Rütli oath

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The three confederates swearing on the Rütli (oil painting by Johann Heinrich Füssli , 1780)

The Rütli oath is an element of a historical narrative from the end of the 15th century, which played an important role during the early modern era as the founding legend of the Old Confederation and which has been developed as a national myth of modern Switzerland since the 19th century .

According to liberation tradition , the Rütli , a meadow above Lake Lucerne , was the secret meeting point of the conspirators from the countries of Uri , Schwyz and Unterwalden who finally, after the murder of Bailiff Gessler by Tell , carried out an armed uprising against the tyrannical bailiffs of the Habsburgs (the breaking of the castle ). The oath (oath) of mutual assistance is considered to be the foundation of the Old Confederation .

Aegidius Tschudi in his Chronicon Helveticum dates these events to the autumn of 1307. Also according to Tschudi, the three leaders of the uprising (the Three Confederates) were equated with Werner Stauffacher von Schwyz, Walter Fürst von Uri and Arnold von Melchtal from Unterwalden; other variants replace Fürst with Wilhelm Tell. Werner Stauffacher and Walter Fürst are documented as historical persons in contemporary sources, but there is no comparable evidence for Arnold von Melchtal and Wilhelm Tell.

A number of federal letters from this period have come down to us. At the end of the 19th century, the federal letter of 1291 acquired particular importance and was elevated to the status of a "founding document" of the Confederation on the occasion of the 600th anniversary of the federal celebration in 1891. Pictorial representations of the three confederates have been documented since the 16th century, and from the 17th century onwards they were occasionally shown with a raised hand of oath. This iconographic tradition became conventional in the 19th century, and the oath itself was now often transferred to the Rütli. The term "Rütli oath" originated around 1850 together with this actually shortening iconographic convention; According to tradition of liberation, the Rütli was the nocturnal meeting place for those who had already conspired and not the place of the oath itself.

story

Old Confederation

Mention of the Rüdli in the White Book of Sarnen (p. 447): so furen sy for the myth stone in nachtz to an end means in the Rüdli there sat sy to semmen [...] and just do it long and secretly and the zyt met Niena different than in the Rüdli

Federal thaler by Jacob Stampfer (approx. 1546)

Earliest sources

A written tradition of the history of the Old Confederation begins in the chronicles of the 15th century. A core of the liberation tradition , of which the Rütli oath was to become the central symbol, becomes tangible in the Bern Chronicle of Konrad Justinger (around 1420). Justinger reports that in the time immediately before the Morgarten War (1315), the Waldstätten were under an overwhelming arbitrary rule by the Habsburg bailiffs, which triggered the uprising.

The liberation tradition can then be found fully developed in its now traditional form in the White Book of Sarnen around 1470 . The events that lead to an open break with Habsburg are dated to the time between the death of Rudolf von Habsburg (1291) and the battle of Morgarten (1315).

According to the story in the White Book of Sarnen, the bailiffs in the forest cantons were given to new bailiffs from the lower nobility from Aargau and Thurgau after Rudolf's death , namely Unterwalden to a Landenberger and Schwyz and Uri to a Gessler . When the Landenberger Vogt wanted to take a team of oxen away from a farmer in Melchi ( Sachseln ), his son defended himself. Since the son fled, the bailiff blinded the father as a punishment. Shortly afterwards, another Vogt is killed by a farmer (later called Konrad Baumgarten ) in old cells with an ax.

Meanwhile, a Stauffacher ( stoupacher ) from Schwyz is building a stone house in Steinen and now fears repression by Vogt Gessler. On the advice of his wife, Stauffacher seeks the support of men in Uri and Unterwalden who also suffered from Gessler, and so he finds him together with a prince from Uri and the son of the blinded farmer von Melchi from Unterwalden. After the three men had sworn to each other, they gradually sought the support of others, with whom they also conspired to stand by one another against the masters.

The growing number of conspirators used to meet secretly at night. To do this, they drove past the Mythenstein at night “to one end, that is to say in the Rütli”.

The White Book of Sarnen names the killing of Gessler by Tell as the actual trigger for the open rebellion. The Telle song (half Suter song) of about 1,477 calls Tell even the "first confederates". The story of Burgenbruch mentions the razing of the Zwing-Uri castles near Silenen , Swandowe ( Schwanau ), Landenberg in Sarnen and Rotzberg .

The story was first published in print by Petermann Etterlin in 1507 .

Reception in the 16th century

The historian Aegidius Tschudi dates the Chronicon Helveticum Schweizer Chronik , created around 1550, the Rütli oath to the year 1307. The meanwhile traditional first names of the main characters go back to Tschudi Wilhelm Tell, Stauffacher as Werner Stauffacher, the "Prince from Uri" as Walter Fürst and "the one from Melche" as Arnold von Melchtal. "Wilhelm Tell von Ure" and "Erni von Underwald" are also mentioned on Jacob Stampfer's Bundestaler (approx. 1546), while "Stouffacher von Schwytz" has no first name here.

Tschudi does not represent the original oath on the Rütli. Rather, the Rütli was the secret meeting place for the gradually increasing number of conspirators. First of all, the three confederates, Walter Fürst, Werner Stauffacher and Arnold von Melchtal, swore mutual assistance in a secret meeting. This meeting does not take place on the Rütli, but it is part of the agreement that "if something happened" that further discussion would be necessary, one would meet at night on the Rütli ( at one end, it was hot in the Rütlin ), and that in in this case each of the three men "two, three or more" who should also have sworn on the covenant should have brought with them. All of this happened "in autumn" without specifying a precise date. After that, everyone in his country won more confederates, and they sometimes met at night on the Rütli. Later, when about "20 or 30" had come together, it was worried that the union could no longer be kept secret, and it was decided to initiate the actual uprising against the governor. For this purpose, a special meeting was arranged on the Rütli, to which each of the three original confederates bring "9 or 10 men" with them. It is this nightly daily performance of the already conspirators, and not the " Rütli oath" per se, which Tschudi dates to the "Wednesday before Martini" 1307, ie November 8, 1307.

While in the 15th century and at Tschudi the Rütli was still mentioned as a secret meeting place for the (already) conspirators, the early modern tradition shortens the story to the effect that the original oath of the first three confederates took place on the Rütli itself. The first wall paintings with this motif were created as early as the 16th century, as was a local culture of remembrance; Heinrich Brennwald mentions the existence of a Tell chapel on Tellenplatte as early as the early 16th century , and Tschudi himself mentions a chapel (a holy hüslin ) that was built on the site of Tell's tyrannical murder of Gessler. The first Tellspiel was performed in 1512 or 1513.

The Three Tells and the Peasants' War of 1653

Rütli oath, depiction at the Stauffacherkapelle in Steinen SZ

The “three confederates” are also known in early modern Switzerland as “die Drei Telle (n)”. These three places became symbolic figures of the peasant uprising of 1653. Three men each, dressed in historical costumes, represented the three confederates at meetings in Schüpfheim, in the Free Offices and in the Emmental.

A second coming of the three Tellen is prophesied in a Tellen song from 1653, in order to resume their fight for freedom when the oppression takes over again. This prophecy was put into practice through the personification of the three Tellen by costumed people, in one of which a costumed Tell actually carried out an attack: The first three characters of the Tellen from 1653 were Hans Zemp, Kaspar Unternährer von Schüpfheim and Ueli Dahinden von Hasli. When the uprising was put down, Unternährer and Dahinden fled to Entlebuch and Zemp to Alsace. Dahinden and Unterstährer resumed their role as Tellen, with Hans Stadelmann as a replacement for Zemp, and in their disguise carried out an attack on Ulrich Dulliker the mayor of Lucerne, in which the Lucerne councilor Caspar Studer died. The symbolic effect of this attack was considerable, as it equated the rebels with the confederates and the authorities with the cruel Habsburg bailiffs of the founding legend.

In the 18th century the “three tales” finally appear in fairy-tale folk tales with the motif of the rapture of the mountains , as if sleeping in the Rigi until their return.

Modern reception

The tradition of liberation around the Rütli oath was adopted after 1798 for the Helvetic Republic, and from the time of regeneration with regard to the formation of the federal state.

The modern reception of the union of the three original cantons is strongly influenced by the portrayal in the drama Wilhelm Tell by Friedrich Schiller (1804). Schiller had never visited Switzerland, but was introduced to the subject through Goethe . Goethe had visited Switzerland three times before 1798 and dealt intensively with the Tell saga in 1797. Goethe obtained Tschudi's chronicle and intended to implement the legend epically himself. The implementation was finally done by Schiller, whether at Goethe's invitation is not known. Schiller follows Tschudi's story pretty closely. The Rütli scene is represented as a gathering of 33 men ( all of them, thirty-three in number, stand around the fire ), based on Tschudi's news that each of the first three confederates had come with "9 or 10 men" each.

However, Schiller's drama has the peculiarity that the actual oath is presented as if it had been taken on the Rütli (2nd act, 2nd scene). At the end of the meeting on the Rütli, Pastor Rösselmann (a figure introduced by Schiller) says: "Let us swear the oath of the new covenant" and speaks the oath formula. Its wording became almost proverbial in Swiss national romanticism:

We want to be one nation of brothers
in no need separate us and danger.
We want to be free like the fathers were
death rather than live in bondage.
We want to trust in the highest God
and we are not afraid of the power of men.

The meeting of the Three Confederates at Walter Fürst in Uri, where Tschudi takes the actual oath, is shown in Act 1, Scene 4. There is no oath here at Schiller, just an appointment that they want to “make friends” and meet on the Rütli.

The emergence of the concept of a "Rütli oath" in the middle of the 19th century is thus promoted by Schiller's dramatization. But still on Anton Schnyder's medal (depicting the three swearing Swiss Confederates) for the 600-year federal celebration of 1891, the «I. Federal Oath in Brunnen »referenced.

The increasing spread of the idea that the oath took place on the Rütli, on the other hand, is illustrated by the existence of an "old legend" to which reference is made in 1866. Accordingly, three sources had sprung up at the point on the Rütli where the confederates had sworn. As long as this so-called "three-country source" flows, the Swiss Confederation will also exist. When the Rütli was handed over to the Swiss Charitable Society in 1859, the sources were found “on the ground floor of an unsightly laundry shed”. The three-country spring was re-framed in 1865 as the "Sanctissimum des Rütli".

In the "Historians' Debate", which also critically questioned the historicity of the liberation tradition around the middle of the 19th century (initiated by Joseph Eutych Kopp as early as 1835), the term "Rütli oath" is now used rather derogatory for a purely legendary event, initially through the Austrian historians Eduard von Lichnowsky (before 1845) and Ottokar Lorenz (1860).

Dating to 1291

The now common year 1291 has an antiquarian basis, through the dating of the federal letter , and contradicts the date 1307 given by Tschudi. Another tradition has already dated the federal government around 1540 to the year 1296.

The implementation of the date 1291 is related to the 600th anniversary of the federal celebration of 1891: In 1891, Bern wanted to celebrate the 700th anniversary of the city. The connection with a 600th anniversary celebration of the Swiss Confederation came in very handy. In the report that the Department of the Interior wrote for the Federal Council on November 21, 1889, a two-day celebration was actually planned in Bern, not in central Switzerland.

Before that, the federal letter of 1291 had hardly been associated with the founding legend of the Swiss Confederation. Historians in the 19th century assumed that the Bund von Brunnen (1315) was the actual founding document of the Confederation, if one did not assume that the Confederation would come into being step by step.

In central Switzerland, people resisted the appropriation of the local liberation tradition by Bern and in 1895 demonstratively put the year 1307 on the Tell monument in Altdorf. In 1907, the 600th anniversary of the Swiss Confederation was celebrated in Altdorf in the presence of a Federal Council delegation.

Since the early 20th century, however, the year 1307 as the date of the Rütli oath has faded more and more into the background and the Swiss federal holiday on August 1st, founded in 1889 (due to the dating of the Federal Letter from 1291), became more and more popular. The Federal Celebration Committee (today Pro Patria ), founded in 1909, began issuing federal celebration postcards in 1910. In 1923 the official August 1st badge was added. Since 1994, August 1st, the Swiss national holiday, has been a day off throughout Switzerland.

iconography

Rütli oath , detail from the fresco in the Tell Chapel ( Ernst Stückelberg 1883)

From the middle of the 16th century, pictorial representations of the three-confederate motif became popular, for example on the "Bundestaler" by the Zurich medalist Jakob Stampfer (approx. 1546). In this early depiction, the three confederates shake hands, the later common oath gesture is missing. As a representative of Uri, Stampfer names Wilhelm Tell instead of Walter Fürst, as is increasingly common in modern depictions. A woodcut by Hans Manuel Deutsch for Sebastian Munster's Cosmographia (1544) shows the three confederates in peasant renaissance clothing against the backdrop of Lake Lucerne and the high mountains. The oath gesture is depicted on a woodcut in the edition of Johannes Stumpf's chronicle by Johannes Wolff (1606).

An early representation as an oil painting comes from the Bernese baroque painter Joseph Werner the Elder. J. (1677). A well-known depiction from the 18th century is the painting The Three Confederates Taking an Oath on the Rütli by Johann Heinrich Füssli (1780).

National romantic depictions became popular with the success of Schiller's Tell (1804). A depiction inspired by Schiller is the copperplate The Oath of Men in Rütli (1840) by the Viennese artist Carl Heinrich Rahl. The lithograph by the Viennese publisher Anton Ziegler The Nightly Gathering of the Confederates in the Rüttli and the steel engraving The Oath on the Rütli by Carl von Rotteck date from the same period . In the depictions from the time of national romanticism, the three confederates are often depicted as men of three ages: Arnold von Melchtal, who, according to Tschudi, was still a young man, is depicted as a young man, Walter Fürst, usually depicted in the middle, as an older man white beard, and Werner Stauffacher as a middle-aged man.

Particularly in the second half of the 19th century, the Rütli oath scene was often depicted on medals in Switzerland, remotely based on the federal thaler by Jacob Stampfer. An early example is the commemorative medal minted for the officers' festival in Langenthal in July 1822. A rifle medal from the Swiss rifle festival in Schaffhausen in 1865 depicts the Rütli oath in a direct quotation from the engraving by Rahl (1840). A Ticino rifle medal from 1889 also makes use of the depiction of Rahl. A rifle medal from 1889 (stamped by Anton Schnyder) shows the oath scene in front of the panorama of Lake Lucerne. Various commemorative medals for the federal celebration of 1891 show the oath scene. Among them is a medal for the national celebration in Schwyz, also by Anton Schnyder, who also allows the goddess of victory to float above the three vowers in front of a mountain panorama.

The three confederates in the Federal Palace (1914)

A monumental statue of the Rütli oath was planned in the domed hall for the inauguration of the Federal Palace in Bern in 1902. However, artistic differences of opinion led to the termination of the contract with the commissioned sculptor Hermann Baldin . In 1909 James Vibert was commissioned to produce the statue according to a new design. The finished statue, The Three Confederates , was unveiled in 1914. Unconventionally, it shows the federal letter from 1291, held by Walter Fürst, over which the three men hold out a hand instead of the oath gesture.

At the end of the 19th century, depictions of the three confederates also appeared in the context of the labor movement , as a symbol of a classless society of peasants and workers. On a May 1st postcard from 1908, one of the three confederates was portrayed as a woman as a reference to the women's movement at the time .

literature

Web links

Commons : Rütlischwur  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Rheinischer Antiquarius (1854) p. 290 has an early use of the word "Rütlischwur" based on a pictorial representation of the Three Confederates in a coat of arms from 1601. The Austrian historian Eduard von Lichnowsky lists "Tell, Rütlischwur, Gessler etc. "handed down in the context of a critical view of the historicity of the liberation tradition as a whole. Kasimir Pfyffer, History of the City and the Canton of Lucerne (1850), p. 109 . Ottokar Lorenz wrote in 1860: "Yes, even the Rütli oath and the characters of Walther Fürst, Melchtahl and Stauffacher have cleared the field from serious historical criticism" ( Leopold III and the Swiss Bünde: A lecture given in the Ständehause on March 21, 1860 , P. 7. )
  2. ↑ G. Studer (ed.), Die Berner-Chronik des Conrad Justinger , Bern (1871), 45–48.
  3. ↑ Du nü the same küng Rudolf gineg / dü would the vögt he gave to the countries haughty and strict [...] So that existed for a long time untz the küng sex us died / the counts were fröwen and the child of Tyrol who were so of the geslecht habksburg dar komen were / here dis geslecht / an landen vnd an lüten / the Turgow vnd the zürichgow and the Ergow and other country slöss and lüt and güt that of the von habksburg gesin was . Weisses Buch von Sarnen, p. 441 (fol. 208 r ).
  4. ↑ and found nu and but lüt secretly the traits sy in itself and swuren each other truw and truth and ir lib and good to dare and show the gentlemen (p. 446)
  5. ↑ and if sy ut do and fornemen, then for the myte stone in hinn nachtz an end means sy to semmen in the rüdli da convented sy to semmen and broke any kind of lout to whom sy would like to getruwen and do it secretly for a long time and the zyt niena met differently than in the rüdli (p. 447)
  6. ↑ a honest one was called the valley who also swore to the stoupacher and his companions (p. 447)
  7. ↑ Aegidius Tschudi, Chronicon Helveticum , ed.JR Iselin, Basel (1734), see 1307
  8. ^ Bergier, Jean-François: Wilhelm Tell: Reality and Myth. Munich: Paul List Verlag, 1990, p. 63.
  9. ^ Gregor Egloff: Three places. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
  10. ^ Brothers Grimm : German legends. The three parts in the Gutenberg-DE project ( archive version )
  11. ↑ The number 33 was already by Johann Conrad Fäsi , Helvet. Description of the earth (1765–1768) called 2.150.
  12. ↑ We want to be one people of brothers, in no need to separate us and in danger. , 1st edition from 1804 . The first verse is often quoted in the version of a united people of brothers , which is not from Schiller. For examples see inter alia. Wertheim and Erika Fuchs
  13. ↑ Often the quotation ends after these three lines, e.g. B. on Anton Schnyder's rifle medal from 1889.
  14. ↑ Swiss Journal for Charity. 5 (1866), p. 116
  15. ↑ Eduard Osenbrüggen, Die Urschweiz (1872), 65f.
  16. ^ For example, the federal medal by Jacob Stampfer from 1546, based on this date for the 250th anniversary of the federal government. The dating to 1296 is used in the early 18th century by Hans Jakob Gessner, see Julius Erbstein, Albert Erbstein: Die Ritter von Schulthess-Rechberg'sche Münz- und Medals-Sammlung. (1868), p. 419 .
  17. ↑ Article 110 of the Federal Constitution of the Swiss Confederation reads: «August 1st is a federal holiday. In terms of labor law, he is on an equal footing with Sundays and is paid. "
  18. ↑ Uwe Fleckner, Martin Warnke, Hendrik Ziegler, Handbook of Political Iconography , Volume 1, CH Beck (2011), p. 196.
  19. ↑ Ziegler also published a pen drawing from 1837, Der Schweizerbund im Rüttli , in Historical Memorabilia of Home and Abroad (1840), Fig. 57 .
  20. ↑ Swiss medals from an old private collection , Bank Leu AG Zurich (1987), no. 792; Sincona auction 35 lot 5129
  21. ↑ J. Richter, Rifle Medals (2018) no. 1057; Sincona auction 61 (2019) lot 5400 .
  22. ↑ J. Richter, Rifle Medals (2018) no.1400; Munzenhandlung G. Hirsch Follower auction 340 (2018) lot 3882
  23. ↑ J. Richter, Rifle Medals (2018) no.876; Sincona auction 64 (2020) lot 4475 .
  24. ↑ Sincona auction 64 (2020) lot 3532/3
  25. ↑ Georg Kreis: Three Confederates. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .

Coordinates: 46 ° 58 ′ 9 "  N , 8 ° 35 ′ 37"  E ; CH1903:  687,883  /  202 649