Background
Nobs grew up in Grindelwald in modest surroundings.
Nobs grew up in Grindelwald in modest surroundings.
From 1902 till 1906 he attended the seminars for teachers in Hofwil and Bern.
In 1906-12 he taught in Wynau and Ostermundigen near Bern. At the age of twenty he joined the Social Democratic Party of Switzerland (SPS). Under the influence of Robert Grimm he took interest in Marxism and the theory of the Mass Strike. In 1912 Nobs became an editor of the party newspaper in Lucerne, in 1914 he worked in Sankt Gallen. In 1915-35 Nobs worked in the newspaper “Volksrecht” in Zurich. There he was an editor in chief since 1922. In Zurich he quickly gained influence: from 1916 till 1919 and from 1920 till 1933 he was a member of the Great City Council, from 1916 till 1918 and from 1919 till 1923 Nobs was President of the Socialist Party of the city of Zurich. He was elected to the National Council during the proportional vote in 1919.
He remained a member of it until 1943. In the 1st World War he belonged to the Left-Wing Party. He took part in the conference of Zimmerwald movement in Kiental in April of 1916 and in Stockholm in September of 1917. Nobs supported the general strike as a means of improving the material conditions of the proletariat, but disliked armed conflicts.
He strongly criticized the cancellation of the general strikes by the strike committee in November of 1918.
He was sentenced to imprisonment for four weeks by a military court in the general strike process in March of 1919. He was the first one to support the USSR during the party debates in 1920. But after learning of 21 conditions for the entrance of the Social Democratic Party of Switzerland to the Communist International, he remained in it in late 1920. In 1921 he co-founded the newspaper "Red Revue" and then became an editor of it. The newspaper was a theoretical organ of the party. The confrontation with communism, and cooperation in the parliaments, after the experience of the crisis and the threat of fascism and National Socialism led him to reformist ideas. In party debates of the 30s, he refused that he was a co-author of the program of 1920 "Dictatorship of the Proletariat" and he supported Social Democratic Party of Switzerland since 1917 in the question of declining necessity of national defense. In 1935 he was elected into the canton government of Zurich. He held a post in the Department of Justice, then since 1938 he worked in the Department of Economics. In 1942 he was elected Mayor of Zurich. Looking at the post-war period, in 1943 he joined the magazine "Helvetische Erneuerung" for the development of Switzerland in the line of social democracy. In late 1943 he was elected into the Federal Council. He became the first social democrat in the Federal Council. There he served from 1944 till 1951. Since 1949 he held a post of President. When he was the Head of the Finance Department, he arranged financing of the old-age and survivors' insurance.
He failed the federal financial reforms (Restructuring of the Budget, the Repeal of Emergency Rights in1950 because of civil resistance of the Left, which rejected the compromise works. His resume is a worthy example of the way of the Swiss.