Trilogie 1848 - Der Galgensteiger (1979)

In 1845, liberal and conservative cantons and Protestant and Catholic parts of the country were hostile to each other in the Swiss Confederation. Jakob Robert Steiger, a doctor for the poor in Lucerne, takes part in the second Freischarenzag against Jesuit rule in his home town and falls into the hands of his arch-enemies. He is sentenced to death on the gallows, but is freed from captivity before the sentence is carried out and brought in triumph to liberal Zurich, where 50,000 people cheer him on. Among them is Gottfried Keller, who writes a poem for the occasion. The following three years are marked by overthrows, assassinations, conspiracies and civil war-like conditions. Violent actions against the conservative, mainly Catholic cantons lead to the union of these cantons in a Sonderbund, which seeks help and support from the reactionary regimes abroad. When the Sonderbund resists the resolution of the Tagsatzung to dissolve it, open civil war breaks out in Switzerland, ending with the defeat of the Sonderbund and the liquidation of the old, loose confederation. Jakob Robert Steiger becomes President of the new National Council and Switzerland gives itself a constitution in 1848.