Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition/Thurgau

THURGAU, or Thurgovia, a canton of Switzerland (ranking as seventeenth in the Confederation), takes its name from the river Thur. It is bounded on the N. by the Rhine, on the E. by the Lake of Constance (the cantonal frontier being so drawn as to leave the town of Constance to Baden), on the S. by a line running from Arbon on the lake west and south-west to Hörnli, and on the W. by a line drawn from Hörnli passing east of Winterthur and west of Frauenfeld to the Rhine, a little west of Diessenhofen and opposite Schaffhausen. It is thus shaped like a triangle, of which the Hörnli (3274 feet, the highest point in the canton) is the apex, and comprises the middle basin of the Thur. Its total area is 381 4 square miles, of which 322·6 (or 84·6 per cent.) is reckoned as "productive land," 69·8 being covered by forests, and 6·9 by vineyards. Of the "unproductive" portion no less than 50·5 square miles consists of the cantonal share of the Lake of Constance. According to the census of 1880, the population amounted to 99,552 (females being in a majority of 1000), an increase of 6252 on the census of 1870; of these, 99,026 are German-speaking. In religion the inhabitants are divided, there being 71,821 Protestants to 27,123 Roman Catholics; the canton till 1815 was in the diocese of Constance, and since 1828 has been in the reconstructed diocese of Basel, though for some time after 1873 the Government would not recognize the authority of Bishop Lachat, in consequence of his support of the dogma of infallibility at the Vatican council. The capital is Frauenfeld (5811 inhabitants), and Romanshorn (population 3647) is an important railway centre on the lake. The canton has many small villages, and the population is chiefly employed in agricultural pursuits, though cotton-spinning is rapidly increasing. The orchards are so splendid that Thurgau has been called "the garden of Helvetia." A network of well-made roads traverses it in every direction.

The Thurgau originally took in all the country, roughly speaking, between the Reuss, the Lake of Lucerne, the Rhine, and the Lake of Constance; but many smaller districts (Zürichgau, Toggenburg, Appenzell, St Gall) were gradually carved out of it, and the county was reduced to about the size of the present canton when in 1264 it passed by the gift of the last count of Kyburg to his nephew Rudolph of Hapsburg, chosen emperor in 1273. In 1415 the count, Duke Frederick of Austria (a Hapsburg), was put under the ban of the empire by the emperor Sigismund for having aided Pope John XXIII. to escape from Constance, and the county was overrun, Sigismund in 1417 mortgaging to the city of Constance the appellate jurisdiction in all civil and criminal matters ("landgericht" and "blutbann") arising within the county, which he had declared to be forfeited in consequence of Frederick's conduct. In 1460 some of the Confederates, now becoming very eager for conquests, overran and seized the county. Winterthur was saved, but in 1461 Frederick's son, Duke Sigismund, had perforce to cede the county to the Confederates. Henceforth it was ruled as a "subject district" by seven members of the League,—Bern, occupied in the west, not being admitted to a share in the government till 1712, after one of the wars of religion. It was only in 1499 that the Confederation (then consisting of ten members) obtained from Constance her supreme jurisdiction, through the mediation of the duke of Milan, but there were still forty-two minor jurisdictions belonging to various lords, spiritual and temporal, which went on till 1798 and greatly limited the power of the Confederates. Thurgau had hoped, but in vain, to be admitted in 1499 a full member of the Confederation.

At the time of the Reformation many of the inhabitants became Protestants, and bitter quarrels ensued between the Protestant and Catholic (the latter having a large majority) members of the Confederation who had rights over Thurgau, with regard to the toleration of the new doctrines in the "subject districts" such as Thurgau. By the first peace of Kappel (1529) the majority in each "commune" was to settle the religion of that "commune," but by the second (1531, after Zwingli's death) both religions were to be allowed side by side in each "commune." Thurgau thus became a "canton of parity," as it is to this day. Its rulers, however, continued to watch each other very closely, and Kilian Kesselring, one of the chief military commanders in Thurgau, was in 1633, on suspicion of having connived at the advance of the Swedes through Thurgau on Constance, seized by the Catholic cantons and severely punished. In 1798 Thurgau became free, and was one of the nineteen cantons of the Helvetic republic, being formally received (like the other "subject lands") as a full member of the Swiss Confederation in 1803 by the Act of Mediation. It was one of the very first cantons to revise, in 1830, after the July revolution in Paris, its constitution in a very liberal sense, and in 1831 proposed a revision of the federal pact of 1815. This failed, but the new federal constitutions of 1848 (of which one of the two drafters was Kern of Thurgau) and 1874 were approved by very large majorities. In 1849 the cantonal constitution was revised and the veto introduced, by which the people might reject a bill passed by the cantonal assembly. Finally, in 1869, the existing constitution was drawn up, by which the "initiative" (or right of 2500 electors to compel the cantonal assembly to take any subject into consideration) and the "obligatory referendum" (by which all laws passed by the cantonal assembly, and all financial resolutions involving a capital expenditure of 50,000 francs or an annual one of 10,000, must be submitted to a popular vote) were introduced. The cantonal government consists of a legislative assembly (now of ninety-seven members, one to every 250 electors) and an executive council of five members, both elected directly by the people; 5000 electors can at any time call for a popular vote on the question of the dismissal of either one or the other. Further, to show the very democratic character of the constitution, it may be added that members of both houses of the federal assembly are in Thurgau elected direct by the people. The "communes" in Thurgau are of no less than eleven or twelve varieties. The division of the lands, &c., of the old "burgher communes" between them and the new communes, consisting of all residents (with whom political power rests), was carried out (1872) in all of the 214 communes; but there are still thirty-eight guilds or corporations with special rights over certain forests, &c.

The best history of the canton is that by J. A. Pupikofer, of which a second and very much enlarged edition is now (1887) being published.