Augustin Keller

Who was Augustin Keller?

Augustin Keller was a Swiss politician and a co-founder of the Christian Catholic Church of Switzerland, the Old Catholic Church in Switzerland. He is considered to have started the Monastery dispute of Aargau and was therefore responsible for the abolishment of all monasteries in Aargau in 1841.

After studying philology, history, pedagogy, philosophy and literature in Munich and Breslau, Keller first worked as a teacher in Lucerne and was the director of the teacher seminar of Aargau from 1834 to 1856. In this position earned a lot building up the education system in the canton of Aargau.

He was, however, better known as a radical liberal politician and harsh critic of the Roman Catholic Church, although he was himself a Catholic. In 1835 he was elected into the parliament of the canton of Aargau, which he was a part of until 1856. After conflicts resembling a civil war between government troops and Catholic insurgents in January 1841, Keller called the monasteries antagonistic to progress and made them accountable for the insurrection during a speech in parliament. Hereupon the government abolished all monasteries in Aargau. The Monastery dispute of Aargau caused an international crisis and ended in the Sonderbund war of 1847, which was followed by the founding of the Swiss federal republic in 1848.