Rudolf Brun

Rudolf Brun (1290s–1360) led Zürich's guild revolution of 1336 and became the city's first independent mayor. Zürich had long been ruled by an aristocratic council, whose mayor was named by the abbess of the Fraumünster. Brun, a councillor from 1332, overthrew it in June 1336 with the craftsmen's help. His constitution balanced old and new: twenty-six councillors, thirteen patricians and thirteen guild masters, with the mayoralty reserved to him for life.

In 1349 he led a massacre of Zürich's Jews. In 1350 he crushed a noble coup, arrested Count Johann II of Rapperswil and destroyed Rapperswil Castle, and the next year Zürich joined the Swiss Confederacy.

His regime curbed the Grossmünster and Fraumünster monasteries, which had dominated the city throughout the Middle Ages, and he ruled the council until his death.