Orell Füssli, scholarship and public life

From silk to print: the Orelli and the publishing house

The best-known trace of the Locarnese in modern Zurich is a company name. Orell Füssli, today a listed company that prints banknotes and security documents and holds an interest in one of the largest Swiss book retailers, traces its origins to 1519. In that year the printer Christoph Froschauer, who had moved to Zurich from Altötting in Bavaria, received the citizenship of the city and was commissioned to set up a printing press. Printing the works of Erasmus, Luther and Zwingli, Froschauer's firm became one of the most important publishers in the German-speaking world between 1530 and 1585.¹ The firm's later name combines three Zurich families, one of which is of Locarnese origin.

From 1735 Hans Conrad von Orelli (1714–1785) directed a publishing house and printing press together with his uncle, the scholar and critic Johann Jakob Bodmer. The firm, which traded as "Orell & Cie.", published poets and the Zurich Bible.² In 1761 the Gessner family joined the business, which became "Orell, Gessner & Cie." The poet and painter Salomon Gessner was himself a partner of the firm from 1761 and remained a partner of its successor until 1798. Meanwhile Johann Rudolf Füssli had become a partner in the old Froschauer firm in 1744 and its sole owner in 1766, under the name "Füssli & Cie." In 1770 the two businesses merged to form "Orell, Gessner, Füssli & Cie."³ In 1780 the firm entered the newspaper business with the Zürcher Zeitung, which became the Neue Zürcher Zeitung in 1821 and is today one of the leading newspapers in the German-speaking world.⁴

From print to banknotes

The publishing house became a security printer in the twentieth century. In 1909 Orell Füssli printed banknotes based on Swiss designs for the Swiss National Bank on a trial basis, and from the second series of notes issued by the SNB in 1911 individual denominations were printed by the firm.⁵ Banknote and security printing has remained the company's core business, together with identity documents, digital credentials and, through a joint venture, book retailing. The company is listed on the SIX Swiss Exchange.⁶ There is a certain logic in this development. A firm whose name recalls a family of Locarnese merchants, which had lived from commercial credit and bills of exchange, now prints the currency of the Swiss financial centre.

Essentials. The name Orell Füssli combines the Orelli (in the shortened form "Orell"), the Gessner and the Füssli. Hans Conrad von Orelli directed the publishing house "Orell & Cie." from 1735 with Johann Jakob Bodmer. The merger of 1770 created "Orell, Gessner, Füssli & Cie.", which founded the Zürcher Zeitung in 1780, the later Neue Zürcher Zeitung. Since 1911 the firm has printed Swiss banknotes for the Swiss National Bank.

Notes

1. Wikipedia, "Orell Füssli", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orell_F%C3%BCssli (consulted 4 October 2026). ↩
2. Wikipedia, "Hans Conrad von Orelli (1714)" (above); Wikipedia, "Orell Füssli" (above), on "Orell & Cie." operated by Hans Conrad von Orelli and Johann Jakob Bodmer. ↩
3. Wikipedia, "Orell Füssli" (above). Bruno Weber, "Gessner, Salomon", in DHS, version of 11 December 2006, https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/fr/articles/011825/ (consulted 5 October 2026): "Il fut associé, à partir de 1761, d'Orell, Gessner & Co. (Orell, Gessner, Füssli & Co. de 1770 à 1798)". ↩
4. Wikipedia, "Orell Füssli" (above): the firm "expanded its product range by entering into the newspaper business with the publication of the Zürcher Zeitung, which was to become Neue Zürcher Zeitung in 1821". ↩
5. Wikipedia, "Orell Füssli" (above). ↩
6. Orell Füssli AG, "History", https://www.orellfuessli.com/en/about-us/history (consulted 4 October 2026): founded in Zurich in 1519, listed on the SIX Swiss Exchange, with security printing, book retailing (Orell Füssli Thalia AG) and digital credentials (Procivis). ↩

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.