swiss jurist and politician, was born at Zurich on the 7th of March 1808, the son of a soap and candle manufacturer.

From school he passed into the Politische Institut (a seminary of law and political science) in his native town, and proceeding thence to the universities of Berlin and Bonn, took the degree of doctor juris in the latter in 1829.

Returning to Zurich in 1830, he threw himself with ardour into the political strife which was at the time unsettling all the cantons of the Confederation, and in this year published Ober die Verfassung der Stadt Zurich (On the Constitution of the City of Zurich).

This was followed by Das Volk and der Souverdn (1830), a work in which, while pleading for constitutional government, he showed his bitter repugnance of the growing Swiss radicalism. Elected in 1837 a member of the Grosser Rath (Great Council), he became the champion of the moderate conservativ