Col des Rangiers

Col des Rangiers
Pass with restaurant
Compass direction	west	east
Pass height	856  m above sea level M.
Canton	law
Valley locations	Saint-Ursanne	Develier
expansion	Pass road
Mountains	law
profile
Ø pitch	5.9% (418 m / 7.10 km)	4.4% (379 m / 8.6 km)
Map (Jura)
Coordinates	583 420  /  248250 coordinates: 47 ° 23 '6 "  N , 7 ° 13' 9"  O ; CH1903:  583,420  /  248250

The Col des Rangiers is a pass in the Swiss canton of Jura .

geography

The pass is located between Courgenay and Saint-Ursanne in the west and Develier in the east. The pass height is 856  m above sea level. M. Until 2009, the pass was in the territory of the municipality of Asuel , which is now part of La Baroche .

The pass connects the Freiberg and Clos du Doubs regions . With the opening of the Delémont – Delle railway line in 1877, traffic over the pass declined. Since 1998, automobile traffic has been able to bypass the pass through the tunnels to the west and south of Autobahn 16 .

As a strategically important point, the pass was occupied by the military in 1870/71 as well as in the First and Second World Wars . The first plans for a permanent fortification of the pass date from 1936. A blocking area with around 30 objects, including bunkers and the Plainbois artillery plant north of the pass, was created. The fortifications were classified as a blocking point of national importance after their abandonment in the 1990s.

Soldier statue Fritz

Le Fritz before the destruction

1924 on the pass road one kilometer towards Courgenay (coordinates five hundred and eighty-two thousand four hundred and sixty  /  248240 ) for the tenth anniversary of the mobilization for the defense of Swiss neutrality in World War I a still image of a soldier by the name of La Sentinelle ( "The border guards") inaugurated. The canton of Neuchâtel donated the granite block from which the statue was made, and the cost of 60,000 francs was put together in a national collection. The work created by the sculptor Charles L'Eplattenier (1874–1946) from La Chaux-de-Fonds , Le Corbusier's teacher , was soon given the nickname Le Fritz .

During the Jurassic conflict , there were repeated disputes over the memorial because separatists saw it as a symbol of the "Bernese occupation". In 1964, protesters prevented Federal Councilor Paul Chaudet from delivering his speech at a commemorative ceremony. In 1984 members of the Jurassic separatist organization Béliers tore the memorial from its base, breaking off the head. After the restoration, car tires were burned on the base , which blackened it and a piece of the soldier figure flaked off due to the heat. In 1989 Fritz was torn to the ground again and robbed of his head and bayonet . The head was destroyed on September 24, 2004 by two hooded members of the separatist organization in front of the town hall of Delémont with hammer and chisel, while the ceremony for the twenty-fifth anniversary of the canton of Jura was taking place in the town hall .

The monument has not been rebuilt since then. The Jura government wants to exhibit the remains from 2022 in the local Musée du Mont-Repais , in a chapel near the restaurant La Caquerelle.

Web links

Commons : Col des Rangiers  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Dominique Prongué: Rangiers, Les. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
• Profile of the route from Saint-Ursanne

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Blocking point Chételat-Les Rangiers ( Memento of the original from April 17, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . In: Federal Department of Defense, Civil Protection and Sport (ed.): Military monuments in the cantons of Neuchâtel and Jura. Inventory of the combat and command structures. (pdf, 7.5 MB) pp. 30-31.  
2. ↑ ^{a b c} "Major Dimitry Queloz, from the Bulletin of the Société jurassienne des officiers, February 2019, in: Schweizer Soldat June 2019 , p. 34 ff.
3. ↑ Swissinfo : Le Fritz - Victims of the Jurassic Conflict (June 24, 2004, accessed on October 23, 2012)
   Swissinfo: Jura Celebration with discord (September 24, 2004, accessed on October 23, 2012)