Hello. My name is Jan Haugner.
I'm a research assistent and Ph.D. student at the University of Lucerne.
The topic of my dissertation project are archival secrecy and practices in early modern Switzerland.
Today i'd like to present to you a case study
that takes us right into the heart of states secrets in the early modern state of Lucerne.
This heart of state secrets was located inside this building.
Please follow me.
(early modern music)
We are here in the old chancery of Lucerne.
On December 4th 1747, Franz Joseph Felber began his service here in the chancery of the Lucerne government.
He was unanimously appointed a chancery clerk
because of his fine qualities, which were certainly suitable in the chancery.
Almost exactly four years, three reprimands, and numerous reproaches later
the Small Council of Lucerne decided that he would be dismissed from his service as clerk.
But what had happened?
On September or October 26 1751, Felber let three men into the chancery
and presented them with writings they had requested.
During the unauthorized visit, however, chancery clerk Cornelius Mahler also came to the chancery.
He later testified that Felber and the three other men had held writings and registers in their hands.
He did not know which ones they were, but he reported the incident to the town clerk.
In the end Franz Joseph Felber got away with a reprimand for a misdemeanour.
Let's take a look at the files.
An application for clemency by Felber shows
that he was placed under house arrest on Monday, December 13th
and that the council judge took away his chancery keys.
For the following day, the files contain a transcript of an interrogation
in which the council judge questioned a man named Joseph Ludi Wäber.
He reported that Felber, who was known to be heavily in debt,
had promised money to various people at the same time
and had probably also helped himself to money stored in the chancery.
In the petition for clemency Felber himself admitted that he had embezzled 100 guilders.
Two days later, on Thursday, December 16th, Franz Joseph Felber's house was searched.
The owner of the house was no longer to be found, however, as he had presumably left Lucerne the day before.
An inventory lists all the writings found in his house.
Here one must consider that, at least for scribes,
home work was by no means unusual in some places in the 18th century.
At Felber's home, however, some documents were found
that he had hardly borrowed with the knowledge of his superiors.
The most prominent is certainly the Schilling Chronicle.
Diebold Schilling's so-called "Luzerner Chronik" of 1513 was so important
that on the cover of the Felber file there is the note
"Misappropriation of files, minutes, seals, Schilling's Chronicle."
The council reacted immediately to the new situation,
for at the meeting held the following day it was decided that Felber should be dismissed and prosecuted.
Due to the writings found at Felber's home, the council now seems to have become really aware of the dangers
that the autumnal intrusion into the chancery might have entailed.
On December 20th and 22nd, the council judge interrogated the three men who had been in the chancery with Felber.
The interrogation questions provide information about the extent
to which an intrusion into the town hall could be dangerous for the government.
The question of where they went in the town hall gives an idea of how heterogeneous
the individual rooms of the town hall were in terms of their importance for secrecy or their general importance.
Particularly revealing is the question of whether the gentlemen would have copied anything or torn leaves from the writings.
This question is aimed at the materiality of the writings and their meaning.
In particular, the fact that no question was ever asked about the concrete texts and their contents
clearly shows that it was probably less about the concrete information and more about provability.
Finally, the question about whether they were also in the chancery highlights the importance of this room
as the most important room in the town hall. In it, secrets become tangible and provable through written documents.
On March 15th, 1752, there is a final entry in the council minutes concerning the Felber case.
In the event that he did not obey within eight days, he was to be led out of the territory of the state of Lucerne by force.
So here there is apparently a talk of banishment.
Only the cover page of the early modern file provides information about his fate:
"Concerning Franz Joseph Felber de Anno 1752, banished for 10 years.”
(music ends)
The Felber case is thus ideally suited to show
how the state reacted to leaks in its secrecy apparatus and what forms these could take.
At the same time, the penalties imposed or the extent of the prosecution make it clear
how the individual events were assessed and to what degree a breach of secrecy was not unforgivable.
The research interest of my dissertation project is basically
about accessibility to state and private archives in early modern Switzerland.
Accessibility works on different levels. For example, the fact that we have physical access to archival materials
does not mean that we also have content-related or mental access to them.
With the approach of "cognitive history" I ask about the cognitive aspects
of organizing and using early modern swiss archives.
This also raises the question of the extent
to which the documents in the archives were secret at all or were only staged as such.
I would like to approach these questions by means of a comparative approach
that compares three or four different early modern cantons
that represent different forms of political organization as well as confessional and regional differences.
As a patrician-urban and catholic place I would like to examine Lucerne.
In addition, the Catholic Landsgemeindeort Obwalden as well as the guild and Protestant shaped Zurich.
For further information, you may visit our website republican-secrets.ch.