Background
HUBER, Karl was born on October 18, 1915 in Haggenschwil. Son of Carl Huber and Mathilde Haessig.
HUBER, Karl was born on October 18, 1915 in Haggenschwil. Son of Carl Huber and Mathilde Haessig.
High school, Saint Gall, and University of Berne.
After finishing his studies at Saint-Gall, he pursued legal studies at the University of Bern where he obtained his doctorate in 1939. In 1941 he was a legal collaborator with the Department of the Economy before being named in 1954 to the general secretariat of the federal Department of the Economy, where he served from 1957 until 1967. In 1967, he was elected Chancellor of the Confederation.
Following his appointment, Huber reduces and streamlines the way the Federal Council makes decisions: he standardizes the presentation of files, prescribes rules for the presentation of legislation, develops the first guidelines for the coming parliamentary term, and advocates for the search of consensual solutions by the four government parties.
These reforms are formalized in the 1978 law on the organization of the administration. Political rights are condensed into a single law approved by referendum on 4 December 1977.
Huber left his post in 1981 to retire. The University of Fribourg awarded him an honorary doctorate.
The "magic formula" was applicable for the first time to the Chancellery as his Vice-Chancellors included the radical Jean-Marc Sauvant and the socialist Walter Buser.
Staff of General Seer, of Ministry of Political Economics.
Married Elizabeth Fink in 1945.