Zurich

A city of northeast Switzerland at the northern tip of the Lake of Zurich. Founded before Roman times, Zurich became a free imperial city after 1218 and joined the Swiss Confederation in 1351. In the 16th century it was a center of the Swiss Reformation under the leadership of Ulrich Zwingli. Today it is the largest city in the country. Zurich is known for its international banking and financial institutions. Population: 350,000.

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Zurich (Zürich), Switzerland's largest city and leading intellectual centre. Under Zwingli it became the focus of the Reformation in the German-speaking cantons while its schools produced men of distinction in many fields. During the 18th c. it was a literary centre of European importance thanks to the work of the critics J. J. Bodmer and J. J. Breitinger, the religious thinker J. C. Lavater, the idyllist S. Geßner, and the educationalist H. Pestalozzi, and attracted writers such as Klopstock, Wieland, and Goethe. Its 19th-c. literary life centred on G. Keller, C. F. Meyer, H. Leuthold, and J. Spyri. Its university (founded 1833) awarded G. Büchner his doctorate and a lectureship: it was among the first in Europe to admit women (see, for instance, Huch, R.), and was closely identified with new developments in psychology and psychiatry (A. Forel and C. G. Jung) with important consequences for modern literature. Zurich granted asylum to many refugees (including R. Wagner and Lenin) and was the centre of the Dada movement during the 1914-18 War. In the National Socialist period it again assumed a leading role in German literature and culture; its Stadttheater premiered many of the major plays of Brecht. Modern writers born in Zurich and closely associated with it include A. Zollinger, J. Humm, and M. Frisch. M. Inglin's Schweizerspiegel and Alles in Allem by K. Guggenheim are panoramic novels set in 20th-c. Zurich.

Although there is evidence of settlement around Zurich from the Bronze Age, the Romans were the first to fortify the site and named it Turicum. The legend of the city's foundation dates from the martyrdom of Felix and Regula, Roman Christians and the patron saints of Zurich, who fled to the city from the massacre of their legion in Valais in the third century C.E. They were martyred by decapitation for refusing to pray to Roman gods, whereupon they picked up their heads and carried them up the hill to the spot where they wished to be buried. The Wasserkirche in Zurich marks the spot where they are thought to have been executed. During the eleventh and twelfth centuries, Zurich's traders exploited the favorable location of the city between the Alpine passes and the Rhine to build the city's wealth from textiles, such as wool and silk. In 1336 the Bürgermeister Rudolf Brun led a revolt that shifted power from the patrician families into the hands of the thirteen guilds. Shortly thereafter, in 1351, still under Brunn's direction, Zurich joined the Swiss Confederation, though it remained an imperial city under the direct authority of the emperor. During the fifteenth century Zurich repeatedly attempted to centralize the Confederation under its control, and the result was civil wars such as the Old Zurich War (1439–1450).

Although it lay in the vast diocese of Constance, Zurich was fairly independent of the bishop and had three major ecclesiastical bodies: the Grossmünster, the Fraumünster, and St. Peterskirche. Huldrych Zwingli (1484–1531) arrived in Zurich in 1519 and gradually built a reform movement that gained minority, although influential, support from leading families and the guilds. In April 1525 the Reformation was formally adopted and the Reformed church established. It was an institution that remained under the control of the magistrates throughout the early modern period. Zurich developed provision for higher education, but not a university. It remained an important center of trade and a key member of the international Reformed church, but during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Zurich was a provincial city with little influence beyond the Swiss Confederation.

Bibliography

Flüeler, Niklaus, and Marianne Flüeler-Grauwiler, eds. Geschichte des Kantons Zürich. Vol. 2, Frühe Neuzeit,16. bis 18. Jahrhundert. Zurich, 1996.

Gordon, Bruce. The Swiss Reformation. Manchester, U.K., 2002.

—BRUCE GORDON

Largest city in Switzerland, situated in the northern part of the country.

• The country's commercial hub and the intellectual center of the German-speaking part of Switzerland, Zurich is known as a world banking center.

The country code is: 41
The city code is: 1

Local Time: Jul 14, 4:11 AM

Dansk (Danish)
n. - Zurich

Français (French)
n. - Zurich

Deutsch (German)
n. - Zürich

Português (Portuguese)
n. - Zurich

Español (Spanish)
n. - Zurich

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
苏黎世

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 蘇黎世

한국어 (Korean)
취리히 (스위스 북부의 주; 주도 Zurich)취리히 호 (스위스 중북부의 호수)

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮ציריך‬

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