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inside the walls of the city, and the population of the rural canton who were also its subjects, about another 16,000 people, were excluded from the government, from office in the state-run Zwinglian church, and from the institutions of secondary education. They were also officially excluded from the profitable textile manufactures, but some individuals were able to circumvent this by using a prominent Zürich inhabitant as a front-name.
The inhabitants of Zürich had a reputation for being virtuous as well as cultured, and the government and church imposed a fairly strict moral code. Even after the Revolution, public amusements were in short supply. An early 19th-century traveller, Henry David Inglis, says that Zürich has no theatre or public concerts and dancing is illegal. Social life for the upper levels of society consists of private dinner parties given for relatives only (but since the upper-class clans married only among themselves relatives would have been quite thick on the ground), or rather less formal but segregated soirées with tea and talk for the ladies, tobacco and talk for the men. Coxe describes their way of life as "simple" and "antiquated". Dinner is eaten at noon, after which the men assemble together in town in winter, or at a country villa in summer. They smoke, consume wine, fruit and cake, play cards and walk up and down talking. Women do not often leave home nor appear before strangers, because of their provincial accent and inability to speak French well. Well-educated people could not always be understood even in their own language, because of the Zürich dialect, about which several travellers are very scornful. Simond says it is "the least harmonious and most uncouth that ever was, they cannot speak it without making faces" [p 355], and Inglis calls it "an abominable patois" [p 35].
For Bräker Zürich was the ideal place to take his first steps into educated society. In one short visit he met three of its most famous citizens, representatives of the seventy or so known scholars who were living there at the time, and representing the different branches of learning: Lavater for theology and history, Salomon Gessner for literature and Hirzel for applied science. It was also a good time for him to be there, because some of the more enlightened citizens were becoming interested in the improvement of agriculture and in rural life and traditions generally. The 18th century was also a time when individuals of unconventional attitudes and behaviour began to be regarded with curiosity instead of outright condemnation - it has been called "the age of eccentricity". As Voellmy puts it [v 3 p 33]: "The fashion of the time fastened upon people who showed originality".
"On the 31st October I wished very much to see some great and famous men in Zürich. For that was my chief purpose for travelling to Zürich. The first one that I met with was Herr Councillor Hirzel
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He received me in a very friendly manner. I found in him, as I had anticipated, a learned, good, honourable man. (Füssli adds: "and I have never seen a town-dwelling gentleman who knows not only how to value the peasant class but also to honour it".)He gave me by the hand of the maidservant a note to one Herr Zunftschreiber [clerk to the guilds] Hofmeister
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. The man was in poor health, but from the first moment on I felt imbued with his harmony of spirit and sympathy. Love was all. O how much I should have liked to have heaven grant me health of this dear man! I could come so close to his inward thoughts that we shared the same way of thinking, circumstances, caprices and fantasies. Long, long will I keep this dear man in mind, I should like to correspond with him [...]. (Füssli adds: "[...] I felt drawn118
For notes on Hirzel, Gessner, Lavater and Bodmer, see below.
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Probably Johann Ulrich Hofmeister (1750-1812), who in 1777 was Zunftschreiber [clerk to the guilds] at Kämbel. [Chronik, p 216]. He was also governor of Sargans in 1794, a cantonal judge and a member of the Great Council of the Helvetic Republic in 1803.
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