Gabriel Hefti – A Glarner in the Italian Struggle for Freedom

Leuggelbach, 1827 – Bologna, 1850

In the middle of the 19th century, in a small village in the Glarus region, Gabriel Hefti was born on March 11, 1827 in Leuggelbach, the first child of Mathias Hefti (1806-1877) and Margaretha Hefti (1804-1865). He grew up in a time of upheaval – a time when the old powers of Europe were faltering and new ideas of freedom, national self-determination, and democracy were taking hold in the minds of young people. The young Gabriel was not immune to this spirit.

While many of his peers remained in the narrow valleys of Switzerland, Gabriel was drawn to distant lands – to Italy, where a tremendous political upheaval was taking place in 1848. At that time, the Italian peninsula was fragmented into numerous principalities and states, many of them under foreign or ecclesiastical rule. Amidst this turmoil, a desire for unity, independence, and freedom grew. The so-called Risorgimento, the Italian unification movement, was born.

On August 18, 1848, an uprising broke out in the coastal town of Rimini, then part of the Papal States. Citizens, students, freedom fighters – and even foreigners – rose up against papal authority and demanded reforms. Among the rebels was Gabriel Hefti, a young man from Leuggelbach in the canton of Glarus. What exactly led him there remains a mystery. But his actions suggest courage – perhaps even idealism. He was not a soldier, nor an adventurer of rank or renown. He was a simple young man who, at a decisive moment, chose to side with freedom.

The uprising in Rimini was quickly suppressed. Gabriel was captured and transferred to the prison in Bologna – one of those grim fortresses where political prisoners often suffered for years at that time. There, far from his home and family, he spent over two years in captivity. Conditions were harsh, disease was rampant, and medical care was scarce.

On December 12, 1850, Gabriel Hefti died in the prison hospital in Bologna at the age of only 23.

His life was short, but it was marked by the great questions of his time: What is justice? Who has the right to rule? And how much is a person willing to sacrifice for the hope of freedom?

Gabriel Hefti may not appear in the great history books. But his story deserves to be told – as part of Glarus family history and as a silent testimony to how far the ideals of 1848 reached. Sometimes as far as a small village in the Glarus region.