Background
His father was a reformed pastor.
His father was a reformed pastor.
Mousson studied law at the Academy in Lausanne.
He was the first Chancellor of Switzerland from 1803 to 1830. He continued his studies at the University of Tübingen, where his obtained his doctorate in 1796. After the French invasion of Switzerland and the establishment of the Helvetic Republic, he took in January 1798 the position of deputy of Bursins in provisional meeting of the "Lemanischen Republic" in part and was its secretary.
The Directorate of the Helvetic Republic appointed Mousson in June 1798 to the post of Secretary-General.
In 1803, he was appointed private secretary to Landammann Louis d"Affry. That same year, at only 27 years of age, he was elected by the Diet Chancellor of the Confederation.
He was the first and youngest in Switzerland to reach this high office. Mousson was instrumental in the construction of the Federal Chancellery, the oldest permanent federal agency in Switzerland.
He remained in that position until his retirement in 1830, successively passing through the period of the Acting of Mediation (1803), as well as the Restoration.
From September 1833 to January 1834, he was part of the arbitral tribunal that legally regulated the Basel Canton Separation. He then retired to Zurich where he continued to participate in federal political debate. During his career, he was appointed honorary citizen of Zurich (1816) and Bern (1821).
He was also awarded the Order of Saint Stephen of Hungary (1815) by Francis I, Emperor of Austria and the Red Eagle of Prussia (1817) by Friedrich Wilhelm IV, King of Prussia.
In 2012, he was honored in his hometown of Morges with a plaque bearing his name. Heinrich married Régula Dorothea von Wyss, daughter of David von Wyss, mayor of Zurich.
Heinrich would later serve as mayor of Zurich himself from 1840 to 1845, and subsequently as President of the Federal Diet.