Forging the Swiss Nation, 1760-1939: Popular Memory, Patriotic Invention, and Competing Conceptions of Nationhood
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FORGING THE SWISS NATION, 1760-1939: POPULAR MEMORY, PATRIOTIC INVENTION, AND COMPETING CONCEPTIONS OF NATIONHOOD OLIVER ZIMMER Submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The London School of Economics and Political Science University of London May 1999 1 UMI Number: U615569 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Dissertation Publishing UMI U615569 Published by ProQuest LLC 2014. Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 F lbO\ 7obf2\Z ABSTRACT This dissertation examines the reproduction and transformation of Swiss national identity in the period from the late eighteenth century to the beginning of World War II. To this end, the major part of the thesis focuses on four relatively short time frames, all of which were characterised by heightened concern with questions of national identity: a) the period 1760-1798, which witnessed the rise of an early, elite-centred Swiss national movement, b) the civil war of 1847 and the subsequent founding of the modem Swiss nation-state in 1848, c) the late nineteenth century (1880-1900), when Swiss nationalism entered its mass phase, and d) the 1930s (1933-1939), when authoritarian volkish nationalism from Germany challenged Switzerland’s poly-ethnic conception of nationhood. Two questions guide my analysis in the substantive part. First, to what extent can nationhood be invented or fabricated? And second, how are ‘civic’ and ‘organic’ conceptions of nationhood related to each other in this process of national reconstruction, and what causes shifts in the balance between the two? A final part (part III) addresses these question by way of comparison. The first comparative chapter contrasts Switzerland with Germany, arguing that there was more scope for inventing nationhood in the German than in the Swiss case during the last third of the nineteenth century. I attribute this difference to the fact that in Switzerland a popular ethno-symbolic memory posed cultural constraints on the activities of national ideologues, unlike in Germany, where pre-modem national myths and symbols never developed a constraining capacity. The second comparative chapter examines the role of landscape symbolism in the construction of national identity in Switzerland, the United States and Canada during the nineteenth and early twentieth century. I attribute the prominence of geographical determinism in the national discourse of these three societies to the divergence between the nationalist ideal of ethno-cultural homogeneity and their polyethnic composition. 2 Table of Contents Abstract 2 Table of Contents 3 Illustrations 5 Maps 7 Chronological Table 8 Acknowledgements 10 Introduction 12 PART I: THEORY & HISTORY 19 1 The Reconstruction of National Identity: A Framework for Analysis 20 Explaining Swiss exceptionalism: variations on a theme 21 Collective memory versus patriotic invention 26 Civic and organic nationhood 37 2 The Formation of an Ethno-Symbolic Memory (15th - 18th Century) 48 The institutional framework: towards an alliance of rural communities and towns 49 Wars and Confederate myth-making 57 The diffusion and political relevance of the Confederate Mythomoteur 66 Conclusion 71 PART II: THE RECONSTRUCTION OF SWISS NATIONHOOD 77 3 Nationalising the Ethno-symbolic memory: The Synthesis of Helvetic Nationalism (1760-1798) 78 The rise of Swiss Patriotism: ideology and organisation 79 The rise of Swiss Patriotism: an explanation 89 What kind of patriotism: delineating the lineaments of Swiss nationhood 99 Conclusion 108 4 Struggling for Unity (1798-1848): Swiss Nationhood Captures the Public 115 The dual Revolution: political and constitutional developments 117 Conflicts, communication, and the nationalisation of the public sphere 126 Competing definitions of nationhood 137 Conclusion 145 3 5 “We have become a People”: Evolving into a Modern Mass Nation (1870-1900) 151 Two days of worshipping the nation: the National Festival of 1891 152 Evolving into a mass nation: an explanation 155 Domestic political dynamics: the nationalising state and the cross-fertilisation of nation-oriented activity 163 Geopolitical dynamics: inter-nationalist competition and the reconstruction of Swiss nationhood 173 Conclusion 184 6 Geistige Landesverteidigung, 1933-1939: Forging a Swiss Volksgemeinschaft 192 Swiss nationhood as a communal experience: the National Exhibition of 1939 194 The context of Geistige Landesverteidigung 198 The formation of Geistige Landesverteidigung 202 The civic discourse: reasserting the Swiss Willensnation 204 The organic discourse: forging the national Wesensgemeinschaft 208 The fusion of Willensnation and Wesensgemeinschaft in the cultural nationalism of the late 1930s 211 Conclusion 225 PART III: COMPARISON 232 7 Memory, Events, and Nation Formation: Switzerland and Germany Compared 233 The present in the past versus the past in the present 234 Memory and nation formation in Switzerland 237 Memory and nation-formation in Germany 246 Conclusion 270 8 In Search of Authentic Nationhood: Nature and National Identity in Switzerland, the United States, and Canada 277 The myth of civic exceptionalism 277 Thinking about geography and national character in history 282 The dialectic of landscape and nationhood: two typical scenarios 286 “It is in the Alpine human being that we find our common ground”: landscape and Swiss nationhood 292 “The children of Israel in the wilderness”: Landscape and American nationhood 299 “We are the Northmen of the New World”: landscape and Canadian nationhood 307 Nature and nationhood in the post-war era 314 Conclusion 326 Bibliography 337 4 Illustrations Tables Tab. 1-1: Swiss resident population according to linguistic affiliation (native tongue) 21 Tab. 1-2: Concepts and analytical levels: ethno-symbolic memory, national ideology, national identity 34 Tab. 1-3: Civic and organic conceptions of nationhood 40 Tab. 2-1: The formation of an ethno-symbolic boundary 63 Tab. 2-2: Tab. 2-2: The Confederate Mythomoteur 66 Tab. 4-1: The rise of republican Nationalism (1798-1848): focus of identification, nature of ideology, institutional form 136 Tab. 4-2: Rival definitions of Swiss nationhood (1798-1848) 145 Tab. 5-1: Increase in nation-centred activity (1880-1900): a model of multiple causation 163 Tab. 5-2: Annual number of visitors to the National Museum (1898-1907) 166 Tab. 6-1: Import of foreign teaching material for Swiss primary and secondary schools 204 Tab. 7-1: The components of ethno-symbolic memory in early nineteenth- 256 century Germany Figures Fig. 1-1: The reconstruction of nationhood in morphogenetic terms 32 Fig. 1-2: The construction of nationhood: boundary mechanisms and resources 42 Fig. 3-1: Number of patriotic associations, 1761-1797 82 Fig. 3-2: The rise of Swiss early nationalism: a model 99 Fig. 5-1: The creation of a climate of ideological competition 170 5 The representatives of the Confederate cantons 56 assembled at the Diet in Baden, 16th century Swiss Cow and Habsburg Lion. Illustration for an anonymous 62 song against the Swiss Confederates, 16th century The topography around Lake Lucerne with the three Confederates 71 of the founding myth in the top left-hand comer Alexander Trippel, Herkules oder Allegorie auf die Eidgenossenschaft (1775) 101 Johann Heinrich Ftissli, Die drei Eidgenossen beim Schwur auf dem Riitli (1780) 106 Four Francs Coin of the Helvetic Republic, displaying Wilhelm Tell carrying the Helvetic Tricolour 129 Shooting Festival in Zurich, 1834 133 First Wilhelm Tell Monument (1852), Lugano 158 Ferdinand Hodler, Turnerbankett (1877/1878) 160 Das modeme Griitli (1887/1888) 161 Ferdinand Hodler, Wilhelm Tell (1897) 182 The National Exhibition of 1939 224 Adolph Menzel, Victoria! (around 1836) 260 Anton von Wemer,Kaiserproklamation in Versailles (1885) 265 Ferdinand Hodler, Eiger, Monch und Jungfrau tiber dem Nebelmeer (1908) 297 Charles Giron, Wiege der Eidgenossenschaft (1901) 298 Frederic Edwin Church, Niagara Falls (1857) 304 Across the Continent: ‘Westward the Course o f Empire Takes its Way' (1868) 306 Tom Thomson, Northern River (1915) 310 6 M aps Switzerland and her neighbours in 1648 . a j? Cantons and languages in contemporary Switzerland I /—*Nidwalderi] ~\ Unterwafden f * 1 .. Obwalden ( / . V£> r ' V . -o r .. di Como 20 30 miles 0 10 20 30 40 km 7 Chronological Table 1291 Alliance between the forest cantons of Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalden 1315 Battle of Morgarten 1353 Expansion of the Confederation from three to eight cantons (& Lucerne, Zurich, Glarus, Zug, Bern) 1386 Battle of Sempach 1499-1500 War between the Swiss Confederation and the German Reich, which results in the de facto independence of the latter from the Reich. 1500 Basle and Schaffhausen join the Swiss Confederation 1515 Defeat at Marignano 1525 Reformation in Zurich 1531 Kappeler Krieg (first religious war) 1648 Treaty of Westphalia results in the formal independence of the Swiss Confederation from the German Reich. 1653 Swiss Peasant War. Three peasant leaders, dressed up as Wilhelm Tell, assassinate a high representative of the Lucerne