The cantonal constitution of 1869

The constitutional council and the vote of 18 April 1869

The elections to the constitutional council on 8 March 1868 took place with a turnout of 94 per cent. Roughly two-thirds of the delegates belonged to the democratic movement, although only two workers were elected, one of whom promptly lost his job.¹ Alfred Escher is reported to have declined a nomination to the council.² During a year of work, the council held debates that show the influence of the ideas that had circulated since Treichler. Johann Caspar Sieber had declared in 1868 that the parliament should become a “vorberathende Commission”, a preparatory committee whose proposals the people would enact or reject.³

The result was put to the people on 18 April 1869 and accepted by about 61 per cent of the voters at a turnout of 90 per cent. The geography of the vote reflected the social geography of the movement. The districts of Zurich, Affoltern, Horgen and Meilen, where the influence of the city and of the lakeside industrial and commercial families was strongest, rejected the constitution, while Winterthur, Pfäffikon and Bülach accepted it with more than 80 per cent.⁴ The preamble dispensed with the traditional invocation of God and declared that the people of the canton of Zurich, by virtue of their right of self-determination, gave themselves the following constitution. That formula expressed the intellectual core of the movement: sovereignty lay with the people as a matter of right, and every institution of the state, the bank included, derived its legitimacy from them.

Direct democracy: referendum and initiative

The political innovations of the constitution of 1869 were radical for their time. Every law passed by the cantonal parliament, every constitutional amendment and every intercantonal concordat had to be submitted to a compulsory popular vote. The constitution introduced the popular initiative for laws and for constitutional amendments, the direct election of the members of the cantonal government by the people and a series of rules against the accumulation of offices and nepotism, including a prohibition on fathers and sons, brothers or in-laws serving together in the government.⁵ According to the NZZ, the referendum also extended to expenditure exceeding 250,000 francs, while 5,000 citizens could launch an initiative. The Landbote celebrated the constitution as the first consistent attempt to realise direct legislation by the people in a form adapted to modern conditions.⁶

These instruments had a direct bearing on the bank that the constitution envisaged. Because every law required a popular vote, the Kantonalbank law itself had to be approved by the people, as did every later revision of the bank’s statute. The bank was therefore anchored in popular decision from its first day. The consequences of this anchoring are still visible: when the cantonal parliament debates the capital of the bank, the compensation of its leadership or the scope of its activities, it does so in the knowledge that a referendum may follow. The Zurich model of direct democracy spread to other cantons and, through the revision of the Federal Constitution in 1874, shaped the federal level, where the optional legislative referendum was introduced.⁷

The economic and social articles

The constitution of 1869 was also an economic programme. It provided for direct taxation according to a “moderate and just progression”, for state support of co-operatives founded on self-help, for protective legislation for workers and for free and compulsory primary education. It prohibited political, legal and fiscal discrimination against Swiss citizens from other cantons. Among these economic articles stood the instruction to establish a cantonal bank for the general promotion of credit, which the Sozialarchiv describes as the fulfilment of a demand that had been raised for decades.⁸ The NZZ gives the provision as Article 24 of the constitution, which tasked the state with the operation of a bank designed to give farmers and trades easier access to credit.⁹

The women of the canton also made demands in 1868, in anonymous petitions to the constitutional council that asked for equal rights in marital property, divorce, inheritance and custody, and for electoral rights. The council did not take them up, and cantonal women’s suffrage came only in 1970.¹⁰ The omission is worth recording because it shows the limits of the “people” in whose name the constitution and the bank were created. Because the democratic sovereign of 1869 consisted of adult male citizens, the Kantonalbank was designed for the economic needs of the male heads of farming and artisan households.

Notes

1. Schweizerisches Sozialarchiv, “Vor 150 Jahren” (cited above), section on the elections of 8 March 1868. ↩
2. NZZ, “Als das Zürchervolk das ‘System’ stürzte” (cited above). ↩
3. Neue Zürcher Zeitung, “Am 18. April 1869 wählt Zürich die direkte Demokratie” (“Das Volk degradiert das Parlament zur vorberathenden Commission”), https://www.nzz.ch/zuerich/das-volk-degradiert-das-parlament-zur-vorberathenden-commission-ld.1466245. ↩
4. Schweizerisches Sozialarchiv, “Vor 150 Jahren” (cited above), section on 18 April 1869. ↩
5. Schweizerisches Sozialarchiv, “Vor 150 Jahren” (cited above), section on constitutional innovations. The Sozialarchiv quotes Article 28: “Das Volk übt die gesetzgebende Gewalt unter Mitwirkung des Kantonsrathes aus.” ↩
6. NZZ, “Am 18. April 1869 wählt Zürich die direkte Demokratie” (cited above), which also gives the expenditure threshold and the 5,000 signatures, and quotes Der Landbote. ↩
7. Bürgi, “Demokratische Bewegung”, HLS (cited above), section on the federal level. The HLS notes that the democrats organised nationally from 1865 through the “Männer-Helvetia”. ↩
8. Schweizerisches Sozialarchiv, “Vor 150 Jahren” (cited above), sections on economic and social provisions and on the Kantonalbank. ↩
9. NZZ, “150 Jahre Zürcher Kantonalbank: ZKB, Retterin vor ‘Kapitalisten’”, https://www.nzz.ch/zuerich/150-jahre-zuercher-kantonalbank-zkb-retterin-vor-kapitalisten-ld.1539022. ↩
10. Schweizerisches Sozialarchiv, “Vor 150 Jahren” (cited above), section on women’s petitions of 1868. ↩

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.