Salomon Landolt (10 December 1741 in Zürich; † 26 November 1818 in Andelfingen) was a Swiss bailiff, politician, soldier, farmer and painter.
Landolt's upbringing was mainly due to his maternal grandfather, General Salomon Hirzel, who resided at Wülflingen Castle (now part of Winterthur). From 1765 he attended the military school in Metz, but shortly afterwards began to study architecture in Paris. In 1768 he returned to Zurich and became a judge at the city court. An initiative to reorganize the Zurich militias came from him, as did the establishment of a sniper corps.
In 1776 Landolt travelled to Berlin, where he caught the eye of the Prussian King Frederick the Great, who invited him to an audience. Landolt gained further insight into the Prussian officers' circles and martial arts. However, Landolt rejected an offer from the king to take on a leading position in the Prussian army.
From 1781 to 1787 Landolt worked as bailiff of Greifensee, one of the smallest bailiwicks in Zurich. His residence was Greifensee Castle.
In 1786, Landolt bought an estate near today's Utobrücke near today's Utobrücke with 6 Jucharten of arable land, 7 Jucharten meadows, 2.5 Jucharten of vines and some forest, and operated an innovative agriculture.
In 1792, he was given command of a Zurich contingent of troops that rushed to Geneva's aid when it was threatened by France.
In 1795 he was appointed bailiff of Eglisau, where he resided in Eglisau Castle. He held this office until the collapse of the old regime in 1798. After the abolition of the bailiwicks, Landolt was elected president by the people of Eglisau. In the same year, however, he returned to his estate in the Enge.
After Napoleon had created the modern canton of Zurich in 1803 with the Act of Mediation, Landolt became a member of the Grand Council and President of the Wiedikon Guild Court. In January 1805 he was appointed colonel of the sniper corps to reorganize the Zurich troops again. In 1808, after the death of his housekeeper Marianne Klaissner, Landolt, who had remained unmarried all his life, sold his estate in the Enge and moved in with his brother-in-law in Teufen Castle. In 1818, Landolt moved into the official residence of a friend in Andelfingen for the last months of his life, where he worked as a senior bailiff.
As an artist, Landolt painted military, hunting and landscape scenes in gouache, some of which were modelled on Franz Hegi.
Gottfried Keller erected a monument to the bailiff of Greifensee in the Zurich novella of the same name, Der Landvogt von Greifensee. In Eglisau, the Salomon-Landolt-Weg, a small neighborhood path, commemorates his time in office there.
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