Gulden or franc? The currency debate of 1849 and 1850

The constitutional mandate

The Constitution of 1848 settled the question of competence in two sentences. Article 36 provided: “Dem Bunde steht die Ausübung aller im Münzregale begriffenen Rechte zu. Die Münzprägung durch die Kantone hört auf” (“The exercise of all rights comprised in the coinage prerogative belongs to the Confederation. The minting of coins by the cantons shall cease”). The article went on to charge the Confederation with fixing the monetary standard and the tariff for the old coins.¹ The last cantonal coins were one-rappen pieces struck by Zurich with the date 1848, so that the city which was to become the country’s financial capital also closed the long history of cantonal coinage.²

The constitutional text did not decide which standard the new federal currency should follow. That question divided the country along economic and geographic lines and became one of the first major controversies of the new federal state.

Two camps and their arguments

The choice was essentially between two models. The first was the south German gulden, the currency of Baden, Württemberg and Bavaria, which had been harmonised among the south German states by the Munich coinage treaty of 1837 and was widely used in the trade of eastern Switzerland. The second was the French franc, a decimal silver unit of five grams at nine-tenths fineness, which had been the basis of the Helvetic currency and circulated widely in western Switzerland. According to a popular account of the debate, the French system was supported by French-speaking Switzerland, Bern and Basel, while eastern Switzerland and Zurich backed the gulden. The divide reflected different trade orientations and different views about the best access to the world economy.³ The gulden camp could point to the recent consolidation of the south German currency area.⁴

The case for the gulden was practical and regional. The trade of Zurich, St. Gallen, Thurgau, Schaffhausen, Glarus and Graubünden with southern Germany and Austria was large, much of it conducted in gulden. Switching to the franc would impose conversion costs on the east and would cut its monetary link with its most important neighbours. The opponents also asked why the fact that a currency was widespread internationally should determine Swiss policy. The University Library of Basel summarises the critics’ arguments as the prohibitive cost of switching and scepticism about the idea that international prevalence should dictate Swiss monetary choices. Its exhibition also recalls that the French monetary system had already applied in Switzerland during the period of French domination between 1798 and 1803.⁵ For many in eastern Switzerland that association was not a recommendation.

The case for the franc was systemic. The franc was decimal, and decimal reckoning simplified calculation for merchants, clerks and the public. It was the currency of France, then the largest economy on the continent and Switzerland’s most important trading partner in several sectors. Because it was also used in Belgium, Sardinia and other states, it gave access to a much larger monetary area than the gulden. The silver franc was a well-defined, well-administered coin, which the French mints could supply to Switzerland in reliable quality. Finally, the franc had a Swiss past in the Helvetic currency and in the coinage of the western cantons, which allowed its supporters to present its adoption as the resumption of a Swiss experiment.

The experts: Johann Jakob Speiser and Leonhard Pestalozzi

The Federal Council commissioned an expert opinion. It chose Johann Jakob Speiser (1813–1856), a Basel banker who had co-founded the Bank in Basel and served as its director, housing it in his residence on the Marktplatz.⁶ Speiser concluded that the French monetary standard should form the basis of the Swiss currency. His reasons, as summarised in the literature, were the easier access to the world economy that the franc would give Swiss trade and the simpler calculation afforded by decimal reckoning.⁷

The most prominent defender of the gulden was the Zurich banker Leonhard Pestalozzi, known in Zurich as “Pestaluz”, who argued for the traditional south German system. The University Library of Basel presents the controversy as a duel between the Basel bank director and the Zurich banker, in which the federal authorities leaned towards the French system while eastern Switzerland opposed it.⁸ The Swiss National Museum’s account of the first Swiss franc also mentions a petition from Zurich concerning the currency question, a sign that the debate was carried beyond the circle of experts into public opinion.⁹

The regional alignment of the debate is instructive for the later history of the financial centre. In 1849 Zurich was still, in monetary terms, a city of the eastern Swiss and south German world, whereas Basel and Geneva were closer to France. Zurich’s banking community, represented by Pestalozzi, argued for continuity with its established trade relations. Basel, represented by Speiser, argued for integration into the larger and more dynamic French monetary system. The outcome favoured Basel’s position. It is one of the ironies of Swiss financial history that Zurich, which lost the argument, became the principal beneficiary of the currency it had opposed.

The decision and the Coinage Act of 7 May 1850

Despite petitions from supporters of the gulden, the National Council voted in April 1850 to adopt the French system. The Federal Act on Swiss Coinage (Bundesgesetz über das eidgenössische Münzwesen) was enacted on 7 May 1850.¹⁰ According to the account published by the Basel bank Trafina, Speiser’s proposal prevailed in Parliament over the vigorous opposition from Zurich.¹¹

The Act defined the franc as five grams of silver of nine-tenths fineness, divided into one hundred rappen (centimes), which made the Swiss franc identical in weight and fineness with the French franc.¹² The Act established a pure silver standard. By making no provision for gold coins, the Swiss legislator deliberately departed from the French model, which was bimetallic. The American economist Henry Parker Willis, in his history of the Latin Monetary Union, emphasised that the Swiss law of 7 May 1850 fixed five grams of silver of 900 thousandths fineness as the unit and did not provide for gold.¹³

The Historical Lexicon summarises the result: the Confederation assumed the coinage prerogative and introduced the franc, divided into one hundred rappen, as a silver currency on the French standard of five grams at 900 thousandths fineness, reduced for the subsidiary coins to 835 thousandths from 1875.¹⁴ The denominations ranged from one rappen in copper to five francs in silver. For large payments, the silver five-franc piece, a heavy coin of twenty-five grams, served as the principal means of payment, while gold coins of neighbouring states circulated in trade at variable rates.

From a legal perspective, the Act is a remarkable piece of legislation. It fixed the unit of account in terms of a precise quantity of metal, which gave the franc an objective definition independent of any issuer’s discretion. It prescribed the denominations and technical specifications of the coins, entrusted minting to the federal authorities and provided for the valuation and withdrawal of the old coinages. It also implicitly made the franc the unit in which obligations were to be expressed and discharged, and required the conversion of existing debts. With this Act, the monetary sovereignty that Article 36 had transferred to the Confederation was given concrete content.

Helvetia seated: the first federal coins

The design of the new coins attracted as much public attention as their metallic content. The engraver Antoine Bovy of Geneva created a seated figure of Helvetia for the silver coins, which was criticised immediately. A contemporary joke held that the long-armed Helvetia reached into all coffers, while critics found the figure aesthetically unpleasant. In the 1870s the seated Helvetia was replaced by a standing figure, again by Bovy.¹⁵ The controversy reveals how directly a currency connects with a nation’s self-image. The new federal state had to express itself in laws and equally in symbols that citizens handled every day. Of these symbols, the coin in the pocket was, with the postage stamp, the most widespread.

Notes

1. Bundesverfassung 1848, Art. 36, https://www.verfassungen.ch/verf48.htm. The Swiss National Bank’s chronicle of monetary events also opens with this provision: Swiss National Bank, “Chronicle of monetary events”, entry for 12 September 1848, https://www.snb.ch/en/the-snb/organisation/history/geld-und-waehrungspolitische-chronik. ↩
2. Wikipedia (de), “Schweizer Münzgeschichte”, section on centralisation, https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schweizer_M%C3%BCnzgeschichte. ↩
3. watson.ch, “Der erste Schweizer Franken”, https://www.watson.ch/wissen/wirtschaft/798655140-der-erste-schweizer-franken. ↩
4. Wikipedia (German), “Münchner Münzvertrag”, https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%BCnchner_M%C3%BCnzvertrag, on the Munich coinage treaty of 1837, under which 24½ gulden were struck from the Cologne mark of silver. See also Wikipedia (English), “South German gulden”, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_German_gulden. ↩
5. Universitätsbibliothek Basel, blog, “Von Gold und Silber – 175 Jahre Schweizer Franken” (14 July 2025), https://blog.ub.unibas.ch/2025/07/14/von-gold-und-silber-175-jahre-schweizer-franken/. ↩
6. Trafina Privatbank, “Der Basler Johann Jakob Speiser und der Schweizer Franken”, https://www.trafina.ch/aktuell/der-basler-johann-jakob-speiser-und-der-schweizer-franken. ↩
7. watson.ch, “Der erste Schweizer Franken”, https://www.watson.ch/wissen/wirtschaft/798655140-der-erste-schweizer-franken. ↩
8. Universitätsbibliothek Basel, blog, “Von Gold und Silber – 175 Jahre Schweizer Franken”, section on the experts, https://blog.ub.unibas.ch/2025/07/14/von-gold-und-silber-175-jahre-schweizer-franken/. ↩
9. Swiss National Museum, blog, “The first Swiss franc” (November 2021), https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/en/2021/11/the-first-swiss-franc/. The accessible version of the article consists mainly of illustrations and captions, which refer to the franc–gulden debate, Speiser’s role, Antoine Bovy’s Helvetia and a Zurich petition. ↩
10. watson.ch, “Der erste Schweizer Franken”, https://www.watson.ch/wissen/wirtschaft/798655140-der-erste-schweizer-franken; the date of the Act is confirmed by Swiss National Bank, “Chronicle of monetary events”, entry for 7 May 1850, https://www.snb.ch/en/the-snb/organisation/history/geld-und-waehrungspolitische-chronik. ↩
11. Trafina Privatbank, “Der Basler Johann Jakob Speiser und der Schweizer Franken”, https://www.trafina.ch/aktuell/der-basler-johann-jakob-speiser-und-der-schweizer-franken. ↩
12. Numis-Post, “Schweizer Münzwesen im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert”, https://www.numis-online.ch/service/schweizer-muenzwesen/19.-und-20.-jahrhundert.html. ↩
13. Henry Parker Willis, A History of the Latin Monetary Union: A Study of International Monetary Action (Chicago, 1901), chapter on Switzerland, online at http://www.numisbel.be/Willis.htm. ↩
14. HLS, Bernard Degen, “Franken”, http://www.hls-dhs-dss.ch/textes/d/D13671.php. ↩
15. watson.ch, “Der erste Schweizer Franken”, section on the Helvetia controversy, https://www.watson.ch/wissen/wirtschaft/798655140-der-erste-schweizer-franken. ↩

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 September 2025.