19th century

The newspaper was founded by Franz Louis Jent, a bookseller from Solothurn and veteran of the Freischarenzüge – the Liberal insurrections of 1844–45 that led to the 1847 Sonderbund War, a Swiss civil war.^[4] The newspaper's name, Der Bund, translates as "The Union", but is also shorthand for the Swiss Confederation, the democratic federal state established in 1848 by the Liberal victors of the civil war.

The newspaper was first published on 1 October 1850 with a daily circulation (including Sundays) of 1,000, and was sold by subscription for 26 batzen for three months. Its circulation soon grew nationwide, briefly rising to more than 10,000 during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71. By 1875, according to the conservative Intelligenzblatt, Der Bund was Switzerland's leading news medium.^[4][5]

It was initially intended to be a neutral, national newspaper modeled after the British newspaper The Times. But in the intensely polarized political and cultural environment of the period, the editors – Abraham Roth and Johann Karl Tscharner – soon took the side of the Liberals, then governing the federal state but in opposition to the majority Conservatives in the Canton of Bern.^[4] The newspaper notably focused on publishing the deliberations of the national parliament and government, to which it had unique connections: three Federal Councillors (Constant Fornerod, Stefano Franscini and Friedrich Frey-Herosé) regularly forwarded notes from cabinet meetings to the newspaper, and Fornerod even drew a 1,000-franc salary from the newspaper for this service.^[4]

In 1893, the newspaper introduced one of the first typesetting machines on the European continent, and in 1894 the newspaper helped in establishing the Schweizerische Depeschenagentur (SDA), still the country's leading press agency.^[4]

In 1897, a second daily edition was introduced, not to be abandoned until 1967.^[4]