Basel canton separation

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Map of the separation of the Basel cantons in 1832/33
Freedom tree in Pratteln , 1833
Street fight in Liestal between troops of the city of Basel and associations of the countryside

The separation of the cantons of Basel in 1832/33 led to the violent division of the canton of Basel into the cantons of Basel-Stadt and Basel-Landschaft, which still exist today .

prehistory

Until the end of the 18th century, the canton of Basel consisted of the city of Basel and the landscape, which had been acquired piece by piece since 1400 and represented a subject area. The residents of Basel enjoyed numerous privileges , in particular only they could be accepted into the cantonal authorities. In addition, despite extensive community autonomy, serfdom still existed until 1790 . The Helvetic Revolution in 1798 brought about a fundamental change in the state system based on the French model. The landscape was legally equated with the city. With the mediation from 1803 and the restoration from 1814/15, equality was reversed in numerous areas. The city received sixty percent of all seats in parliament with only forty percent of the population.

The rise of liberalism at the beginning of the 1830s led to the political upheaval in Switzerland known as regeneration . Numerous cantons received constitutions that guaranteed citizens democracy, legal equality and economic equality. This was not infrequently done under threats and violently, but with the exception of Basel, bloodlessly.

separation

Caricature of the Basel canton division in 1833 (by Ludwig Adam Kelterborn , 1833). The liberal farmer from Basel with the Swiss cross on his hat takes the lion's share of the cheese wheel that represents the canton of Basel. The prongs of his fork were in communities that were urban-minded until 1833. The townspeople with the aristocratic braids have to be content with three communities on the right bank of the Rhine.

A political meeting in Bad Bubendorf on October 18, 1830 formulated a petition which demanded complete equality between town and country and based on the codifications of 1798. A new and popularly adopted Basel constitution in 1831 incorporated numerous demands from the landscape, but informal power structures remained untouched. The political situation was exacerbated by agitation and criminal prosecution of the political leaders of the countryside. The formation of a provisional government of the country in January 1831 provoked military intervention of the city, in response emerged scenic volunteer corps , federal troops moved to calm a able. When some municipalities refused to participate in a plebiscite organized by the city in November 1831 about the cohesion of the canton, the cantonal administration was withdrawn from them. The expelled and other communities founded the canton of Basel-Landschaft on March 17 and May 4, 1832, respectively. The daily statute , politically mostly on the side of the liberal landscape, recognized the split off canton. On September 14, she pronounced partial separation subject to reunification. Twelve undecided congregations were to decide who they wanted to join by referendum. The Diet also withdrew the federal troops, which were supposed to prevent direct military confrontations since 1831.

The city now joined the Sarnerbund with other conservative cantons , while attacks by free groups on the rural communities loyal to the city increased. An auxiliary expedition ended on August 3, 1833 near Frenkendorf (Battle of the Hülftenschanz ) with the decisive defeat of the city. On August 26, 1833, the daily statute decreed the total separation of the Canton of Basel. The rural communities of Bettingen , Kleinhüningen and Riehen on the right bank of the Rhine remained with the city . The canton of Basel-Stadt (initially under the name "Basel-Bezirk") adopted its own constitution on October 3, 1833. The cantonal assets (including the Basel Minster Treasury ) were separated according to the population situation, whereby the city regularly felt itself to be disadvantaged in disputes.

Evaluation and effect

The separation of the cantons is remarkable in the context of regeneration, as the city had a comparatively liberal leadership class. The confrontation became more acute due to the fact that the city had already largely regenerated the canton and viewed the actions of the countryside as unjustified. The separation also had supporters in Basel, who saw the opportunity to preserve the “urban uniqueness” in view of the rural population growth. On the other hand, in contrast to Bern or Zurich, there was hardly a modern rural ruling class with a proto-industrial background that was striving for promotion to the urban ruling class and could therefore have had a de-escalating effect. In addition, the residents of the Birseck district , which had only become part of the canton in 1815 , had no traditional ties to the canton. Accordingly, many leaders of the landscape came from there, namely Stephan Gutzwiller .

The separation happened in 1833 subject to voluntary reunification. While in the 19th century the city developed a strong isolationist tendency under the impression of a political victim role, the landscape built its state structures. The establishment of the Swiss federal state in 1848 offered the opportunity to overcome the new borders and customs barriers within the framework of federal legislation. In March 1861, the Grand Council in Basel decided to consider reunification with the landscape. Five days later, in an extraordinary meeting , the Basel district administrator unanimously made the so-called never decision, namely “that the canton of Basel-Landschaft will never offer a hand to reunification with Basel-Stadt”. This decision was confirmed in a referendum on May 29, 1861.

Concrete steps towards reunification were only taken in the 20th century. In 1938, on the initiative of the Basel area, positive votes were taken in both cantons, but the reunification articles were put on hold during the war . The federal parliament rejected it in 1948 because it was too big a change in the federal structure of the cantons. A new attempt failed in the cantonal votes in 1969 when the population of Basel-Landschaft rejected the planned cantonal constitution. Instead, partnership-based cooperation was legally implemented.

The forcible separation of the canton of Basel is still a controversial issue between the people of Basel and the Basel region. In the current cantonal constitutions of 1984 (landscape) and 2005 (city), the earlier articles that formulated reunification as a political goal have been deleted. While the city canton would not be averse to a union with the rural canton, the resistance in Basel-Landschaft has grown. At the center of the dispute are the city's central services and their co-financing by Baselland. However, the question of a territorial merger is meanwhile being addressed by the discussion about regional special-purpose bodies (for example the University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland ) and major cantons (in this case the “Canton of Northwestern Switzerland” from Basel-Stadt, Basel-Landschaft, Aargau and Solothurn ) as a fundamental territorial reorganization of Switzerland superimposed.

At the end of July 2012, a popular initiative was published in each of the two cantons with the aim of reunification. However, this was rejected, with a slight approval in the canton of Basel-Stadt (54.9% yes), while Basel-Landschaft rejected it (68.3% no).

literature

  • Martin Leuenberger: 1830 to 1833: The new canton. In: Close, far away. History of the Canton of Basel-Landschaft , Vol. 5: Poverty and wealth. 19th and 20th centuries. Liestal 2001, pp. 171-183.
  • Claudia Opitz : From the Enlightenment to the separation of the cantons. In: Georg Kreis , Beat von Wartburg (Ed.): Basel. History of an Urban Society. Basel 2000, pp. 150-185.

Web links

Commons : Basler canton separation  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The caricature is a quote from the famous caricature by James Gillray from the Napoleonic era ( The plum pudding in danger ), which shows British Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger and Napoleon Bonaparte dividing the globe.
  2. ↑ Advertisement in the official gazette of the Canton of Basel-Landschaft (PDF; 64 kB)
  3. ↑ Merger of the two Basel - Basel area sweeps reunification off the table. Neue Zürcher Zeitung, September 28, 2014, accessed on March 18, 2016 .