Emil Frey
member of the Swiss Federal Council, director of the International Telegraph Union, Union Army officer (1838-1922)
Emil Johann Rudolf Frey (24 October 1838 – 24 December 1922) was a Swiss politician, Union Army soldier in the American Civil War and member of the Swiss Federal Council (1890–1897). He served as President of the Swiss Confederation in 1894.
Early life
Frey was born in Arlesheim, in the Canton of Basel-Landschaft, to Emil Remigius Frey and Emma Kloss. His father was a liberal separatist politician.
Frey's family provided refuge for Friedrich Hecker when he fled the repression following the revolution in Germany in 1848. After attending gymnasium in Basel, Frey went to study in an agronomical institute in Jena. In 1860 he emigrated to the United States, arriving in Belleville, Illinois, an area with many Forty-Eighters, veterans of the 1848 revolutions in Europe. For a while he worked for Hecker, but they had a falling-out.
Military career
American Civil War
Frey enlisted in the Union Army's 24th Illinois Infantry Regiment as a private. He wrote in his essay "My American Experiences" that "on 17th of June [1861] I enlisted in the 24th at Chicago.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Emil Frey” is member of the Swiss Federal Council, director of the International Telegraph Union, Union Army officer (1838-1922). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Emil, Frey and member, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “member of the Swiss Federal Council, director of the International Telegraph Union, Union Army officer (1838-1922)” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q118257. VIAF identifies the subject as 22938564. The Library of Congress control number is n86088464. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1838, 1922, 1890 and 1897.
A concise life account rarely captures disputed attribution, private networks or the changing language used to describe a career. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.
- Establishing names and roles
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Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Emil Frey”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Emil Frey primary sources, Emil Frey archive and Emil research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Emil Frey” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.