Jonas Furrer

Jonas Furrer (1805 to 1861) was a Swiss lawyer and politician, the first president of the Swiss Confederation and a member of the Federal Council from 1848 until his death. Born in Winterthur, he studied law at Zürich, Heidelberg and Göttingen, established himself as a jurist, was admitted to the bar in 1832 and wrote a work on the law of inheritance in the city of Winterthur. He sat on the Cantonal Council of Zürich, where he led the Liberal opposition, and in 1845 became president of the Council of State of Zürich. In 1847 he served on the commission seeking a peaceful settlement of the Sonderbund War, and his contribution to drafting the 1848 constitution, which made Switzerland a federal state, led to his election as the first president of the Confederation. As a Federal Councillor he headed the Political Department and the Federal Department of Justice and Police, resolved the question of stateless persons, enacted a law in 1850 protecting religiously mixed couples and founded agencies to settle conflicts of jurisdiction between the Confederation and the cantons.