19th century The newspaper was founded by
Franz Louis Jent, a bookseller from
Solothurn and veteran of the
Freischarenzüge the Liberal insurrections of 1844–45 that led to the 1847
Sonderbund War, a Swiss
civil war. The newspaper's name,
Der Bund, translates as "The Union", but is also shorthand for the
Swiss Confederation, the democratic federal state established in 1848 by the Liberal victors of the civil war. The newspaper was first published on 1 October 1850 with a daily circulation (including Sundays) of 1,000, and was sold by subscription for 26
batzen for three months. Its circulation soon grew nationwide, briefly rising to more than 10,000 during the
Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71. By 1875, according to the conservative
Intelligenzblatt,
Der Bund was Switzerland's leading news medium. It was initially intended to be a neutral, national newspaper modeled after the British newspaper
The Times. But in the intensely polarized political and cultural environment of the period, the editors Abraham Roth and Johann Karl Tscharner soon took the side of the Liberals, then governing the federal state but in opposition to the majority Conservatives in the
Canton of Bern. The newspaper notably focused on publishing the deliberations of the national parliament and government, to which it had unique connections: three
Federal Councillors (
Constant Fornerod,
Stefano Franscini and
Friedrich Frey-Herosé) regularly forwarded notes from
cabinet meetings to the newspaper, and Fornerod even drew a 1,000-
franc salary from the newspaper for this service. In 1893, the newspaper introduced one of the first
typesetting machines on the European continent, and in 1894 the newspaper helped in establishing the
Schweizerische Depeschenagentur (SDA), still the country's leading
press agency. In 1897, a second daily edition was introduced, not to be abandoned until 1967. ==List of publishers and co-publishers==