Brünig-Napf-Reuss Line

Red: Brünig-Napf-Reuss-Linie, yellow: High Alemannic language area

Duchy of Alemannia and Kingdom of Hochburgund around 1000 AD: The Brünig-Napf-Reuss line runs in Aargau , which was disputed between the two empires.

The Brünig-Napf-Reuss-Line , also known as the Jass border , is a cultural border within Switzerland . Its course is roughly indicated by the Brünig Pass , the Napf range of hills and the Reuss River . It runs about 50 to 100 km east of the Romance-Germanic language border ( Röstigraben ). It was first proposed by folklorist Richard Weiss in 1947.

The Brünig-Napf-Reuss line can be recognized on the one hand as a dialect border - admittedly broadly diversified - within the High Alemannic language area, but also on the basis of a number of folk customs . The use of different sheets of paper in Jass is striking : to the west of the Brünig-Napf-Reuss line, French (heart, scoop, corner, cross) are used to play cards , to the east, however, German-Swiss playing cards (acorn, bell, scarf, rose). At the same time, the line is largely congruent with the (traditional) distribution limit of Simmental Fleckvieh and the Brown Swiss .

Some authors, according to historians and folklorists, therefore take the view that the Brünig-Napf-Reuss line is the only really incisive cultural border in Switzerland, much more important than the language border, since the “western” customs all apply to both French and French apply to German-speaking residents of western Switzerland. The separation is said to go back to the early Middle Ages: to the west of the line, the Burgundian influence was at that time , to the east the Alemannic influence was more effective. The cultural border came to lie in the Aargau , which was disputed for centuries between the Kingdom of Burgundy and the Duchy of Alemannia and Swabia. With the beginning of the High Middle Ages , the Upper Rhine influences from the north-west and the Swabian influences from the north-east . The formation of language and culture, which originated in the city-states of Bern in the west and Zurich in the east, also made a significant contribution to this structure.

literature

• Walter Haas : Basics of linguistic history. In: Hans Bickel , Robert Schläpfer (ed.): The four-language Switzerland . 2nd Edition. Sauerländer, Aarau 2000, ISBN 3-7941-3696-9 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Urs Bader: “National Sport”: How Jassen came to Switzerland and divides the country today. In: tagblatt.ch. November 13, 2018, accessed August 24, 2020 . 
2. ↑ Alban Frei: A “Document of Switzerland's Spiritual Self-Assertion”. The Atlas of Swiss Folklore and the Nationalization of Folklore in Switzerland. In: Sabine Eggmann, Marius Risi, Franziska Schürch (eds.): United knowledge. Folklore and its social roots. A book for the 100th birthday of the Basel section of the Swiss Folklore Society. Swiss Society for Folklore, Basel 2010, ISBN 978-3-908122-88-3 and Waxmann, Münster / New York 2010, ISBN 978-3-8309-2401-2 , pp. 133 ff.