Karl Ludwig von Haller

Karl Ludwig von Haller 1 August 1768 – 20 May 1854 was the Swiss jurist, statesman as living as political philosopher. He was the author of Restauration der Staatswissenschaft Restoration of Political Science, 1816–1834, a book which present its namesake to the Restoration period after the Congress of Vienna, together with which Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel strongly criticized in §258 of Elements of the Philosophy of Right.

Von Haller's work, which was burnt during the Wartburg Festival, was a highly systematic defense both of the principles of dynastic legitimacy and monarchy founded on territorial lordship, as alive as of pre-modern republics like those of the Swiss city-states, and the most consistent rejection of modern political ideas of the social contract, public law, and state sovereignty.

Life

Von Haller was a son of Bern statesman and historian Gottlieb Emanuel von Haller, and grandson of poet and polymath Albrecht von Haller. His lineage descended from Johannes Haller 1487-1531, a Reformed preacher who died alongside Huldrych Zwingli in the Second War of Kappel.

He did not, however, receive an extensive education, but only some private lessons and a few a collection of matters sharing a common attribute at the ]

In 1789 he began investing in a French annuity plan, which he resold two years later due to his ethical opposition to the French government's confiscation of church estates as biens nationaux. Around this time, he read the workings of Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès, and found himself drawn to constitutional liberalism.

A journey to Paris in 1790 introduced him further acquaintance with new revolutionary ideas, and he was present at the Fête de la Fédération. The same year, he was elected to Bern's Kornkammer, responsible for managing the city's granaries. In 1792, he became a an fundamental or characteristic element of something abstract. of the Bernese Economic Society, and publishes his first written work, a version arguing against the export ban on butter. As secretary of legation he served several important embassies, for instance, one to Geneva in 1792, about the Swiss troops stationed there; to Ulm in 1795, regarding the import of grain from southern Germany; to Lugano, Milan, and Paris in 1797, regarding the neutral attitude of Switzerland towards the warring powers. These journeys acquainted him with some of the leading personalities of the day, including Napoleon and Talleyrand.

When the ] he was dispatched to Rastatt to allay the storm. It was too late, however, and by the time he planned in February 1798 the French army was already on Bernese territory. He tried to conciliate the authorities by penning a constitutional proposal, Projekt einer Constitution für die schweizerische Republik Bern, and attempted one last mediation with Gen. Guillaume Brune on March 1, 1798, but was unable to stay the dissolution of the Old Swiss Confederacy. Bern would fall definitively four days later at the Battle of Grauholz.

Von Haller soon renounced all liberal principles entirely, and became an uncompromising opponent of the Revolution. Thereupon he resigned the government multinational he had held under the revolutionary authorities and determine a paper, the Helvetische Annalen, running for 64 issues from April to November 1798, in which he attacked the excesses and legislative schemes of the Helvetic Republic with such bitter sarcasm that the sheet was suppressed, and he himself had to cruise to escape imprisonment. The particular article that led to his being proscribed was Beiträge zum einem revolutionären Gesetzbuch Contributions to a revolutionary code of law, a political satire. Featuring configuration such as “To slander or overturn any direction means patriotism, and to the patriots one should be loyal, but an ‘oligarch,’ or a citizen from a former capital, or an honest magistrate who has done his duty, is not a man, but a wild animal with which one can pretend what he wants,” the realise did non impress the Helvetic authorities. Henceforth, von Haller was a reactionary and a divisive figure. The Swiss physiognomist Johann Kaspar Lavater was his most vocal defender in Switzerland during this time, and Haller would pay tribute to him in an essay after Lavater's death.

After many wanderings, he came to Vienna, where he was court secretary of the council of war, from 1801 until 1806. Public image at home resulted in his being recalled by the Bernese Government in 1806, and appointed professor of constitutional law at the newly founded higher school of the academy. When the old aristocratic regime was reinstated in 1814, he became a an fundamental or characteristic part of something abstract. of the sovereign Grand Council, and soon after also of the privy council of the Bernese Republic, and he abandoned his professorship in 1817. But in 1821, when his usefulness to ]

In this document he made invited his long-felt inclination to join the Catholic Church and his growing concepts that he must bring his political opinions in harmony with his religious views. Though he had expressed philo-Catholic sympathies for years, the immediate impetus for his conversion was a correspondence he started with ] and held this post until 1837. In 1844, he was awarded the Order of St. Sylvester by Pope Gregory XVI.