Your call caused a political scandal

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The year is written in red on the book cover: 1956. Below it is written: “World in Revolt.” The monumental work on the year of the era was published by a young British historian named Simon Hall. A few years ago, the 500-page book lay on the living room table of former Federal Councilor Elisabeth Kopp.

1956: A year of symbolic power for Elisabeth Kopp. In 1956, students in Hungary took to the streets for democracy and freedom. And for twenty-year-old law student Elisabeth Iklé, as she was then called, daughter of a middle-class family, this acted as a beacon that pushed politics into her life. Without 1956 there would have been no mayor, no FDP national councilor, no federal councilor Elisabeth Kopp.

First political speech on the Gold Coast

For those born before the war, 1956 was the big bang for the politicization of an entire generation. Elisabeth Kopp was one of the last remaining hard core witnesses of the “Student Direct Aid Switzerland-Hungary” (SDSU). No wonder the Hungarian embassy asked the former federal councilor to give a lecture on the subject on the occasion of the 60th anniversary, which she gladly gave.

For Elisabeth Kopp the circle was complete: she spoke on the same subject at an early age. On the national holiday in 1957, she stood before the inhabitants of the municipality of Küsnacht on Zurich’s Gold Coast and gave her first political speech. Subject: their experiences helping Hungary.

Women’s suffrage campaigner

In the 60 years since then, a lot has happened: when women’s suffrage, for which Kopp, as a staunch liberal, had always fought, finally became a reality, one thing after another happened for the lawyer, wife and mother: in 1970 she was elected to the city council of Zumikon ZH chosen. Her national career began in 1979 when she was elected to the National Council on the list of the Zurich FDP.

Just five years later, on October 2, 1984, Kopp joined the Federal Council. She was elected on the first ballot with 124 of 244 votes. The clothes she wore at the time are kept in the historical collection of the Swiss National Museum.

Mud fight and resignation

But Kopp could not work in the Bundesrat for long. Even during the Federal Council election campaign, alleged indiscretions by her husband Hans W. Kopp were mooted. The star lawyer, university lecturer, colonel in the general staff, “media pope” and author, to whom she was married for nearly five decades.

In the fall of 1988, the magistrate came across her husband. On the phone, she urged him to resign from the board of directors of a company suspected of money laundering. One of the biggest political scandals in Switzerland was born, which led to Kopp’s resignation in January 1989.

Fully rehabilitated

She was later fully rehabilitated, but to no avail. 20 years of rise in the Federal Council chamber were followed by 20 years of communal descent into social nothingness.

Hans W. Kopp, who was sentenced to a suspended prison sentence in 1991 in the Trans-KB affair and lost his license to practice law, died in early 2009 without ever making his way back into public life. Elisabeth Kopp, on the other hand, gradually returned as a speaker. Later there was a reconciliation with her party: in 2017 she attended a delegates’ meeting of the FDP Switzerland for the first time since her resignation from the Federal Council.

On the fiftieth anniversary of women’s suffrage two years ago, she remembered her political commitment during her studies. A fellow student asked her why she campaigned for women’s suffrage. She’s just a normal woman. “That’s why,” she replied. Today, it is no longer a question for her granddaughters to participate in political events. And that’s a good thing.

Well, the one who always left first on Good Friday after a long illness – as the first member of the Bundesrat.

Source:Blick