Karl Viktor von Bonstetten

Karl Viktor von Bonstetten (born Sept. 3, 1745, Bern—died Feb. 3, 1832, Geneva) was a Swiss writer (in both French and German) of wide cosmopolitan interests and outlook.

Of a conservative and patrician family, Bonstetten for 12 years had to resist being forced into the traditional career of municipal magistrate. Instead he studied Horace and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, traveled abroad, and cultivated friendships in the liberal intellectual circles of Geneva (1763–67), Leiden, England, France, Germany, and Italy. After his return to Bern and his father’s death (1773), he at last entered provincial politics. He became an enlightened administrator, first of Saanen (1779), then of Nyon (1787), and, finally, a judge in the canton of Ticino (1795–97). After the French invasion and the collapse of the ancien régime in 1798, he went to Denmark, spending three years there before settling in Geneva. His charm and cosmopolitan temperament made him an outstanding member of the international elite and are revealed in his wide correspondence and in various books, which were forerunners of modern comparative studies of national characteristics. The best of them is L’Homme du midi et l’homme du nord; ou, l’influence des climats (1824; “The Man of the Midi and the Man of the North; or, The Influence of Climates”). He also wrote philosophical works and autobiographical sketches.