“The Denied Revolution”: Between Modernity and Tradition in Switzerland—On the Figure of the Peasant in the Swiss Identity Discourse

Abstract

The text examines the formation and persistence of the Swiss national imaginary as a construct shaped by enduring symbols, narratives, and figurative images. Building on theories of collective identity and Charles Taylor’s concept of the social imaginary, it argues that Swiss national identity emerged through a long cultural process in which the Alps, the herdsman, and eventually the peasant became dominant symbolic figures. Through literary works, historical writing, visual culture, and political discourse, these images acquired normative force and provided a shared framework for interpreting collective experience. The study traces how eighteenth-century idealizations of Alpine life, reinforced by authors such as Haller, Rousseau, and Gessner, established a myth of origins that overshadowed later political transformations. It shows how the bourgeois elites of 1848 chose symbolic continuity over revolutionary rupture, allowing the peasant figure to become the central bearer of national distinctiveness. The analysis highlights tensions between modernity and tradition, progress and nostalgia, and urban and rural imaginaries. It concludes that despite attempts to introduce modern symbolic figures, the Alpine-pastoral tableau continues to dominate the Swiss imaginary, revealing a persistent divergence between Switzerland’s historical development and the symbolic field through which it understands itself.

1. Introduction

Speaking about collective—especially national—identity presents a difficult task, for one is expected to discuss a construct that refuses to acknowledge itself as a construct. That collective identity, including national identity, is such a construct has, however, been beyond doubt for decades. The works of Benedict Anderson (Anderson 1983) and Eric Hobsbawm (Hobsbawm 1990) have become standard references in this regard. Yet national identity in particular struggles with the notion that it might be merely an imagined entity. It is built upon a social imaginary which, following Charles Taylor, is not to be understood merely as an assemblage of ideas, but rather as something that additionally encompasses social phenomena enabling collective action by endowing such action with meaning. This attribution of meaning possesses normative force and thus establishes a moral and ethical framework within which individuals act:

“By social imaginary, I mean something much broader and deeper than the intellectual schemes people may entertain when they think about social reality in a disengaged mode. I am thinking, rather, of the ways people imagine their social existence, how they fit together with others, how things go on between them and their fellows, the expectations that are normally met, and the deeper normative notions and images that underlie these expectations […] my focus is on the way people ‘imagine’ their social surroundings, and this is often not expressed in theoretical terms, but is carried in images, stories, and legends […] what is interesting in the social imaginary is that it is shared by large groups of people, if not the whole society […] the social imaginary is that common understanding that makes possible common practices and a widely shared sense of legitimacy.”

(Taylor 2004, p. 23)

The concept of the social imaginary proposed by Taylor leads into the sphere of figurative imagination, which, in the context of collective identity, contains old and enduring images that in turn dominate both the social consciousness and the social unconscious. With reference to these images, new phenomena can be identified and perceived as one’s own. Taylor’s imaginary is constituted by significant figures of a collectively experienced drama into which every experience is integrated. Thanks to these figures, images, or narratives—“the most diverse remnants of the past” (Marchal 1992, p. 38)1 to which the emotions of each individual within a community are attached—developments long since shaped, as well as singular events, can be experienced collectively. On this basis, the imaginary is continually cultivated and unfolds within the symbolic field that forms a kind of framework for the collective subject. In every shared event, in the media, in holidays, festivals, and popular celebrations, the collective subject becomes the bearer of identity.

When attempting to address the Swiss national imaginary, one is confronted with a particular challenge. On the one hand, it draws nourishment from neighbouring cultures; on the other, from the shared history of the Confederation; and in yet another respect, it is profoundly shaped by the country’s internal regional and cantonal differentiation. In order to identify the components of the national symbolic field and to understand their functionalization, it is appropriate to briefly retrace the process through which this imaginary emerged. Special attention in this context must be given to the figure of the peasant who, still in Hans Caspar Hirzel’s writings, was regarded as in need of “moral improvement” (Hirzel [1761] 1989, p. 159)2, yet gradually merges with the positively connoted figure of the herdsman and eventually becomes a foundational figure of the nation. To consider the herdsman in isolation, however, would be insufficient given the complexity of the social imaginary. One must take into account the broader environment that contributed decisively to the elevation of this figure. In this case, it is above all the Alps which, in the eighteenth century—when the need for national cohesion manifested itself with great intensity—became an acceptable and attractive reference image for all regions of Switzerland. A milestone in this development was set by Albrecht von Haller, whose poem Die Alpen (1729), as Peter von Matt observes, equated the mountain world with the Confederation as a whole (cf. von Matt 2012, p. 25).

This signals the central thesis: that in the competition for dominance in shaping Swiss identity, the “symbolic representation” (Barkhoff and Heffernan 2010, p. 16) of the founding myth3—together with the entire complex of images surrounding the figure of the peasant—outstripped all potential competing images and confirmed, within the symbolic field4, the denied revolution (Maissen 2015, pp. 132–40).

In what follows, I build on Thomas Maissen’s observations, which assume that the bourgeois-liberal victors of the Revolution of 1848—and simultaneously the founders of modern Switzerland—opted for continuity within the symbolic field rather than for a radical transformation. As a result, the symbolic sphere of the revolution and the actual reality of upheaval diverged. The bourgeois-liberal elites “created, above all through national institutions and a revision clause, the instruments that made it possible to adapt the internal political framework continuously—and yet peacefully—to the accelerated economic transformation of the industrial age. In constitutional terms, this step amounted to a revolution” (Maissen 2015, p. 133)5 and thus oriented toward the future. The national imaginary, by contrast, was directed backwards, toward the myth of origins and a well-tempered stability. Two different speeds of civilizational development thus became apparent—foundations for which Albrecht von Haller had already laid in his Alpine poem. There, he associated progress, linked to the development of the natural sciences, “assigned to decline, that is, to what is negative” (von Matt 2012, p. 43) and opposed it to the intact idyll of origins. Peter von Matt illustrates this dual perception of the Confederation with Rudolf Koller’s painting Die Gotthardpost, in which the racing mail coach stands for the dawning new era, while the cows watching from the alpine pasture represent passive retrospection. (von Matt 2012, p. 10).

2. Foundational Figures in the Swiss National Imaginary: The Peasant, the Cow, and the Alps

It is well known that Albrecht von Haller, through his poem, contributed to revising the perception of the Alps, which until then had been regarded primarily as dangerous and inaccessible. With his most significant literary work, Haller succeeded in establishing or reinforcing several topoi fundamental to the Swiss self-perception. One of these is the notion of a continuity of the Confederation since the “golden times” of its mythical founding—a continuity that, according to Haller, could be guaranteed thanks to the inhabitants of the Alps. “Ihr Schüler der Natur, ihr kennt noch güldne Zeiten!” (von Haller [1729] 1768, p. 4)6—he writes in his widely read poem, before elaborating on the virtues of these “pupils of nature.”

But who are these praised natural people, who are said to be free of all vanity, industrious, poor but happy, who drink dew and radiance from the clouds and live in extraordinary harmony? Unmistakably, it is a peasant people whose plough is able to cut through hard, stony land and whose seed runs across infertile soil (von Haller [1729] 1768, p. 5). Nature, he claims, throws the Alps around this people, fencing them off from the corrupted world. In this way, Albrecht von Haller not only provides a foundation for the idealization of the herdsman and, subsequently, of the peasant together with his environment, but also for the later idea of the Homo Alpinus. The heroization of the herdsman that begins at this time unfolds in the mountains, which become a shared point of reference for all regions of Switzerland. More than that: thanks to the Alps—appropriated as quintessentially Swiss—the herdsman, stripped of regional differentiation, becomes a universal figure of reference for all Swiss. With this integrative moment, an important step on the path toward the formation of national identity was taken.

Albrecht von Haller not only contributed to that positive identification of the Swiss through the Alps, but also to the fact that foreigners came to function as a kind of mirror held up before the Swiss themselves. It was the French who first had access to his poem Die Alpen, published in 1795 in the translation by Vinzenz Bernhard Tscharner. The French version played a significant role in transforming perceptions of nature and of the human relationship to it. From that point on, the Alps were no longer regarded as the abode of evil spirits, but as a refuge of freedom, communal spirit, and integrity—an antithesis to the civilized yet corrupt life at court. The mountains invited visitation and recreation. Consequently, from the turn of the nineteenth century onward, foreign tourism increased, and the Swiss found themselves confronted with outsiders, which necessarily intensified processes of self-examination. Already in the eighteenth century, particularly in Romandy7, a group of intellectuals emerged who insisted on the cohesion of all regions of the Confederation. These early Helvetists—such as Doyen Philippe-Sirice Bridel and later Rodolphe Töpffer—emphasized cultural differentiation from France and a close attachment to the other cultural communities of Switzerland. For them, their identity as Swiss stood in the foreground, and the Alps played a decisive role in this integrative process. In view of the burgeoning “foreigners’ industry,” Töpffer lamented that tourists showed no genuine interest in Swiss culture and merely followed a contemporary fashion. The blasé gawkers from Great Britain, as described in the chapter La partie pittoresque des voyages de De Saussure in Mélanges (Töpffer 1852), came to the beautiful, chaste Switzerland only to trample it down without any regard for the inhabitants (Töpffer 1852, pp. 96–98). The unity and distinctiveness of Switzerland, as conceived by Töpffer, correspond to Herder’s idea of the Volksgeist, which was highly influential in the nineteenth century. In Switzerland, this concept was adopted only selectively, with an emphasis on climate, understood as encompassing factors such as landscape, topography, labour, and ways of life (Cf. Herder 1989, p. 266). A topographically shaped, organically grown Volksgeist ensures its coherence—yet, as Töpffer argues, this coherence is endangered by the burgeoning tourism industry. Töpffer speaks of the dispossession of Switzerland, a motif that would become central to national debates around the turn of the twentieth century. The self-assertion of the Welsches8 as Swiss took place internally, up to the end of the nineteenth century, not primarily in opposition to culturally foreign groups, but through a stance taken against Paris. Concern for the cohesion of the multicultural nation clearly gained importance and was placed at the forefront. At that time, as the literary scholar Daniel Maggetti emphasizes, the non-Francophone Swiss were perceived by the Romands as closer than the Frenchman. According to Maggetti, in the second half of the nineteenth century the Romands defined themselves not primarily through France, but through their political-historical belonging to Switzerland. (Cf. Maggetti 1995, pp. 17–22, especially p. 19).

The relationship of German-speaking Switzerland to its northern neighbour in the nineteenth century is marked by an ambiguity that manifests itself in a dual sense of belonging. Politically, the Swiss felt themselves to belong to the republican Switzerland; culturally, however, to the German-speaking world. A paradigmatic example here is Gottfried Keller, who already in his early poem Einkehr unterhalb des Rheinfalls gives expression to his notion of this double affiliation:

“Wohl mir, daß ich dich endlich fand,

Du stiller Ort am alten Rhein,

Wo ungestört und ungekannt

Ich Schweizer darf und Deutscher sein!

…

Da raschelt’s drüben, und der Scherg,

Zweifärbig, reckt das Ohr herein—

Ich fliehe rasch hinan den Berg,

Ade, du stiller Ort am Rhein!”

(Keller [1846] 2026)

The legendary Rhine still stands here for the shared roots of Germanic culture. Yet the imagined harmonious idyll along the old Rhine—which is still perceived as a unifying element rather than a dividing border, and along which the subject could be both German and Swiss—is unmistakably disrupted by a rustling Scherg from across the river (Müller 1997, p. 92). The border policeman, as Dominik Müller writes, abruptly ends the dream of unity and becomes a figure of otherness for German-speaking Switzerland. The lyrical subject withdraws from its quiet place back into the mountains. And yet, as Müller shows, Gottfried Keller remained faithful throughout his life to his notion of Switzerland’s dual status (Müller 1997, p. 89). This ambivalence in the relationship to the German Empire would accompany the national-identity debate in Switzerland up until the First World War.9

The eighteenth century brought to light two important developments which, intertwined with one another, significantly shaped the process of national identity formation. On the one hand, history was discovered as a source for promoting the happiness and virtues of citizens and, consequently, for a state order grounded in reason; on the other hand, a new perception of landscape emerged, modelled on antiquity. In this respect, the role of Albrecht von Haller cannot be overstated. Even if Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Salomon Gessner later put the finishing touch on the idealization of the Alpine landscape and its inhabitants, it was Albrecht von Haller who laid the foundations not only for the equation of the Alps with the Confederation, but also for their idealization. In his poem, he praises the harmony that prevails among the Sennen. The inhabitants of the Alps, he claims, are equal and free:

“Hier herrscht kein Unterscheid [sic!], den schlauer Stolz erfunden,

der Tugend unterthan und Laster edel macht; […]

Die Freiheit teilt dem Volk, aus unpartei’schen Händen,

mit immer gleichem Maß Vergnügen, Ruh und Müh.

Kein unzufriedner Sinn zankt sich mit seinem Glücke,

man ißt, man schläft, man liebt und danket dem Geschicke.”

(von Haller [1729] 1768, p. 6)

The unspoiled natural human is contrasted with the moral decay of courtly and bourgeois-urban life. A few decades later, in Julie ou la Nouvelle Héloïse (Rousseau 1761), Jean-Jacques Rousseau regarded the Alpine landscape as an ideal place for spiritual retreat—a place where one could surrender to a desired solitude and to a state of oneness with nature, and where one could also enjoy the simple life among the herdsmen. Almost simultaneously with his epistolary novel, Salomon Gessner’s Idyllen (Gessner 1756) appeared, in which the Arcadian image of the Alps found its full expression.

The change in the perception of the Alps made journeys to Switzerland suitable both for the princely court and for the bourgeois household; more than that, such journeys even came to be regarded as desirable. This had far-reaching consequences for the formation of national belonging, since the bourgeois circles in Switzerland—one thinks of the postulates of the Helvetic Society (Helvetische Gesellschaft)10—incorporated the exploration of the homeland into their pedagogical programme. Thus Swiss youth were encouraged not only to experience nature, but also to experience their own homeland and to encounter the “national history” that became intertwined with the experience of nature. Step by step, however, the Alpine landscape was decisively instrumentalized for patriotic purposes.

The rural imaginary, in the image of the Alpine idyll, includes not only the natural landscape and the herdsman but also animals, which—like human beings—enjoy a happy life. Here, too, Albrecht von Haller provided a model that his successors would follow:

“Wann der entfernte Strahl die Schatten nun verlängert,

und Phöbus müdes Licht sich senkt in kühle Ruh,

so eilt die satte Schar, von Überfluß geschwängert,

mit schwärmenden Geblöck gewohnten Ställen zu.”

(von Haller [1729] 1768, p. 11)

This idealized image of what would later be called the land of herdsmen was cultivated not only in the literature but also multiplied in countless landscape drawings and vedute, such as Johann Ludwig Bleuler’s Ansicht der Stadt Chur und ihrer Umgebung (Bleuler 1830) (Figure 1).

The veduta presents Chur in a panoramic view in which the wide valley and the mountains envelop the city and convey an impression of security. This effect is heightened by the fact that the city is not placed centrally but slightly shifted to the side, partially hidden behind a hill. The foreground, by contrast, is formed by a composition consisting of two figures—a man and a woman—positioned at opposite edges of the image. Between them, in the centre, livestock are depicted in mid-stride. They move toward the woman, who stands in the gateway with open arms, welcoming them. It is an idyllic scene in which the peaceful, perhaps even cheerful coexistence of humans and animals forms the focal point. One of the three animals is a cow—a figure that, within the patriotic discourse, became politically instrumentalized. This is evidenced, among other things, by the five-part pictorial narrative Geschichte einer Schweizer Kuh und ihres Kälbleins by the Zurich caricaturist David Hess from 1803 (Weishaupt 1992, p. 90). In his critical drawings on the French and Helvetic Revolution, the Swiss cow allegorically represents the Confederation. Thus the Swiss cow entered the canon of national images and the Swiss national ideology, where it still holds an honoured place today.

In the current year, a vote was held on a popular initiative promoted by the SVP, whose aim was to limit Switzerland’s population to 10 million by 205011. The people’s initiative “Keine 10-Millionen-Schweiz! Nachhaltigkeitsinitiative” (Website of the People’s Initiative n.d.) was accompanied by a visual campaign that depicted the alleged dangers associated with an “excessive” number of inhabitants, linked to immigration12. One of its central motifs was the contrast between an idyllic Alpine landscape and a modern, urbanized environment filled with high-rise buildings meant to accommodate millions of new residents (Figure 2). However, the campaign’s key image was a poster showing a happy family on a green Alpine meadow, accompanied by sheep and a cow (Figure 3). The term sustainability used in the initiative’s title combined, in a paradoxical way, contemporary concerns for sustainable development with the conservative stance of its proponents, whose idea revolved around the slogan “bewahren, was wir lieben” and positioned itself against modernity:

In the nineteenth century, the cow, alongside the Alpine dweller who, in literary simplification and through a radical reduction in social complexity, is rounded into an abstract figure of the herdsman, stands for the intact world of Switzerland. This is at least what the educated and travelling European bourgeoisie wished for: a herdsman living a free and happy life, practising his daily gymnastics (wrestling and stone-throwing), and, when young, delighting the elders with a cheerful dance (Cf. von Haller [1729] 1768, pp. 7–8).

Two years after the publication of Hess’s Geschichten einer Schweizer Kuh and the dissolution of the Helvetic Republic, the appropriation of the herdsman for political purposes had become an undisputed fact. This becomes even clearer two years later, in 1805, when an attempt was made to reunite the society divided by the Helvetic Revolution. Near Interlaken, on a meadow in Unspunnen, a folk festival was organized—conceived as a “national celebration intended to promote reconciliation among the cantons” (Marchal 2007, p. 88)—to help restore harmony. The festival was filled with historical fictions and reminiscences, as Guy P. Marchal describes. The meadow itself was symbolically charged, for reconciliation festivals between the Oberland and Bern had been held there for centuries. The scene of the celebration was framed on one side by the ruins of the castle—representing the broken power of the nobility—and on the other by an Alpine backdrop with the Jungfrau. The games held there were regarded as ancient competitions of the herdsmen. One is reminded of the passage in Haller’s poem in which the elders take pleasure in the games of the younger Alpine dwellers: they were the same ancient contests—wrestling (Schwingen) and stone-throwing (Steinstossen). They have remained the same to this day.

Politically, the two Unspunnen festivals of 1805 and 1808 achieved little, but the fact that the herdsman was deployed for political purposes speaks for itself. Today, the Unspunnen festivals, held roughly every twelve years, enjoy enormous popularity and are accompanied for an entire week by all major media—press, radio, and television. The winners in the traditional Swiss disciplines such as stone-throwing and wrestling are celebrated, interviewed long after the festival has ended, and featured on the front pages of newspapers. They are contemporary national heroes, such as Christian Stucki, the winner of the wrestling competition at the Unspunnenfest 2017 (Figure 4)13.

In the nineteenth century, the figure of the herdsman largely merged with that of the peasant. Johann Caspar Lavater had already taken a decisive step in this direction in his Schweizerlieder (Lavater [1767] 1788). At the request of his friends in the Helvetic Society—who, in accordance with their pedagogical programme, sought to instruct the youth about the advantages of Swiss rural life in contrast to that in monarchies—Lavater composed a series of Swiss songs, among which is a song dedicated to Swiss peasants. In this song, Lavater invokes all the virtues of the herdsman previously mentioned, yet he foregrounds above all his freedom, which was elevated to the status of an ideological emblem of Switzerland. Moreover, as the title of the song suggests, the piece celebrates not only the herdsman but also the peasant, and Lavater no longer draws any distinction between these two professions, which were socially distinct categories:

“Reich genug ohne einen Heller,

Glücklich auch im groben Zwilch,

Tragen wir in kühle Keller

Mutten voll von Nidelmilch;

Führen wir in Erntetagen

Unsre hochgehäufte Wagen,

Bey der Abendröthe Schein,

Mit Gesang ins Tenn hinein.

Aller Pracht und Hoffart spotten

Schweizerbauern an dem Pflug;

Quellenwasser, frische Schotten,

Käs und Brod ist uns genug!

Tragen wir auf braunen Nacken

Bürden frisch gemähtes Heu;

Trieft der Schweiß von Stirn und Baken,

O wie herrlich schmeckt der Brey!”

(Lavater [1767] 1788, pp. 102–3)

The allusions to Haller’s description of life in the Alps and to Rousseau’s praise of the freedom of the Alpine dweller are unmistakable. Brought into play is the republican right to property, which at that time was already interpreted as a natural right. The peasants of the Confederation were able to keep the results of their labour—in contrast to the peasants in monarchies, whose fruits of labour were consumed by princes:

Wir nun pflanzen für uns selber;

Unser nur ist Feld und Weid;

Unsre Schaaf und unsre Kälber

Mästen wir zu unsrer Freud;

Jedes eigne Sichel mähet,

Was er, nur für sich, gesäet;

Und für Fürsten triefet, nicht

Unser Schweiß vom Angesicht!

(Lavater [1767] 1788, p. 104)

It is not only the Confederation that proudly idealizes the heroized peasant. Lavater presupposes that the peasant is happy to have been made a Swiss by God. The final stanza is an expression of reverence for God, with whom—and with whose commandments—the peasants live in harmony, and thanks to whom they can be free and enjoy family life. Lavater unfolds an idyllic image:

Gott im Himmel sey gepriesen!

Er ists, der uns glücklich macht,

Macht, daß uns Feld und Wiesen

Alles blüht, alles lacht!

Er vermehret unsre Wiesen!

Er, er ließ uns Schweizer werden!

Er, er macht von Tyrannerey

Uns und unsre Kinder frey!

(Lavater [1767] 1788, p. 104)

Parallel to the process of idealizing first the herdsman and then the peasant, another process unfolded: the formation of a national ideology tied to the elevation of history and historiography. In the Entwurf einer Helvetischen Gesellschaft of 1762 one reads: “Historical knowledge is rightly regarded as one of the most distinguished means of promoting the virtue of citizens and the happiness of states.” (Marchal 1992, p. 39)15. In accordance with Enlightenment virtue philosophy, insight into the relationship between morality and the desired happiness of states was understood to arise from knowledge of their own history. Like other countries, the educated bourgeoisie turned to the Middle Ages, which was regarded as the founding era of states—the Golden Age. By placing the birth of the state in the “Golden Age,” the founders, the Old Confederates, were simultaneously idealized. Hirzel wrote that the Old Confederates had been driven by nothing other than the preservation of civic freedom, and that no desire for domination had motivated them (Cf. Marchal 1992, p. 40).

Almost at the same time, Johannes von Müller, in his Geschichten schweizerischer Eidgenossenschaft, left no doubt as to who the heroes of those Golden Times were:

“The customs of the Old Swiss are explained by human nature and by their Alps […] In general, these old Confederates, especially the Alpine herdsmen, were natural men: in their features, when no passion made them fearsome, there was plain honesty, and strength in their entire bearing.”

(Weishaupt 1992, pp. 63–64)16

Among other sources, Friedrich Schiller drew on Johannes Müller’s work on the history of Switzerland while preparing his play Wilhelm Tell, which consolidated the Swiss national myth.17 It was Schiller who took the most important step in equating the Old Confederates with peasants. Even before the curtain rises, one hears the Kuhreihen and the ringing of cowbells. The first three characters to appear are Kuoni, Ruodi, and Werni—a fisherman, a herdsman, and a hunter—who converse about rural life. The oath that is mythologized as the beginning of the Confederation is sworn, in Schiller’s version, on a meadow called the Rütli by the ordinary people. As Weishaupt explains, the main characters of the drama are, in a completely natural manner, transformed into “noble” peasants and herdsmen—generalized as equal members of “freedom-loving peasant democracies.” In accordance with the Enlightenment emphasis on the role of history, the interest of the bourgeois elites in folk life and folk culture had its deep roots in the desire for originality, which emerged simultaneously with the development of virtue philosophy. The figure of the peasant, with his unchanging customs, rituals, and traditions, was ideally suited to refresh a high culture that had grown somewhat weary. The source of spiritual renewal was sought in the birth of the nation. In this context, the peasant and rural folk culture were regarded as guarantors of tradition and continuity. They were functionalized in the name of bourgeois ideals.

One should not be deceived, however. The supposedly leading role—a certain dominance—of the peasant figure in the national discourse does not mean that peasants actually assumed this role in reality. This would not even have fit the conceptual framework of the patriotic Enlighteners, who reserved the state-forming function for the nobility and the bourgeoisie. The dominance of the peasant figure described here is realized exclusively within the symbolic field. Yet the heroization and idealization of the Alpine landscape and of the peasant, accomplished in the eighteenth century, meant that in the period of intense engagement with the question of national identity, one could find ready at hand—and draw upon—the tableau of an Alpine meadow, a herdsman, and his animals. It is in the nineteenth century that the figure of the peasant develops its full integrative power and becomes a supporting pillar of bourgeois nationalism (Cf. Weishaupt 1992, p. 59).

In the meantime, however, attempts were also made to reinterpret the symbolic figure of the peasant. Already in the eighteenth century, the bourgeoisie sought to transform the tradition-bound peasant into a progressive, future-oriented agriculturalist. One may recall here the philosophizing Jakob Guyer, known as Kleinjogg, whose significance for the development of the Confederation had already been emphasized by Johann Caspar Hirzel in his 1761 work Die Wirthschaft eines philosophischen Bauers. The fact that this attempt had no lasting effect was due, among other things, to Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl, who in 1851 published his ethnographic work Die bürgerliche Gesellschaft, in which he portrayed the peasant as persistently rooted in the soil and nationally conservative. The text was widely received in Switzerland and decisively shaped the image of the peasant. As a consequence, the peasant continued to be understood as a source of new vitality for urban dwellers, but now his socially conservative character—grounded in his rootedness—was emphasized. The urban bourgeoisie then incorporated this figure into its national-political ideology.

When, in the mid-nineteenth century, the conflict between liberals and conservatives—which had been intensifying since the Helvetic period—was resolved by force and the modern state, the Swiss Confederation, was subsequently founded, the integrative figure of the peasant, who as an ancestral forefather guaranteed continuity, came into play. The new constitution of 1848 sealed a revolutionary transformation in Switzerland, yet this transformation was denied by the bourgeoisie, who themselves had been the agents of that change. As noted at the outset, the founding fathers of the constitution created political and social instruments and mechanisms that were forward-looking. The bourgeois-liberal elites correctly recognized future developments, new social and economic processes, and the challenges of the time—but they failed to recognize the opportunity to create a new imaginary.

In this respect, Thomas Maissen speaks of a denial of the revolution, for—to put it simply—they opted for continuity rather than rupture. One of the reasons for this denial, Maissen argues, lay in the desire to avoid any negative associations with the founding of the Helvetic Republic, which had come into being through foreign intervention. Thus the revolution that had in fact taken place was replaced by the notion of continuity, drawing once again on the old reservoir of images. The Old Confederates of the Golden Age were invoked anew, as they served as an excellent reference point for both sides of the Sonderbund conflict.

Thus Christian Wälti, in his song Der neue Schweizerbund, celebrates the founding of the Confederation as follows (the last two stanzas):

“Die Männer, die erklären,

Die Lüge muss zu Grund,

Auf Vaterlandsaltären

Der Freiheit Feuer nähren,

sie sind der Schweizerbund.

Den Donner hört man schreiten

Hoch ob der Berge Rund;

Die Freien sieht man streiten,

kühn wie vor alten Zeiten—

Das ist der Schweizerbund.”

(Wälti [1848] 1998)

Similar tones can be found on the commemorative sheet marking the entry into force of the Federal Constitution, written by the radical liberal Johann Jakob Leuthy. In the right-hand column, he invokes “the ideal community with the ancestors, the founders of the old Confederation” (Leuthy [1848] 1998)18: “Not in vain, O heroic fathers, did you fight for the highest good; Behold it, saviours of the fatherland—Not in vain was your blood shed; Sacred is this hour.” (Leuthy [1848] 1998)19 One may say that reality and the symbolic field diverged.

What could be understood as an alliance between the citizens of the towns and the peasants was in fact a self-effacement on the part of the bourgeois elites, who had brought the modern state into being but ceded the symbolic sphere—the imaginary—to the peasantry. It is therefore not surprising that around the turn from the nineteenth to the twentieth century, at a time when the question of national identity was being discussed with particular intensity, the bourgeois elites once again relied on the peasants as the best bearers of Swiss distinctiveness. This becomes strikingly clear in the cultural journal Wissen und Leben, which around 1910 became an important forum for the exchange of views on Switzerland’s national and cultural belonging. In 1910, the Zurich pastor Eduard Blocher placed the figure of the peasant at the centre of his reflections on Swiss national and cultural identity. By building his argument on the figure of the peasant, he confirmed its identity-bearing function. However, Blocher saw the Swiss peasant—as a representative of the nation—in a cultural entanglement with his northern neighbour and resisted the cultural appropriation of the peasant figure for Switzerland. He claimed that the peasant from Schaffhausen had far more in common with his South German neighbour and would feel more at one with him than with a welscher Bankier (Blocher 1910, p. 451). The response given to him by Ernest Bovet, the editor of Wissen und Leben, is remarkable, for the Lausanne Romanist did not separate the political sphere from the cultural one. He asked rhetorically:

“If ‘everything we are and everything we have created on both sides [in Baden and in German-speaking Switzerland—D.K.] is the same,’ then what meaning does our democracy still have? It becomes nothing more than a form; it imparts no distinctiveness to our character; it no longer belongs to the substance of our soul?”

(Bovet 1910, p. 566)20

In contrast to Blocher, he saw Swiss distinctiveness in the modern political system of democracy, in which Switzerland, at the turn of the century, was far ahead of other European states. Yet Bovet’s voice was, at that time, more the exception than the rule.

One of the reasons for the lack of competition to the peasant figure, Albert Tanner (1996, p. 210) and Thomas Maissen (2010, pp. 230–33) argue, lay in the threat that the relatively new socialist International was believed to pose to the bourgeois order at the turn of the century. In view of the failed attempt to anchor national identity in constitutional patriotism (Tanner 2002, p. 189), the Bürgerblock—formed by the Free Democratic Party, the Liberals, and the Catholic Conservatives—returned to the tried-and-tested historical images and to the peasant in order to provide the nation with a foundation. By once again turning to the peasant as a reference figure for national identity, however, the achievements of the Revolution of 1848 were overlooked, as was the modernity that, at that time, entered republican Switzerland ahead of all other European states. With the denial of the revolution, the bourgeoisie turned away from modernity within the symbolic field.

3. Persistence of the Symbolic Representation

This dissonance was addressed by Peter von Matt in his speech on the Rütli on 1 August 2009. It was a special situation in which the assembled audience found themselves. Von Matt drew the attention of the distinguished listeners to the silence prevailing on the meadow. On one side, the lake shimmered through the trees; on the other, a mountain rose, up which an ibex was climbing. “It is beautiful here.” he said. And then he added: “But behind us, deep within this mountain, hell is raging.” By this he meant the heavy lorries roaring through the tunnel—all of Europe rushing past the people gathered on the meadow:

“All the peoples of the continent hiss through the stony night. Here, where we stand, time seems to rest; yet inside the mountain its acceleration—the headlong rush of civilization toward ever new triumphs and ever uglier catastrophes—becomes a numbing event. Is that back there not the truth of our world, and is this here before us not, after all, merely an illusion?”

(von Matt 2012, p. 94)21

Two years later, in his text Die Schweiz zwischen Ursprung und Fortschritt, von Matt once again addressed the double speed of civilization, referring to Koller’s painting briefly discussed at the beginning. The racing stagecoach in the painting—and, a hundred years later, the roaring lorries inside the mountain during his Rütli speech—stand for the ongoing acceleration of development. Images of progress are juxtaposed with those of comforting nature and the idyllic scene of origins on the meadow. The distinguished society gathered at the foot of the Gotthard, at the symbolic cradle of the Confederation, celebrates the birth of Switzerland and indulges in the old myth, while inside the mountain reality keeps pace with modernity, opening itself to new triumphs and possible catastrophes. Here: time-honoured tranquillity; there: a venture. And yet this adventure of modernization, which Switzerland has experienced since its founding as a modern state, remains without a convincing symbolic figure:

“The symbolic force of the mountains was something the cities had never been able to match, even though it was in the cities that all historical breakthroughs occurred, and from them that all the energies of change—of progress, that is—and of the connection to the ‘accelerated processes’ of world civilization emanated.”

(von Matt 2012, p. 64)

In the Swiss imaginary, neither Zurich’s Bahnhofstrasse nor Geneva’s banking district nor the Basel Rhine harbour appear to this day—but, as ever, the mist-shrouded Gotthard. Perhaps this is due to their limited potential to function as allegories. Perhaps, however, Peter von Matt is right when he attributes a certain danger to progress, one associated with the speed of change and with uncertainty. He sees the fear of civilizational acceleration evoked in the figure of the fleeing calf in Koller’s painting.

Alfred Escher—the creator of the technological achievement of the century, as the construction of the Gotthard Tunnel was called in the press—was himself confronted with the risks inherent in progress. Among other things, due to financial difficulties during the construction of the tunnel, he was forced in 1878 to resign as president of the board of directors of the Gotthard Railway Company. As a reminder of his achievements, the citizens of Zurich erected a monument to him on the station square—to the “greatest tycoon of progress Switzerland ever had.” (von Matt 2012, p. 16) Yet even Escher did not become an icon for modern Switzerland as a whole.

Attempts to reorient the national discourse toward modernity—as Ernest Bovet had done—remained exceedingly rare. Shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War, at a time of heightened demand for national ideology, Hans Oprecht, then president of the Social Democratic Party of Switzerland and a long-serving member of the National Council, sought to steer the debate on the programme of Geistige Landesverteidigung (Spiritual National Defence) onto a modern track. In his 1937 speech before the Neue Helvetische Gesellschaft, he called for a renewed focus on the liberal-democratic tradition of the founding of the federal state, rather than on the myth of origins:

“The historical dignity and greatness of our nation, and its rightful self-confidence, rest upon the realization of the democratic principle of popular sovereignty. Whoever lays hands on democracy deprives our people of its self-confidence and breaks its backbone.”

(Oprecht 1937)

His proposal, however, found scarcely any representation in the programme of Spiritual National Defence. The idea of two speeds of civilization—which, according to von Matt, could become a hallmark of Switzerland—was partially reflected in the 1939 National Exhibition in Zurich, where “original Switzerland,” on the right bank of the lake, was symbolically connected by cable car to its modern counterpart on the left bank.

It is no coincidence that Max Frisch, Lucius Burckhardt, and Markus Kutter referred to the Landi when critically examining Switzerland’s lack of imagination and its reluctance to take risks, and when formulating their own proposal for opening Swiss society to modernization. In the Zurich exhibition, they saw the next leap forward after the unification of Switzerland in 1848: “The idea was to make ourselves able to act by performing an act.” (Burckhardt et al. [1954] 1990, p. 141). With their proposed “act,” they aimed to reclaim the symbolic sphere of the nation for modernity. They suggested building a new city that would correspond to contemporary forms of life:

“The city that is to be founded must be a model city in the sense that it sets a development in motion which will naturally outpace it as well—thus not a terminus, not a dictate to which the standardization of all Swiss cities would have to conform.”

(Burckhardt et al. [1954] 1990, p. 151)22

A modern city—a forward-looking project that could have become an icon and that recalled the boldness of Le Corbusier—ultimately entered literary history merely as an intellectual exercise. Several decades later, Christian Kracht, in his novel Ich werde hier sein im Sonnenschein und im Schatten, alluded to the failed Swiss modernity project by depicting a Swiss architect named Jeanneret, who watches in helpless bewilderment as Africans abandon the cities he designed and return to their villages:

“The architect, after wandering alone through his dark and deserted Swiss city for an entire night, cast the end of a rope over a steel streetlamp of his own design early in the morning and hanged himself before the African sun grew too hot.”

(Kracht 2008, p. 149)23

Hugo Loetscher also attempted to establish a different topos for the origins of Switzerland in Lesen statt klettern. In Die urbanen Platters—die andere helvetische Tradition (Loetscher 2003, pp. 11–21), he sought to challenge the dominance of the idealized Alpine landscape and, pointing to historical processes and to Thomas Platter—who resisted the canonical pattern of tending cattle as a goatherd on the alp—to propose a different symbol for Switzerland’s development. Platter’s desire for education drove him out into the world, into the cities, where he not only acquired knowledge but also rose socially. Thomas Platter could have become a reference figure for an alternative founding myth—yet, as von Matt says of the ideas of Frisch and Loetscher, both failed gloriously.

4. Conclusions

The analysis has shown that the Swiss national imaginary emerged from a complex interplay of literary, historical, and political discourses in which the Alps, the herdsman, and eventually the peasant became dominant symbolic representations of the nation. These figures acquired extraordinary integrative power because they offered a shared language through which a culturally, linguistically, and regionally diverse society could imagine itself as a coherent community. Over time, they developed into foundational images within the Swiss symbolic field and became central elements of the national myth.

At the same time, the persistence of these images reveals a fundamental ambivalence at the heart of Swiss identity. Switzerland was among the most successful examples of political modernization in Europe. The federal constitution of 1848 created institutions capable of adapting the country to the economic, social, and technological transformations of the modern age, while democratic participation became a defining feature of the Swiss political order. Yet this remarkable modernization was not accompanied by a comparable transformation of the symbolic sphere. Instead, the imaginary continued to be structured by images of an Alpine world allegedly untouched by historical change. The result was a growing divergence between social and political reality and the symbolic repertoire through which that reality was interpreted.

This discrepancy corresponds to what Thomas Maissen has described as the “denied revolution.” The liberal elites who created modern Switzerland proved capable of carrying out a revolutionary political transformation, yet they refrained from symbolically representing it as such. Rather than developing new images that could embody democracy, industrialization, technological innovation, urban modernity, or constitutional patriotism, they relied on the older mythological reservoir of the Old Confederates, the Alpine landscape, and the peasantry. Symbolic continuity prevailed over revolutionary rupture. The revolution succeeded institutionally but remained largely absent from the collective imagination.

Yet the persistence of myth should not simply be interpreted as a failure of modernization. As Peter von Matt has argued, “The notion that one can live without mythical narratives, images, and symbols is an illusion, both for the individual and for society.” (von Matt 2012, p. 140)24. Myths, images, and symbolic narratives are indispensable components of collective self-understanding. They provide societies with orientation, continuity, and meaning where purely rational political concepts often fail to generate emotional attachment. The enduring presence of the peasant and the Alpine tableau therefore points not merely to historical inertia but also to the continuing social need for symbolic figures capable of embodying the nation.

Maissen, while fundamentally agreeing with von Matt’s assessment of the necessity of myths, insists on the importance of critical historical reflection. Myths require scholarly correction that makes visible what has been forgotten, repressed, or rendered invisible within collective memory, while also exposing elements that have lost their historical relevance. Such criticism is not directed against myths as such but against their unreflected naturalization. Precisely because myths remain powerful instruments of social cohesion, they must be subjected to continual reassessment and historical contextualization. Only then can the Swiss imaginary be complemented by additional images more adequate to the country’s historical development, thus realizing Peter von Matt’s postulate: “The Rütli and the tunnel are two symbolic realities of Switzerland. Both must be taken into account when determining our country’s place within modern civilization.” (von Matt 2012, pp. 96–97)25.