Swiss blood

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Day trippers at the St. Jakob inn near Basel, 1787.

Schweizerblut was the name of a Basel red wine that was grown and served in St. Jakob an der Birs until the second half of the 19th century. The wine, which bore its name in reference to the battle fought there between the Swiss and the French in 1444, was known nationwide and was even processed in literary terms.

Cultivation

The viticulture in and around Basel had since the Middle Ages a long tradition and great to the 18th century meaning, both economically (wine as a staple food) and fortifikatorisch (outside the city walls irregularly planted vines as an attack complication). It reached its zenith in the 17th century, in the 18th century the local wine was already considered to be rather inferior and a drink of the common people. The upper class of Basel got their wine from Alsace, the Markgräflerland and other regions of Switzerland.

Map of St. Jakob from 1657. The rebaker known as the Scherkessel can be seen to the left of the legend as an enclosed field crossed by a slope.

At St. Jakob an der Birs , viticulture is likely to be of modern origin. A rebaker can be detected for the first time on the map pictures by Georg Friedrich Meyer from the second half of the 17th century. At first it was a field one and a half Jucharten size, which was surrounded by a high wall. After its collapse due to dilapidation at the end of the 18th century, this was not rebuilt, but replaced by a hedge that cast less shade and created better conditions for wine-growing. In addition to the viticulture of the St. Jakob estate, which belonged to the Basel orphanage, further plots of land totaling around ten Jucharten were added. Since the area yield from vineyards was higher than with other plantings and the trade in home grown crops was not subject to guild restrictions, this represented a worthwhile investment for the orphanage. White wine was grown many times more than red wine. The harvest of 1802, for example, was 16 hem red wine and 80 white wine hem.

The supervision of the viticulture in St. Jakob was carried out by the tenant of the inn of St. Jakob. Four to five vintners and their families took care of the actual cultivation, i.e. one for around two Jucharten each. The wages consisted of money and natural goods (white wine and grain, free lodging and exemption from labor). The earnings from this position are considered good, but a gradual decline began in the 19th century. It became more and more difficult to find suitable and willing staff for the viticulture, and from 1835 the first vines were removed. At the turn of the 20th century at the latest, viticulture stopped near St. Jakob, especially since the construction of settlements, roads and railways increasingly impaired agriculture.

Notoriety

In Basel, the Swiss blood was the best-known local wine, even if the problems due to the limited yield were known. Obviously, red wine from abroad had to be bought in order to enable wine to be served in the St. Jakob inn. Unmistakably malicious it said in the historical-topographical description of the city of Basel by W. Th. Streuber from the year 1856: “The red wine given to St. Jakob as Swiss blood should mostly come from the country where the enemies of the Swiss came from in 1444 are."

In Merck's lexicon of goods from 1884, the “Baseler Schweizerblut” was counted among the “best known” Swiss wines. The red wine with the remarkable name had probably attracted attention beyond the region since the Swiss rifle festival and the 400th anniversary of the Battle of St. Jakob in 1844. In contrast to the white wine drunk as must, it was a lager wine and was considered to be of good quality. Gottfried Keller mentioned it as the wedding gift of his novella The Flag of the Seven Upright People with the following words:

In the cellar I find a barrel of thirty-four red wine, so-called Swiss blood, which I bought myself in Basel more than twelve years ago. With your moderation and modesty, I never dared to tap the wine, and yet it is in my interest around the two hundred francs that it cost; because there are a hundred measures. I'll give you the wine at the purchase price, I'll sell the keg as cheaply as possible, glad if I only gain space for more salable goods, and I won't go away anymore if we don't honor the gift!

In 1920, the American author Edward Alexander Powell still mentioned Swiss blood in his travel story The New Frontiers of Freedom , but referred it to the wine from Murten and the battle of Murten in 1476.

Naming and traditions

The original name of the walled Rebacker, which was called like an adjacent field, was Scherkessel . The field name is possibly derived from the names Scher for the mole and Kessel for the mole burrows. In the files of the Basel orphanage only the terms Scherkessel and Scherkesselwein appear. Swiss blood as a nickname for wine is more recent and probably has its roots in the early phase of national historiography, which began in the 18th century. From the stone edging of the Rebacker it was concluded that this was the place where the federal troops almost completely perished in the battle of St. Jakob an der Birs in 1444; According to tradition, the final battle took place on the walls of the infirmary in St. Jakob. Immediately next to the shear kettle was another Rebacker, named Im Delphin after the French Dauphin , the enemy general . The namesake of the Swiss blood is presumed to be the Basel philology and history professor Johann Jakob Spreng , who gave the first public commemorative speech on the Battle of St. Jakob in 1748. In 1750, the local historian Daniel Bruckner stated in his description of historical and natural peculiarities of the Basel landscape :

It is true that some scholars and not scholars have come to St. Jacob, and perhaps some will still walk there; [... we] let the same people taste their drink Scherkessel or Swiss blood everywhere, or whatever they want. [...] By this name is meant that delicious red wine that grows in the walled vineyard at St. Jakob, where the Swiss fought so valiantly at that time, from which the unified name also came.

Numerous customs are associated with the wine of St. Jakob. The occupants of the neighboring house sick were administered during the time of reading traditionally cash and in kind, but this had the Rebäckern and trotting stuffs. On Rudolfstag , April 17th, citizens of Basel went to St. Jakob to consume the wine there with noses (a native species of carp). Another excursion happened on August 26th as the anniversary of the battle. During the carnival, the young men from the neighboring towns of Münchenstein and Muttenz moved to St. Jakob, where they received wine and bread. The community leaders and citizens of Münchenstein received wine again at the annual ban ride. The communities of Muttenz, Münchenstein and Reinach regularly received wine and sheep cheese for the grazing rights of the shepherds of St. Jakob . After all, the wine from St. Jakob was also given to the carpenters from Münchenstein when the nearby gallows were renewed.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wine . In: Merck's Warenlexikon . 3rd ed. 1884 ff., P. 613 f.