Citizenship by degrees: the legal status of the Locarnese

Protection, residence and the purchase of citizenship

For a refugee in sixteenth-century Zurich, the decisive legal question was citizenship. Without it, a merchant could not join a guild in his own right, could not sit in the councils, could not hold any of the city's lucrative offices in the territory and remained exposed to expulsion if the political climate changed. With it, he and his male descendants acquired a share in the city's political and economic privileges, including the right to trade on equal terms, access to the city's institutions of credit and charity and, eventually, the prospect of office. Citizenship was therefore the most valuable asset the city could confer, which is how the council treated it. Admission required a formal decision of the council and the payment of an admission fee. From the late sixteenth century the Swiss towns raised these fees again and again, until in some places access to citizenship became practically impossible.¹

The Locarnese families obtained citizenship in stages, and some waited for generations. Giovanni Muralto, the physician-surgeon who had arrived with his wife Barbara and their children, received citizenship together with his two sons in 1566, eleven years after the exile.² The Neue Deutsche Biographie dates the admission of the surgeon Johannes Muralt, founder of the Zurich branch, to 1556 and speaks of citizenship "with voting rights". The difference between the two dates may reflect a distinction between an early grant of protection or limited rights and the later formal admission, but it cannot be resolved without the council records.³ For the Orelli the sources are clearer. The sons of Aloisio Orelli, Franz and Johann Melchior Aloys, were admitted to Zurich citizenship in 1592, thirty-seven years after their father's arrival. Even then their citizenship was not complete. Johann Melchior Aloys became a citizen "though not with full rights".⁴

Full and limited citizenship

The distinction between full and limited citizenship mattered more than the act of admission itself. Zurich, like other Swiss cities, developed from the late sixteenth century a graded system of citizenship with restricted rights, under which new citizens could be admitted without access to council seats and political offices. The purpose was to protect the political monopoly of the established families while allowing the city to profit from the wealth and skills of newcomers.⁵ The Orelli were refused full citizenship rights in 1606, in 1639 and again in 1673. Only in 1679 did the Grand Council grant them full rights.⁶ In the same year Daniel Orelli was appointed a judge of the city court, the first member of the family to hold a political position in Zurich. He became director of the posts in 1687 and represented the Saffron guild in the Grand Council from 1709.⁷

The chronology is instructive. The Orelli were by 1700 among the leading merchants of Zurich, yet it took them a hundred and twenty-four years after the exile to obtain the full civic equality that would have allowed them to translate commercial success into political influence. The Muralt followed a similar path. Caspar Muralt entered the Grand Council in 1680 and the Small Council in 1685, and four further members of the family sat in the Small Council between 1685 and 1798.⁸ The political integration of the Locarnese thus coincided with the last decades of the seventeenth century, when the silk industry they had helped to build had become one of the economic pillars of the city.

Year Event 1555 Arrival of the Locarnese exiles in Zurich 1556 or 1566 Citizenship of the surgeon Johannes (Giovanni) Muralt and his sons 1567 Citizenship of the Pestalozzi from Chiavenna 1592 Citizenship of Franz and Johann Melchior Aloys Orelli, not with full rights 1606, 1639, Full citizenship refused to the Orelli 1673 1679 Full citizenship rights for the Orelli; Daniel Orelli city judge 1680–1685 Caspar Muralt in the Grand and Small Councils 1778–1785 Hans Heinrich von Orelli mayor (Bürgermeister) of Zurich

Table: Stages in the civic integration of the Locarnese and related families in Zurich (sources in the footnotes to this section).

Notes

1. Holenstein, "Habitants" (above): "A la fin du XVIe s. et au XVIIe, l'accès à la bourgeoisie, tant en ville qu'à la campagne, fut rendu difficile (le relèvement constant des taxes d'admission, la création de catégories de bourgeois aux droits restreints en apportent la preuve [...]), parfois même impossible." Rainer J. Schweizer and Christina Müller, "Droit de cité", in DHS, version of 11 January 2021, https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/fr/articles/008969/2021-01-11/ (consulted 5 October 2026): in the early modern period the towns made access to citizenship "de plus en plus ardue, puis impossible". See also Peyer, Verfassungsgeschichte der alten Schweiz (above). ↩
2. Wikipedia, "Barbara Muralto" (above): "Giovanni Muralto and his two sons were granted citizenship of Zurich" in 1566; Wikipedia, "Muralto family", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muralto_family (consulted 4 October 2026): "Johannes Muralt became Zürich bourgeois" in 1566. ↩
3. Edgar Bonjour, "Muralt, von", in Neue Deutsche Biographie 18 (1997), 602, https://www.deutsche-biographie.de/sfz69190.html (consulted 4 October 2026): Martinus von Muralt emigrated "als Anhänger der Reformation 1555 mit seiner Familie nach Zürich"; his son Johannes, a surgeon, obtained citizenship in 1556. The divergence from the date 1566 is noted here for verification against the council records (Staatsarchiv Zürich). ↩
4. Wikipedia, "Orelli family", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orelli_family (consulted 4 October 2026): admission of Franz and Johann Melchior Aloys to citizenship in 1592; Wikipedia, "Johann Melchior Aloys von Orelli", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Melchior_Aloys_von_Orelli (consulted 4 October 2026): citizen of Zurich in 1592 "though not with full rights". ↩
5. Holenstein, "Habitants" (above), on the creation in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries of "catégories de bourgeois aux droits restreints". Rodolfo Huber and Martin Illi, "Orelli", in DHS, version of 3 May 2017, https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/fr/articles/020179/ (consulted 5 October 2026): Franz and Johann Melchior Aloys Orelli were admitted to the citizenship of Zurich in 1592 "mais sans droit d'accès aux charges politiques"; full rights were refused in 1606, 1639 and 1673 and granted in 1679. See also Peyer, Verfassungsgeschichte (above). ↩
6. Wikipedia, "Orelli family" (above): refusal of full citizenship in 1606, 1639 and 1673; grant of full citizenship rights by the Grand Council in 1679. ↩
7. Wikipedia, "Daniel Orelli" (above): city judge in 1679, "the first member of the Orelli family to hold a political position in Zurich"; director of posts 1687–1714; representative of the Saffron guild in the Grand Council from 1709. ↩
8. Wikipedia, "Muralto family" (above). ↩

For general information only. This article does not constitute legal or tax advice, does not replace advice on an individual case and creates no lawyer-client relationship. It reflects the legal position as of August 2025.