Vinzenz Rüttimann

Vinzenz Rüttimann (20 May 1769 – 15 January 1844) was a leading Lucerne politician during the first half of the nineteenth century. He served as president of the Swiss Federal Assembly (Tagsatzung) during 1820 and again during 1826.

Life Georg Vinzenz Rüttimann was born in Reiden, in the northern part of the Canton of Lucerne. He was born into one of the leading Catholic families of Lucerne. He remained a member of the inner ruling council till 1798. During the 1790s he also served as a Habsburg bailiff and as secretary to the delegation sent on behalf of the thirteen cantons to meet with the agents of the French in Basel (1792/93).

Reflecting widespread dissatisfaction with general unruliness under the Lucerne Cantonal government since the setting aside of the traditional old regime, on 16 November 1814 Vinzenz Rüttimann led a group of leading citizens in a coup d'etat to protect the traditional status quo through a reversion to a modified version of the "patriarchal" pre-revolutionary constitutional structure. In addition to the old patriarchal families, the new structure now also included members of the increasingly important middle class elements. A few years later, in 1818, Rüttimann participated in negotiations in Rome over diocesan issues, which led to the transfer of Lucerne to the Swiss Diocese of Basel following the dissolution of the imperial Diocese of Constance.

In terms of federal politics, between 1807 and 1829 Rüttimann was regularly a delegate from Lucerne to the Swiss Swiss Federal Assembly (Tagsatzung) of which he was elected president in 1820 and 1826, which made him the senior political officer in the Swiss confederation, although the decentralised power structure in the country, meant that in the nineteenth century, as to a lesser extent still in the twenty-first, most important political decision were taken at the cantonal level.