Fridolin Anderwert

Fridolin Anderwert (19 September 1828, in Frauenfeld^[1] – 25 December 1880) was a Swiss politician.

Fridolin Anderwert

He was elected to the Swiss Federal Council on 10 December 1875 and was member of the council until 25 December 1880.^[2] He was affiliated to the Free Democratic Party of Switzerland.

During his office time he held the Department of Justice and Police and was Vice-President of the Swiss Confederation in 1880.

On 7 December 1880 he was elected President of the Swiss Confederation for the year 1881. Immediately after the election a nasty campaign against him broke out in the press, in particular about the eating habits of the obese bachelor, but also rumors that he was a regular visitor in brothels.^[3] Drawn by physical exhaustion and severe depression,^[4] Anderwert killed himself on Christmas Day 1880 on the "Kleine Schanze", a small park next to the Houses of Parliament.^[5] The only published sentence of his farewell letter states: "They want a victim, they shall have it."