When Switzerland celebrates its national day, people all over the world get busy brunching, lunching, and setting off fireworks.
But why is it celebrated on August 1st, and what does it honor? Here’s what you need to hear about it.
The date of August 1st, 1291, is considered to be the beginning of the Swiss confederation.
After Emperor Rudolf I of Habsburg died in early August of that year – the exact date is unknown, and even the year is contested by some – the citizens of what are now the Swiss cantons of Uri, Schwyz, and Nidwalden banded together to ensure their sovereignty in the face of threats from foreign powers.
These three cantons signed up to the Federal Charter (or ‘Letter of Alliance’) which saw them promise to “assist each other by every means possible against one and all who may inflict on them violence or injustice within their valleys and without”.
The three groups came together in the charter to condemn “alien judges” and to lay out the guidelines for civil and criminal disputes.
These three initial cantons were gradually joined by others over the years to form the current Swiss confederation of 26 cantons that we know today.
Although the Federal Charter is now synonymous with the birth of the country in the Swiss imagination, it is only one of a number of important alliance documents that helped shape the complex world of the Old Swiss Confederacy – the forerunner of the modern Swiss state.
In reality, the Latin-language charter of 1291 was only adopted as Switzerland’s founding document at the end of the 1800s as part of a national-building exercise.
According to the Swiss government, the Federal Council decided to link the new Swiss confederation, which was established in 1848, with the Old Swiss Confederacy at the time.
The roots of this confederacy were thought to be in central Switzerland’s deep valleys.
The legend of the so-called Rütli Oath, in which the sovereign and “freedom-loving” groups of Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden are said to have sworn allegiance to each other on the Rütli meadow above Lake Lucerne in 1307, has become closely connected to the charter.
Every August 1st, official (but low-key) Swiss National Day celebrations are held on the Rütli meadow.
This use of history to help construct the modern Swiss nation mirrored a trend in Europe, where new nation states drew on deep national mythologies to gain legitimacy.
In 1891, Switzerland commemorated the 600th anniversary of the Federal Charter, and in 1899, August 1st was designated as Swiss National Day – but it did not become an official national public holiday until 1994.
The Swiss government points out that the Federal Charter gained in significance during the 1930s, when the nation was threatened by the Nazis in Germany.
However, the government acknowledges that the text was far from being a “revolutionary act of peasant self-determination.” Instead, it was about maintaining the status quo and the local elites’ position in the face of external pressure.
The charter and the Rütli Oath now have enormous symbolic value in a country that is still fiercely independent, regardless of their historical significance or revolutionary existence.
