The merchant elite

Families and fortunes

The merchant elite of eighteenth-century Zurich was small, interrelated and remarkably stable. Its core consisted of old burgher families that had combined office-holding, military enterprise and trade since the late Middle Ages, joined by the Locarnese families of the sixteenth century and by a few newcomers who rose through commerce. Their names recur in the membership of the councils, the directors of the Kaufmännisches Direktorium, the founders of the Zinskommission and, a century later, the boards of the Kreditanstalt and the insurance companies.

The Escher vom Glas were perhaps the most characteristic. The HLS summarises the basis of their position over several centuries as a combination of urban offices, skilful marriage policy, long-distance trade and military enterprise. The family belonged to the governing class throughout the ancien régime and continued to produce politicians, merchants, industrialists, engineers and scientists in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.¹ Alfred Escher, the dominant figure of Zurich’s economy in the mid-nineteenth century and the subject of Part D, came from this family.

The Werdmüller were the great silk family of the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Their lineage divided into several branches, of which one, descending from David Werdmüller, consisted of textile merchants and silk manufacturers, and another, descending from Heinrich, produced silk at the new Seidenhof built in 1606–07 and later turned to textile trading and banking. By 1798 the family had given Zurich 78 members of the Great Council and 35 of the Small Council, a record exceeded only by the Escher vom Glas and the Hirzel, as well as 36 bailiffs, though never a burgomaster.²

The Hess combined silk, the post and scholarship. Hans Schmid, a butcher from Reutlingen naturalised in 1517, founded the line. After the family moved from crafts into the textile trade in the early seventeenth century, its commercial branch, descending from Kaspar Hess, the founder of the Lyon post, produced wealthy silk merchants such as Salomon Hess (1696–1768).³ The Schulthess had begun as tanners and moved into commerce, silk manufacture and banking in the eighteenth century. Among the brothers Hans Heinrich, Hans Kaspar and Hans Conrad, who were prominent in these fields, it was Hans Kaspar whose house became the bank that continued under the family’s name for generations.⁴

The Muralt, Orelli and Pestalozzi represented the Locarnese and Chiavennasque element, whose commercial expertise had founded the silk industry, and who by the eighteenth century counted among the richest families of the city. The Pestalozzi owned nine houses in the best locations of Zurich by the eighteenth century and belonged to the merchant aristocracy of the city.⁵ The Landolt, by contrast, were an example of the rentier path: rising through state and military service at the end of the seventeenth century, they lived from rents and property income by the early eighteenth century and provided the city with two burgomasters.⁶

The ethos of a merchant patriciate

The Zurich merchant elite was distinguished from the patriciates of Bern or Lucerne by its commercial activity and from the merchant communities of Basel or Geneva by its close integration into the guild state. A Zurich merchant was a member of a guild, such as the Saffran, whose emblem already marked international trade in the fourteenth century, or of the Constaffel of the knights and old burgher families, and through the guild he sat in the councils. His business was his own, but his standing depended on his conduct in the community. The morals mandates of the Reformed city regulated conduct down to church attendance, tavern hours and games (see Chapter B.III).⁷

That ethos of sobriety coexisted with often considerable wealth and shaped its display and use. Capital was kept in the family and in the city, reinvested, lent out or placed abroad. Where it was spent, it went on country houses on the lake, on libraries and collections, and on foundations for education and welfare. The discretion that is often attributed to the Zurich financial centre has among its roots this merchant culture, in which wealth was a private matter and business correspondence confidential, with the family’s reputation as the most valuable asset. The family funds described above, the careful marriage policy of the leading houses and their slow but persistent entry into the council chamber show a patriciate that thought in generations.

Notes

1. HLS, Katja Hürlimann and Michael Zeuske, “Escher (vom Glas)”, section in the family article “Escher”, version of 27 August 2024, https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/de/articles/023794/. ↩
2. HLS, “Werdmüller” (cited above). The article also records the acquisition of the castle and lordship of Elgg in 1715. ↩
3. HLS, “Hess (ZH)” (cited above). ↩
4. HLS, “Schulthess”, https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/de/articles/023834/. The HLS records that 27 members of the family sat in the Great Council but only four in the Small Council. ↩
5. HLS, “Pestalozzi (ZH)” (cited above). ↩
6. HLS, “Landolt (ZH)” (cited above). ↩
7. Sigg, “Zunftherrlichkeit” (cited above), on the seal of 1336 with “der Saffran-Stab, offenbar Kennzeichen eines international ausgerichteten Handels”, and on the Constaffel, “in der sich die bisher allein bestimmenden Ritter und Bürger fanden”. On the mandate of 1530 and its rules on church attendance, taverns and games: wissen.de, “Aus dem Züricher Sittenmandat”, https://www.wissen.de/lexikon/aus-dem-zuericher-sittenmandat. ↩

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.