How does a farmer's son from the countryside become a lawyer in the 19th century? How does one get elected to the Council of States as a leftist democrat in the early federal state of Thurgau, dominated by the liberals - as a "man of the people" against the liberal elite? And what happens to life when one soon ends up in a mental institution? The life of a long-forgotten provincial politician offers insights into a little-known era of Swiss history. This scarcely documented yet extraordinary life sheds light on the education system of the 19th century in the then progressive Thurgau, and illuminates a turning point in Switzerland's political development. The widely commented Thurgau by-election campaign for the Council of States in 1889 is one of those moments that reveal the crisis of liberal dominance and lead to a reorganization of political forces around 1890. The modern party system emerges: the liberals ally with the Catholic Conservatives to jointly keep the rising left in check. The brief career of a local politician on the left fringe of the political spectrum is a piece of this transformation. Ulrich Baumann spent half of the last fifteen years of his life in mental institutions. The book documents, through his medical records, a fate that was not uncommon at the time: suffering from the late effects of syphilis and the helplessness of medicine and psychiatry in dealing with it.