HOOVER'S ANCESTORS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 103, 3 May 1930, Page 15 (Supplement)

HOOVER'S ANCESTORS.

FIGHT AGAINST AUSTRIAN TYRANNY. LIGHTS OF THE HUBER CLAN ACHIEVED INTERNATIONAL REPUTATION. . (IPropi Our ISwlfs Correspondent.) Ancestor# of Herbert Hoover, President of the United Stages, fought in the ranks of the Swiss Eidgenossen against the tyranny of Austraia's Emperors in A.D., 1492, the year of the discovery of America by Columbus. The name of a rebellious Hans Huber, from the region of the Berner Oberland, is mentioned in an old historical chronicle dating from the middle of the sixteenth century, in connection with the refusal of the Swiss freemen to recognise the authority of decrees issued by the Imperial Reichstage of Worms. This event, commonly accepted as ifha Declaration of Swiss Independence, marked "the climax of a long series of Ibloody combats, in which one burg and mountain. village followed the other in throwing off the yoke of Austria to join the confederacy of shepherds, mountaineers and noblemen, who had sworn a solemn oath to resist to the death against the attempts of the Germanic Kaisers to lord it over them. Hans Huber figures in a list of outlaws drawn up by representatives of the Archduke of Austria, Emperor Maximillian, who had decided upon an energetic attempt , to make the Swiss cities and free burghers re-enter the German Empire. With outlaw Hans, the Huber name figures probably for the first time in Swiss annals as a personal name. Prior to this the word "huber"; was used to designate the owner of a .parcel of free land, or "hube." It is more than likely that Hans or one of his immediate forbears had adopted the "Huber" appellation after neighbours had come to refer to him as the "Huber" par excellence of the district —that is to say, the largest individual landowner. Others were "hubers," Hans was the Huber. Man of Importance. The supposition that the hubers were landowners of some importance, disposing of a certain measure of power and influence, is 'borne out by the specific naming of Hans aa one of the Headers in the rebellion, a man whose capture and execution seemed essential to the restoration of imperial prestige and sovereignty.. Nobody, it is obvious, would have thought of drawing up an imperial decree int he case of a siniple mountaineer or shepherd. Such an individual, if in opposition to his natural licge-lord, would have had short shrift in the middle ages- —that is to say, incarcreation without warning and execution

•without much publicity. Provincial Governors, acting on behalf and -with, the consent of the Kaiser, were not required to give a very strict accounting of their dealing with folk who were considered little better than chattel slaves. That Hans Huber was indeed a man of importance and belonged, in fact to the landed nobility, is made clear by the existence of heraldic designs, dating from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In that time members of the Huber family had scattered over the country, and all had their distinctive coats of arms. There is no record of any of them having been elevated to the nobility. Consequently the privileges of possessing a coat of arms must have been hereditary. From the sixteenth century onward to this day the Huber name figures extensively and prominently in annals of Swiss history. There were Huberts who were merchants of wealth and power in Berne and in Zurich. Other Hubers were judges and priests. Many of them were leaders in communal life. Several achieved international reputation and fame. Passionate lovers of freedom in a nation which was among the first to shake, off the-the fetters of feudalism, the Hubere took their place among the defenders of man's inalienable rights wherever autocracy, threatened its arbitrary dominion, or a foreign power menaced to enslave the nation. -Like the few of their contemporaries whose features have been preserved Jot posterity by medieval painters, they had that' dour. physiognomy , of the mountaineer, the steel-blue eyes encountered among Nordic peoples, whose vista for generations has. been, either the endless expanse of ocean or the granite towers of the Alps. Thin-lipped, strong rawed, men of vast daring, were.these Swiss burghers, the elite of the leuton race. , . The. greatest contemporary bearer ol the Hulper name in the branch of the family which has remained in Europe is Prof. Dr. Max Huber, of Zurich, who was President of the International Court of Arbitration in The Hague in 1927, and who is universally acknowledged one of. the most distinguished authorities on international jurisprudence.^ Through Herbert Hoover in the United States, and Max Huber in Switzerland, the medieval family of which; Hans Huber, the outlaw and rebel was tlie father,, has * achieved positions ox supreme eminence in two hemispheres, although evolution and environment have been widely different for the better part of 300 years, a record probably unique in the world. Migration of Berner. The majority of the Huber clans seem to have joined the Eeformation movement begun in Switzerland by Zwingli, the contemporary of 'Martin Luther and John Calvin. Sebastian Huber is mentioned as one of the prominent citizens of Berne, who championed the cause of the Protestant faith iii .his'city 'in the years following 1519. He aided materially in securing for the adherents of the new religion that freedom of worship to which he considered every burgher entitled. Yet, on the other hand, the Hubers, once a closely-knitted clan, began to drift apart as a result of the conflict

that broke out between Catholics and Protestants all over Europe, and of which Switzerland Lad its full sanguinary share. There were Hubers on both sides in the Battle of Zurich in 1531 when the civil war over religion broke out, and the Protestants were temporarily defeated and their spiritual leader, Zwingli, killed. The Thirty Years War, one of the most devastating that Europe has ever known, when religious differences split families, did not spare the Hubers. Not only did these events cause the family to drift apart further, but several heads of Huber households were completely ruined by the destruction of their property or confiscation of their goods, the usual punishment meted out 'to heretics on either side. It was one of the Berner Hubers, Andrew, a stern and uncompromising Protestant, who migrated to America in the latter part of the eighteenth century, i President Herbert Hoover is, of course, a direct lineal descendant of Andrew. Of the Hubers who stayed behind in Switzerland, at the time the President's forbear, sailed for the New World, one of the most distinguished was without a doubt Ludwig Ferdinand Huber, who. was called to the editorial chair of the "Algepieine Zeitung," of Stuttgart, in 1.764. He was a personal friend of the poet Fredrich von Schiller. Illustrious Scions. In modern times several Swiss Hubers achieved international fame. Viktor Aime Huber is till this day considered one of the 'outstanding idealists of the last century and the famous theoreticus of 'Christian Socialism. He was known in all the European capitals, a tireless lecturer, reformer and organiser. Deserting the chair of political economy which he occupied in Gottingen, he edited Labour papers in Berlin, London and Geneva. The 1848 revolution in France and Prussia saw Viktor Aime in the front ranks of Liberal reformers. His pet scheme was co-operation. It is said of him that he lived in daily companionship with labourers and artisans in order to raise them by personal contact to a higher level. In this he spared no sacrifice of time or money. He called into being the Christian Association of Journeymen and died in 18(39, leaving a name venerated as one of the artisans of Labour's emancipation and one of -the moulders of modern political thought. In German Labour circles hi 3 nam© is mentioned in one breath with those of Marx and Tolstoi and Kropotkine' and other idealists whose life work was like a ferment in political thought at the time of the introduction of the era of industrialisation of the machine age. Professor Eugen Huber was an eminent jurist who taught civil law at the University of Basle in-.1880. Michael Joseph Huber of the, Catholic branch of the family is one of the world's recognised Latin'ists of distinction. He is. a member of the learned Benedictine Order. . The name Hans Huber recurs. - in modern times -with the famous musician and composer who died in 1852. To the second 'Hans • Huber's honour and credit stands'the creation of popular concerts and music schools. throughout• the Ger-manic-wcrld. .