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26 The Federal Chancellery dates back to the time of Napoleon Bonaparte who, in the Act of Mediation, insisted on the creation of a permanent chan- cellery. In the Old Confederation, chancellery work was predominantly carried out in Zurich and Bern. However, during the period of the Helvetic Republic (1798–1802), the Directory – the five-member governing council – was granted a permanent secretary. Jean-Marc Mousson was appointed as the first Federal Chancellor in 1803. The Chancellery had the task of drawing up the agendas, correspondence and decisions of the federal diet, and of re- locating each year to the new presiding canton (Fribourg, Bern, Solothurn, Basel, Zurich and Lucerne) along with the government archives. In 1815, after the fall of Napoleon, Zurich, Bern and Lucerne continued to serve as presiding cantons. From then on the Chancellery moved only every two years. The Chancellery consisted of a federal chancellor and a federal clerk, who were not permitted to be of the same religious denomination. It was only in 1848 – by which time the Federal Chancellery had a staff of seven and had been translating all decrees into French since 1837 – that the Federal Council was elected as the permanent federal government, and the federal clerk was replaced by a vice chancellor. A second vice chancellor (a native French speaker) was introduced in 1896. Until the end of World War I, the Federal Chancellor and the vice chancellors also acted as the secretariat of the Federal Assembly. Since 1926, the Federal Chancellery has also been responsible for overseeing political rights. The oldest federal institution The Federal Chancellery’s first typewriter (1885)

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