Language: French, German, Italian, Romansh
Currency: Swiss franc (CHF)
Calling Code: +41
Switzerland (French: Suisse, Italian: Svizzera, Romanian: Svizra;
officially: Swiss Confederation) is a landlocked country in Central
Europe.
Switzerland is a fascinating travel destination with
breathtaking nature, a wide range of outdoor activities, a rich cultural
heritage, first-class infrastructure and warm hospitality. From majestic
Alpine peaks to picturesque lakes and well-preserved cities such as
Zurich and Geneva, Switzerland offers a variety of attractions to suit
every taste. Hiking in the Alps, skiing in first-class ski resorts.
The Swiss Confederation emerged from the original cantons of Uri,
Schwyz and Unterwalden. The Federal Charter of 1291 is considered the
founding document. Today's republican federal state has existed since
1848.
It is not a member of the European Union, but joined the
Schengen Agreement on November 1, 2008. Neighbouring countries are
France, Germany, Austria, Italy and Liechtenstein. Switzerland is
divided into 26 cantons, of which 6 have half a cantonal vote (formerly
called half-cantons).
The Alps play an important role in Swiss
identity and culture, as well as tourism and communication. The Swiss
Alps make up around 60% of the country's surface area. The Mittelland,
where all the major cities (except Basel) are located, makes up around
30%. It is densely populated, but also characterized by agriculture and
industry. The remaining 10% is made up of the Swiss Jura, a mountain
range that stretches from Geneva to Schaffhausen.
The Swiss
Confederation is also special because of its semi-direct democracy,
which is unique in the world, and its variety of national languages.
According to Article 70, Paragraph 1 of the Constitution, German, French
and Italian are equal official languages, with Romansh also being the
official language of the Confederation in communication with Romansh
speakers.
Switzerland can be roughly divided into the regions of Mittelland,
Jura, Alps and Southern Switzerland. All of these regions have very
clear differences. The Alps and Jura are mountainous, while the
Mittelland is mostly hilly. Southern Switzerland has a large number of
Alpine foothills and is particularly known for its lakes, which
geographically belong to the northern Italian lake district.
The
country is divided into the following regions, some of which overlap:
Swiss Alps: The mountainous cantons of Graubünden, Valais, Uri,
Glarus, Obwalden and Nidwalden as well as parts of the cantons of Bern,
Schwyz, St. Gallen, Vaud, Fribourg and Ticino.
Central Switzerland:
The region around Lake Lucerne, consisting of the cantons of Uri,
Schwyz, Obwalden, Nidwalden, Lucerne and Zug, is also known as Central
Switzerland.
Eastern Switzerland: The area from Lake Constance to the
foothills of the Alps, consisting of Thurgau, St. Gallen, Appenzell
Innerrhoden and Appenzell Ausserrhoden as well as Schaffhausen. It has a
part of the Alps.
Metropolitan region of Zurich
Espace Mittelland:
The flatland between the Jura and the foothills of the Alps.
Northwestern Switzerland: The region from Basel to Aargau and Neuchâtel
in the western Jura region.
Romandie: The French-speaking part of
Switzerland, consisting of the cantons of Geneva, Vaud, Jura, Neuchâtel
and parts of the cantons of Bern, Fribourg and Valais. The region is
also called Western Switzerland or French-speaking Switzerland.
Southern Switzerland: The Italian-speaking part of Switzerland consists
essentially of the canton of Ticino and the southern valleys of the
canton of Graubünden: the Misox, the Calanca valley, the Puschlav and
the Bergell.
Switzerland is made up of twenty-six cantons. Of these, six, namely
Appenzell Ausserrhoden/Appenzell Innerrhoden,
Basel-Stadt/Basel-Landschaft and Nidwalden/Obwalden, are considered
cantons with half a vote, formerly called "half-cantons".
Aargau,
Appenzell Ausserrhoden, Appenzell Innerrhoden, Basel-Stadt,
Basel-Landschaft, Bern, Fribourg, Geneva, Glarus, Graubünden, Jura,
Lucerne, Neuchâtel, Nidwalden, Obwalden, Schaffhausen, Schwyz,
Solothurn, St. Gallen, Ticino, Thurgau, Uri, Vaud, Valais, Zug, Zurich
The largest cities in Switzerland are
1 Zurich. Switzerland's
largest city is a major economic and cultural center. Zurich boasts a
beautiful old town, a picturesque location on Lake Zurich and a lively
atmosphere. Here you will find an impressive selection of museums,
shops, restaurants and vibrant nightlife.
2
Geneva. As the seat of many
international organizations such as the United Nations, Geneva is a
multicultural city with a rich historical heritage. Its beautiful
location on Lake Geneva and the stunning Alps in the background make
Geneva a popular destination. Here you can explore the old town, admire
the world-famous Jet d'Eau water fountain and enjoy the exquisite Swiss
watch and chocolate culture.
3 Basel . This city on the Rhine
impresses with a fascinating mix of history, art and culture. Basel is
known for its renowned art museums and its beautiful old town with its
narrow streets and historic buildings. The impressive Basel Minster, the
lively Kleinbasel district and the cozy atmosphere along the river are
worthwhile destinations.
4 Lausanne. The charming city of Lausanne is
picturesquely located on the shores of Lake Geneva and is known as the
seat of the International Olympic Committee. The city offers a beautiful
old town, impressive cathedrals and a variety of cultural events. A
visit to the Olympic Museum and the waterfront promenade with views of
the lake and the Alps is worthwhile.
5 Bern. Tel.: +41 313 21 61 11 .
The capital of Switzerland captivates with its historic charm. The
beautiful old town of Bern is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and impresses
with its medieval alleys, the imposing Bern Minster and the famous Clock
Tower. The city also offers a lively cultural scene, excellent shopping
and a relaxed atmosphere.
6 Winterthur . This city near Zurich is
known for its diverse art and culture scene. The Winterthur Art Museum,
the charming old town district with its historic buildings and the green
parks and gardens are well worth a visit. Winterthur also offers
first-class shopping and is an ideal base for exploring the surrounding
region.
Other popular tourist destinations include Lucerne,
Lugano, Montreux, Interlaken, Zermatt and St. Moritz.
In addition
to the large cities, many smaller ones are also worth visiting. A
selection of these are: Aarau, Appenzell, Ascona, Bellinzona, Biel,
Chur, Estavayer, Fribourg, Locarno, Martigny, Rapperswil-Jona,
Neuchâtel, St. Gallen, Sitten, Solothurn, Thun, Vevey Winterthur,
Schaffhausen, Schwyz.
High Alps: The High Alps are home to first-class
travel destinations such as Grindelwald in the Bernese Oberland, Verbier
in the Valais, the Titlis in central Switzerland and the Bernina region
in the Engadine.
Ski areas: The Swiss Alps have some particularly
high-altitude and therefore snow-sure ski areas, such as Zermatt, St.
Moritz, Verbier, Crans-Montana, Andermatt, Grindelwald, Arosa and
Saas-Fee.
Lakes: The areas around the large lakes on the northern
and southern edges of the Alps are also popular. These include Lake
Geneva (Lac Léman), Lake Constance, Lake Zurich, Lake Thun, Lake Lucerne
and Lake Lugano. The area around Lake Biel, Lake Murten and Lake
Neuchâtel together form the "Seeland", which is known as the "vegetable
garden of Switzerland" because of its fertile agricultural soils.
Landscape: Other destinations that are typical for the landscape can
be found in the Pre-Alps and the pre-Alpine hill zone; Appenzell with
the Säntis, Central Switzerland with the Rigi, the Emmental, the
Fribourg Alps (Gruyere) and the Vaud Pre-Alps with the traditional Grand
Hotels near Vevey are particularly worth a visit.
Entry regulations can be viewed at the Federal Office for Migration
(BFM). Since November 1, 2008, Switzerland has been part of the Schengen
area, which means entry is usually possible without showing ID. For
citizens of the European Union, the national identity card (identity
card) or passport is sufficient for visa-free entry as a tourist. The
border guard is responsible for identity checks; these can also be
carried out by “flying patrols” in the rear area.
Since
Switzerland is not part of the EU, goods checks can be carried out at
the borders; The customs administration bodies are responsible for this.
The limits are particularly low for foods produced in the country (dairy
products, meat, alcoholic beverages) and exceeding them can result in
steep punitive tariffs. Goods up to a limit of CHF 300 per person can be
imported freely; more expensive new goods must be declared upon import,
after which VAT must be paid. Larger amounts of foreign currency are
also subject to registration requirements.
The largest airport in Switzerland is Zurich Airport (IATA: ZRH). Most scheduled flights depart from Zurich, Geneva Airport (IATA: GVA) and EuroAirport Basel-Mulhouse-Freiburg (IATA: BSL, MLH, EAP). Other, albeit smaller, airports are Lugano-Agno Airport (IATA: LUG), Bern-Belp Airport (IATA: BRN) and St. Gallen-Altenrhein Airport (IATA: ACH).
From Germany there are direct trains between Zurich and Basel and
European destinations such as Frankfurt am Main, Hamburg or, for
example, Berlin. Night trains serve cities such as Prague, Dresden,
Hamburg, Berlin, Copenhagen and Amsterdam. There are direct connections
from Zurich to Stuttgart and Munich.
Trains also run from Zurich
to Austria, for example to Innsbruck, Salzburg or Vienna. Night trains
run to Vienna and sometimes further to Budapest.
TGV connections
to France exist from Basel, Bern, Neuchâtel, Lausanne and Geneva to
Paris, from Basel and Geneva to Lyon and from Basel and Lausanne to
Dijon. There are also TER trains from Basel to Strasbourg.
There
are direct trains to Milan from Zurich, Bern, Basel and Valais / Ticino.
After many night train connections were canceled for reasons of
profitability, there are now signs of an improvement in the
international night train service due to increasing awareness of
ecological issues.
The Swiss Federal Railways (SBB) offer various
package deals for travelers from abroad. With the Swiss Travel Pass, for
example, travelers receive free travel on most train, post bus and
shipping lines for 3, 4, 8 or 15 days. However, many mountain railways
are excluded from this. Interrail tickets are also valid. If you're
planning a day trip, you might find a discounted offer at Railaway. The
easiest way to buy a ticket (although not always the cheapest) is to use
the SBB app on your smartphone: after the journey has been planned using
the electronic timetable, you can immediately buy the ticket online, it
will be in the form a QR code stored on the smartphone.
Cheap day
tickets are also available from almost all municipalities in Switzerland
that offer impersonal general subscriptions (CHF 30.00 to 45.00 per day
ticket). You don't need a half-fare subscription, but many
municipalities only offer the offer to their own residents. Here is the
list of affiliated communities: Day ticket community
Most larger
cities are connected every half hour.
Unless you use the
above-mentioned package deals or Interrail, traveling by train in
Switzerland is relatively expensive compared to other European
countries. In addition, the trains on the main traffic routes (away from
the tourist routes) are overcrowded during peak hours. Switzerland has
many tourist-interesting routes where a train ride is worthwhile (e.g.
Glacier Express, Gotthard route, various mountain railways, etc.).
In Switzerland, you must ensure that you do not board a train
without a valid ticket (travel document). If in doubt, you can make
inquiries at the railway counter or ask the conductor (conductor) before
boarding. The fines are otherwise high (usually a basic fee of 100
francs plus the travel price).
Various long-distance bus lines, mainly from European providers, run
in and through Switzerland. There is a wide range of options, especially
from/to Germany, the Eastern European countries, the Baltics and the
Balkans as well as Spain and Portugal. The main destinations are Zurich,
Basel, Bern, St. Gallen, Lausanne and Geneva. Due to the cabotage ban,
international providers are not allowed to transport travelers on routes
within Switzerland in order to circumvent the transport monopoly of
public providers.
Due to the dense rail network, national
long-distance bus lines, on the other hand, hardly exist except for the
PostBus lines Chur – Bellinzona (practically every hour) and St. Moritz
– Lugano (rarely).
Reservations are mandatory on some tourist
PostBus lines. Reservations are free and can be made up to one hour
before departure. A surcharge applies on some tourist lines.
Most motorways leading to the Swiss border have a motorway border
crossing or at least a high-quality continuing road. From Germany, the
main routes are from Frankfurt/Main along the Rhine to Basel, from
Stuttgart via Singen to Schaffhausen, from Munich via Bregenz to the
Lustenau border crossing near St. Margrethen, which is also used when
traveling from Austria via the Arlberg.
Coming from the south of
France, the crossing near Geneva is the most important; from Alsace you
drive via Basel. From Italy via Milan the Chiasso or Simplon Pass
crossing is usually used.
The public transport system in Switzerland is very well developed.
Most places are connected to the nearest larger city every half hour,
and even remote villages can usually be reached by train or post bus.
The larger cities with their agglomerations have a dense public
transport network. The timetable can be accessed online from the Swiss
Federal Railways (SBB). With the SBB app, the route can be planned on
the smartphone thanks to the electronic timetable (including details of
line numbers, platforms and transfer times) and the ticket can be
purchased online using an integrated function.
Zone tariff
systems are increasingly being used in public transport, and the SBB app
simplifies the purchase of the ticket that covers the required zones.
The half-fare subscription is popular in Switzerland; holders travel at
half the price, just like children.
Vignette
In order to be able to use motorways and motorways, a
motorway vignette must be purchased. This applies to cars, motorcycles,
mobile homes and all other privately used motor vehicles up to a maximum
weight of 3.5 tons for any number of trips within a calendar year
(annual vignette, from December 1st of the previous year to January 31st
of the following year). In contrast to other Alpine countries, there is
no special toll for road tunnels (e.g. Gotthard Tunnel). Unlike in
Austria, however, car trailers in Switzerland also require a vignette.
The price for a motorway vignette for 2021 is CHF 40.00. or €38.50. The
vignette is available online at Swiss Post, Deutsche Post, ADAC, ÖAMTC
and other points of sale, as well as offline at petrol stations, post
offices, rest stops and larger border crossings. The vignette must be
placed on the inside of the windshield in a place that is clearly
visible from the outside in cars and motorhomes; in motorcycles, it must
be placed on an easily recognizable and non-replaceable part of the
vehicle (left on the fork handle or on the tank) and on the left front
of trailers.
Speed limits
120 km/h on motorways, 100 km/h on
motorways, 80 km/h on country roads outside built-up areas, 50 km/h in
urban areas, unless a different speed is signaled. Many cities and
villages also have 30 km/h zones. It is advisable to adhere to these
limits; the fines can be very expensive (for 61 km/h instead of 50 km/h
in urban areas: 250 francs). If you exceed 15 km/h in urban areas, 20
km/h outside of urban areas and on motorways or 25 km/h on motorways,
your driving license can be revoked, as well as a severe fine depending
on your income; if you exceed 5 km/h more, this is usually mandatory (
for foreigners: in addition to the fines, at least the revocation of the
right to drive in Switzerland). In the case of massive speed violations
(70 km/h in 30 km/h zones, exceeding the speed limit by 50 km/h in urban
areas, 60 km/h outside of urban areas and on motorways or 80 km/h on
motorways), the minimum penalty is one year's imprisonment, and this is
also the case Vehicle confiscated. If a trailer is carried, the same
speeds apply as without a trailer, apart from the general maximum speed
of 80 km/h. Trailers that are registered for 100 km/h in Germany must
comply with the 80 km/h limit in Switzerland; The registration is not
valid in Switzerland (note: at 100 km/h on roads or 105 km/h on
motorways there is a risk of driving privileges being withdrawn, see
above).
Identifying colors for signposting
Motorways and
motorways are shown with green signposts and distance boards (the
motorway numbering in red), main roads with right-of-way with blue
signposts and town signs, secondary roads with no right-of-way with
white signs. On the back of the town signs (when leaving the town), the
next town is shown at the top in small font above the dividing line, and
at the bottom the next important route destination is shown in larger
font (usually with distance information). Detours are signaled in
orange, yellow signs are for military traffic. Road numbering is
practically only important on motorways.
Alcohol and drugs
In
Switzerland there is a blood alcohol limit of 0.5‰ in traffic. If you
are involved in an accident due to excessive alcohol consumption, this
can still result in civil legal consequences. There is absolute zero
tolerance for illegal drugs. Therefore, if you consume alcohol, you
should generally leave your car parked, use public transport or call a
taxi.
Attention, carrying stored “speed cameras” is prohibited and will
result in the confiscation of the device and a fine of up to 3,000
francs. More recent navigation devices therefore automatically
deactivate the radar functions based on the current location. With older
devices, care must be taken to ensure that no speed cameras are stored
in the points of interest in the device, even if they were supplied with
the device. Simply “turning off” such points of interest is not enough.
Navigation devices must not be attached to the windshield if they block
the field of vision.
Other differences to Germany and Austria
In Switzerland, the town signs have no influence on the permitted speed.
The urban speed applies there from the signal “50 generally” and stops
at the signal “end of 50 generally”. Under ideal conditions, you should
not drive slower than 80 km/h on motorways. Overtaking on the right on
multi-lane roads is also prohibited in urban areas, similar to on
motorways, if the individual roads do not lead in different directions.
Overtaking on the right usually results in your ID being revoked. During
the day you drive with lights on (daytime running lights or, in the
absence of one, with dipped beams).
Autobahnen.ch, private
information portal on tolls, traffic rules and an overview of motorways
and expressways in Switzerland
Tips for road traffic in the mountains:
The yellow post buses
(buses) have the right of way on mountain post roads - marked with a
golden post horn on a blue background. The post bus driver can warn of
confusing curves with the typical three-tone horn. The post bus driver
has the right to give mandatory instructions to other road users.
The
vehicle traveling downhill gives way to the one traveling uphill and
backs up on narrow roads. Trucks and buses, but not minibuses or mobile
homes (as they are legally passenger cars), always have the right of way
over passenger cars.
Smaller mountain roads are often winding and can
be strenuous to drive as you always have to make room for oncoming
traffic.
On small roads, you may want to honk in front of very
confusing curves, especially on mountain passes (but this will reveal
that the driver is a foreigner and may get malicious looks).
Don't
drive or overtake as fast as the locals, they know the route better.
Especially in mountain areas, locals appreciate it when drivers and
motorhomes who are unfamiliar with the area briefly turn off to the
right and let the following vehicles pass.
In winter, make sure you
have the appropriate equipment (winter tires, snow chains); insufficient
tires can result in a fine. If a corresponding obligation is signaled,
winter equipment must be carried with you.
Although Switzerland is a landlocked country, it can be reached by
boat. The most important for entry is the Lake Constance ferry
Friedrichshafen-Romanshorn as a feeder to Friedrichshafen Airport
(airport-lake transfer available). From Romanshorn you can continue by
train.
Other cross-border connections are less important for
entry, but from a tourist perspective they are worthwhile. River cruises
on the Rhine or a sea trip across the Italian part of Lake Langensee
(Lake Maggiore) or Lake Lugano are possible. There are four shipping
lines on Lake Geneva to Geneva, Lausanne, Nyon, Morges, Vevey and
Montreux.
Many lakes are worthwhile for boat trips; not just on
Lake Constance or Lake Geneva. Lake Lucerne with one of the largest
paddle steamer fleets in Europe or a three-lake tour on Lake Neuchâtel,
Lake Murten and Lake Biel in the western Mittelland also have their
charm.
River trips are possible on the Rhine between Schaffhausen
and Konstanz and between Basel and Rheinfelden and on the Aare between
Biel and Solothurn.
Bicycle trips (in Switzerland they are called bike tours) are also
popular and have their own special appeal. Switzerland can be easily
reached as an extension of the Rhine cycle path or as part of a tour
around Lake Constance. Within Switzerland there is a well-designed and
excellently signposted long-distance cycle path network with 9
long-distance cycle routes and 52 regional routes. In addition, the
various Alpine passes offer challenges for sporty insiders. Bicycles can
be taken on almost all trains and post buses for 18 CHF (reduced 12 CHF)
(bicycle ticket), or for the additional price of a ticket. Some post
buses only take bicycles with you if you register in advance.
In
various larger cities there are bike sharing offers where you can rent a
bike at short notice (some free, some for a fee); Corresponding offers
can be found via Suisse roule.
In Switzerland, for electric
bicycles that travel faster than 30 km/h and up to 45 km/h with pedal
assistance, you need a class M moped license (from 16 years old) and a
rear-view mirror on the left; 14-16 year olds also need these for slower
e-bikes. This also means wearing a helmet is mandatory.
Switzerland has a dense, well-developed and marked network of hiking
trails with yellow signposts that are uniform throughout Switzerland and
indicate the direction, time required and intermediate destinations.
Various long-distance hikes, such as the Jurahöhenweg, cross large
regions of Switzerland.
Red-white-red marked mountain trails and
blue-white-blue alpine routes are demanding, require good footwear and
sure-footedness and should not be underestimated.
The Swiss maps
are also considered excellent; for hikes we recommend the editions at a
scale of 1:25,000 or the special hiking maps at 1:50,000 Swiss National
Topography: Map Index. You can access the country's topography maps
directly and free of charge on the Wanderland Schweiz website or with
the Swisstopo smartphone app.
Hiking suggestions for long hikes,
multi-day tours and short hikes can be found at SchweizMobil.
The most important thing that a traveler from abroad immediately
notices as soon as he sets foot on Swiss soil is that he does not
understand the person he is talking to. Swiss German is very different
from Standard German and is almost completely incomprehensible to
foreigners; It's gotten to the point where Swiss German is generally
subtitled on television. In particular, the characteristic hard palate
sounds only occur in Switzerland and are difficult for strangers to
imitate successfully (you shouldn't even try, you'll just make yourself
ridiculous). Swiss people grow up speaking Swiss German and only learn
the standard language at school. Apart from a few French loanwords, the
standard language in Switzerland is similar to Standard German with one
serious difference: the Eszett "ß" is generally not used in Switzerland,
which is why it comes from e.g. B. does not exist on any Swiss keyboard.
Switzerland has a total of four national languages: in addition to
German, they are French, Italian and Romansh. Around 66 percent of the
population is a German native speaker. A good 23 percent speak French, 8
percent Italian, and just under one percent speak Romansh. Very few
Swiss people speak four languages; many speak two or three national
languages.
One should therefore not expect that German will be
understood in the Romansh-speaking regions; this particularly applies to
the French-speaking part of Switzerland. In Italian-speaking
Switzerland, on the other hand, communication in German is often
possible, at least in touristy places. In Romansh Switzerland, all
locals speak German or Italian. Most Swiss - except French-speaking
Swiss, who usually only speak French - know some English, so
communication in English is usually possible. If you don't have any
knowledge of one of the national languages, it might be helpful to try
to communicate in English.
There are three bilingual cantons,
Friborg, Valais, and Bern. French and German are spoken in all of these
cantons, with French clearly predominating in the first two cantons. The
only trilingual canton is Graubünden, where German, Italian and Romansh
are spoken. In some bilingual cities, German and French are spoken.
Examples of this are Biel/Bienne, Freiburg im Üechtland/Fribourg and
Murten/Morat.
There is no uniform spelling for the dialects,
which vary regionally and even from place to place. Dialect is basically
written the way it is spoken, and only in private. In addition to
standard German, at least one foreign language is taught. In most
cantons, the first foreign language is another national language, but in
some cantons it is English. There are currently efforts, particularly in
eastern Switzerland, to make English the first foreign language in
schools.
The currency used in Switzerland is the Swiss franc, abbreviated
“Fr.” or “CHF”, in French-speaking Switzerland often “frs”. Values below
one franc are called “rappen” (Rp.) in German-speaking Switzerland,
“centimes” in French-speaking Switzerland and “centesimi” in Ticino. One
franc corresponds to 100 centimes. Since the “Fünfräppler” is the
smallest coin unit, centime amounts are always rounded to 5 centimes.
Switzerland changes its banknotes approximately every 10 years (the
notes of the 8th series of banknotes will be recalled as of April 30,
2021 and are no longer considered official means of payment. snb.ch).
The old series can then still be exchanged in some banks during the
transition period, notes from older series can only be exchanged at the
Swiss National Bank. It's not worth taking banknotes home for your next
vacation.
The euro is accepted as a means of payment in many
shops and service providers (post office, train, etc.), but only
banknotes, not coins. Many machines also accept euros. However, change
is usually paid in Swiss francs. Because of the exchange rate loss,
using euros as a means of payment only makes sense in individual cases
(e.g. when in transit). Money is exchanged at the SBB (exchange offices
in the larger train stations), the banks and larger post offices (the
latter, however, only in euros). Places where you can pay with euros are
often marked with a € sign.
When paying by credit card, billing
in CHF or EUR is usually offered as an alternative; The selection must
be made at the beginning of the payment process on the card reader.
Billing in EUR is not recommended because the billing company uses a
significantly less favorable exchange rate than the credit card
companies (example in February 2019: direct payment in EUR with 1EUR =
1.08CHF, payments in CHF at the exchange rate 1EUR = 1.14CHF ).
In the large distributors (Migros, Coop) you can usually pay without any
problems with euro notes at the favorable exchange rate without any
fees, and you get the change back in Swiss francs. Larger train stations
usually have a supermarket where this money exchange is possible.
The usual, traditional opening hours are from 8:00 a.m. to 6:30 p.m.
Smaller shops close at midday (12:00 p.m. to 1:30 p.m.). Larger stores
(Migros, Coop, etc.) may be open a little longer in the evening,
depending on the canton; they usually close around 8 p.m. The exception
to this is the so-called evening sale, which takes place once a week and
takes place on a different day depending on the location (in St. Gallen,
for example, on Thursdays until 9 p.m.). On Saturdays most shops are
only open until 5:00 p.m. and closed on Sundays.
Shops at gas
stations and train stations usually have very long opening hours (daily,
6 a.m. to 10 p.m. or 11 p.m., depending on the canton, sometimes earlier
on Sundays)
Due to the parts of the country with different languages and
cultures, Swiss cuisine has influences from Italian, German and French
cuisine. Well-known specialties include raclette, cheese fondue,
Älplermagronen (cheese macaroni), Zürcher Geschnetzeltes, Rösti and
other dishes. Polenta and risotto are popular in southern Switzerland.
Switzerland is also known for its diverse types of cheese and chocolate.
There are also very good Swiss wines.
More on this topic under
Eating and Drinking in Switzerland.
Swiss nightlife offers a wide range of events to suit every taste.
Numerous parties take place on weekdays, especially in big cities, and
clubs and bars are also open until the early hours of the morning during
the week.
Depending on the canton, regulations regarding “police
hours” still apply to normal restaurants and inns; on weekdays they
close at 11 p.m. or midnight. However, the days in which the village
policeman made the rounds and the “Überhöcklers” are over " a " Nötli "
received - in some cantons the police hour was abolished completely,
which led to complaints from residents about noise pollution.
"Extensions" for bars and nightclubs and also in the case of folk
festivals and other major events are common in all cantons, however, in
special ones A “free night” is granted for major events.
The
minimum age for entry into the clubs is usually between 18 and 21 years.
Hard alcohol is served from 18 years old, beer and wine from 16 years
old. The controls are sometimes quite restrictive; For reasons of equal
treatment, all customers (if they are not already gray-haired) are often
required to provide ID. Certain outlets that are open late in the
evenings have started selling alcohol only to people over 20 or even 21
years old. Certain stores stop selling alcohol at all after a certain
period of time, although this period varies depending on the location.
When it comes to sleeping options, there is a very wide range of
options in Switzerland, as in most European countries. This starts with
5-star hotels and extends to campsites, youth hostels or overnight
accommodation in a straw barn. In terms of price, overnight stays in
Switzerland tend to be in the upper price segment.
As a rule of
thumb you can use the following guide prices:
5-star hotel: from
around 350CHF per person and night
4-star hotel: from around 180CHF
per person and night
3-star hotel: from around 120CHF per person and
night
2-star hotel: from around 80CHF per person and night
Hostels: from around 30CHF per person per night.
The hotel stars
in Switzerland are based on the hotel classification of the
hotelleriesuisse association. All hotel members of hotelleriesuisse
undergo regular quality tests in order to be awarded the corresponding
hotel stars. At swisshoteldata.ch you can find information about hotel
stars, infrastructure and specializations.
The prices in Swiss
youth hostels are at the usual level in Europe. The accommodation is a
little simpler than in Germany, but breakfast and dinner are usually
better.
For group accommodation in Switzerland there is the
central agency CONTACT groups.ch, hotels and holiday homes for groups.
The mediation is free and non-binding. On the portal you can select 850
accommodations according to your own criteria and write to them directly
using a collective request. The occupancy plans are online and up to
date.
Tipping is included in all service establishments. For
special services, a small tip, usually in the form of rounding up the
amount, is always welcome.
For information on booking options on
the Internet, see the topic article on hotel portals in the relevant
section on Switzerland.
Wild camping is generally prohibited in
national parks, nature reserves, hunting areas and game rest areas. The
cantons of Appenzell, Bern, Glarus and Solothurn have also issued bans;
this also applies to parking mobile homes outside designated areas. In
Aargau and Obwalden you can stay one night as an individual. Otherwise,
community-specific rules apply. The TCS automobile club offers a special
camper membership, 2023 for 60CHF.
Mon, Jan 1, 2024 New Year's Day
Sun, Mar 31st 2024 Easter Sunday
Thu, May 9, 2024 Ascension Commemoration of Christ's Ascension
Sun,
May 19, 2024 Whitsun Sunday
Thu, Aug. 1, 2024 Federal celebration
national holiday
Mon, Dec 25, 2023 Christmas
There are six
public holidays in Switzerland that are non-working throughout the
country. In large parts of Switzerland, Good Friday (Friday, March 29,
2024), Easter Monday (Monday, April 1, 2024), Whit Monday (Monday, May
20, 2024), Federal Bus and Prayer Day (September 15, 2024), and St.
Stephen's Day are also celebrated (Tuesday, December 26, 2023) and
Berchtold Day (Tuesday, January 2, 2024).
If these holidays fall
on a working day, long-distance public transport (SBB, etc.) runs as on
a Sunday (timetable note; † = Sundays and public holidays), although the
differences are often only minimal. This does not apply to municipal
transport companies. These observe regional holidays and therefore have
very different timetables.
The federal holiday is the only
federal holiday. All other public holidays are determined by the 26
cantons, so there are significant differences from canton to canton.
Furthermore, there is no work or only limited or shortened work on
certain traditional holidays, even though these days are not recognized
as public holidays. It is not uncommon for such events to only affect
certain districts of a canton or even individual communities.
The
national holiday on August 1st is celebrated with bonfires, fireworks
and also speeches and music lectures.
The crime rate in Switzerland is low. In cities there is a slightly
increased risk of becoming a victim of pickpockets. Bicycles e.g. B.
should always be locked when out of sight. In larger cities, a good lock
is also recommended for older bicycles.
As a neutral country,
Switzerland is not affiliated with any alliance, but maintains its own
army.
Switzerland is one of the few countries in the world that
has more shelter places than residents; The cantons and municipalities
are responsible for planning shelters, with each resident being assigned
a shelter. Since 2012, the construction of a shelter for new
single-family homes has been abolished; Larger shelters will continue to
be created and maintained in residential complexes and under public
buildings.
Switzerland offers one of the highest standards of healthcare in the
world, with compulsory health insurance with guaranteed basic care.
Dental treatment is always subject to a charge. The European Health
Insurance Card applies. However, treatments must first be paid for and
then submitted for reimbursement to the Joint Institution KVG,
Industriestrasse 78, CH-4609 Olten (information sheet). Compared to
Germany, high additional payments are due. It can make sense if you are
near the border to go to the doctor in Germany, Austria or Italy.
Every larger city has one or more hospitals, and family medical
emergency practices are increasingly being run at the hospitals, which,
like the 24-hour "permanences" in large cities, are direct contact
points for health problems. In the larger hospitals, the forms and the
staff are also multilingual. The density of doctors is one of the
highest in the world, and the primary care emergency service is
organized across the board.
The rescue service is exemplary and the
various emergency response organizations are networked with one another,
and the medical emergency number (144) has been introduced throughout
Switzerland. Every point in Switzerland can be reached by helicopter
within a very short time by the non-governmental REGA (emergency number
1414). Patron membership with REGA is highly recommended. In Valais, Air
Glaciers (emergency number 1415) is responsible for air rescue.
Unless otherwise stated, tap water, but also the water in most fountains
in Switzerland, is generally drinkable and is often even superior in
quality to mineral water. The "No drinking water" sign on a well does
not necessarily mean that the water is bad and undrinkable - it was
often put up in order to be able to forgo the strict controls for
drinking water. Locals may be able to tell you if you can still drink
the water, at your own risk of course... it may well be high quality
spring water.
In many areas, especially in the northeastern
Mittelland (Thurgau, Schaffhausen, Zurich, northern canton of St. Gallen
and the Aarau/Olten area), in the Three Lakes region (Lake Neuchâtel)
and in the southern Lake Thun area (Spiez-Niedersimmental region) ( As
of 2012) there is an increased risk of infection with TBE (tick-borne
encephalitis), which is transmitted through tick bites. When going on
trips to the forest, it is recommended to take the necessary protective
precautions (long clothes, tick spray, etc.). Vaccination is recommended
for longer stays in the region with activities in the forest.
North of the Alps there is a temperate, Central European climate,
mostly characterized by oceanic winds, south of the Alps it is more
Mediterranean. However, the climate varies greatly from region to
region, depending on the geographical elements.
Basically, the
weather is similar every day from the Jura arc across the Central
Plateau and the foothills of the Alps, while the weather in the inner
Alps and in southern Switzerland can be completely different. In central
Switzerland, the Alps and Ticino, the average rainfall is around 2000
millimeters per year. The wettest place is Säntis (2,502 m above sea
level) with an average of 2,837 mm (standard period 1981–2010), the
driest place is Ackersand in Vispertal with an average of 545
millimeters per year (both values for the standard period 1981–2010). In
the standard period 1961–1990, the value for arable sand was 521
millimeters. In the Central Plateau the amount is around 1000 to 1500
millimeters per year. This region is the only region in Switzerland to
have recorded a statistically significant increase in annual rainfall
since 1864, which is primarily due to an increase in the winter months.
The amount of precipitation in Switzerland is generally around twice as
high in summer as in winter. Primarily depending on the altitude, a lot
of precipitation falls as snow in winter, so that there is a solid
blanket of snow in the Alps and foothills of the Alps for months. It
snows comparatively rarely in the regions around Geneva and Basel as
well as in southern Ticino, and here there can also be winters without a
snow cover. The greatest snow depth in Switzerland was measured at 816
cm in April 1999 on Mount Säntis.
The temperatures in Switzerland
depend primarily on the altitude. In addition, they tend to be
statistically slightly higher in the west than in the east (approx. 1
°C). In general, the average temperature in January in the lowlands is
around −1 to +1°C. In the warmest month, July, it is 16 to 19°C. The
average annual temperatures are around 7 to 9°C. The warmest places on
average with available series of measurements are Locarno-Monti and
Lugano, each with an annual average of 12.4°C (normal period 1981–2010).
As at almost all measuring stations, climate change is also evident
here: in the standard period 1961–1990, the average values were 11.5°C
(Locarno/Monti) and 11.6°C (Lugano), respectively, and thus by 0.9 or
0.8°C lower than in the last averaged standard period. The coldest place
on average is the Jungfraujoch at −7.2°C (normal period 1981–2010). Here
too, the average temperature has increased by 0.7°C since the standard
period 1961–1990. Absolute records were measured in Grono with 41.5°C on
August 11, 2003, and in La Brévine with −41.8°C (January 12, 1987).[37]
Compared to the altitude of comparison locations in the Central Plateau,
the temperatures in the Rhone Valley, the Rhine Valley and the Basel
region are on average one to two degrees Celsius warmer, and two to
three degrees warmer in the Magadino Plain in Ticino. Although the
climate is part of southern Switzerland, the temperatures in the
Engadine are an average of ten degrees Celsius colder. This is because
the Engadine is a high alpine valley. The same applies to the side
valleys and Goms in Valais.
Hail is a rather rare event in the
Alps, French-speaking Switzerland and Ticino. In the period from 1999 to
2002, the average annual hailstorm in Emmental, Laufental and Toggenburg
was up to 60 minutes; in the other regions it was less than 30 minutes.
Fog can be observed throughout the Central Plateau, although the
Alpine areas are affected less frequently. The fog is particularly
common along the Aare, the northern Reuss and in Thurgau, where it can
occur for several weeks, especially in autumn, winter and early spring.
With the exception of high fog, fog is a comparatively rare phenomenon
in the Jura arc and in the Basel region. The frequency of fog in the
Swiss plateau has decreased significantly since the 1970s. The
Zurich-Kloten weather station, for example, used to repeatedly record
years with 50 to 60 days of fog. Today there are around 40. The reasons
for the decline in fog are likely to be found in a change in the
prevailing weather conditions and in improving air quality control.
Frequently occurring winds in Switzerland are the mild Föhn on both
sides of the Alpine ridge and the cold Bise, from which southern
Switzerland is often spared. The highest wind speed ever measured is 285
kilometers per hour (Jungfraujoch, February 27, 1990).
The
Federal Office of Meteorology and Climatology (MeteoSwiss) is
Switzerland's national weather service. Other well-known private weather
services are: SRF Meteo, Meteomedia and MeteoNews. The Institute for
Snow and Avalanche Research is located in Davos.
This section on
climate is covered by the Wikipedia page "Switzerland".
Basically, similar rules of decency and mutual respect apply in
Switzerland as in other Western European countries. However, a few small
differences are worth mentioning:
There is an unspoken
understatement. Modesty is perceived as pleasant.
When toasting with
a glass of beer or wine, make eye contact with your partner. The French
way of turning to the next person is considered impolite.
The
statement “I'll get a beer,” often used in restaurants and bars in
Germany, is considered very impolite in Switzerland. Instead, in
Switzerland people order with “I would like a beer” or “Could I get a
beer?”
Close friends and good acquaintances give each other three
kisses on the cheeks - left, right, left.
The usual “Hello” greeting
in Germany is generally rarely used in Switzerland, except on the
telephone. In Eastern Switzerland, people who are on first name terms
are greeted with “Hoi” and say goodbye with “Tschau”. In contrast, in
the Basel region they greet each other with “Sali” (Salut) and in the
Bern region with “Tschou”. .
People you don't know or with whom you
communicate via email are greeted with "Grüezi" or "Grüessech"
(Greetings to you). However, “Guete Morge” (in the morning hours), “Gute
Tag” during the day and “Guete(n) Obig” as a greeting in the evening are
more common.
In Germany, the usual "bye" when saying goodbye is
perceived by the Swiss as collegial/confidential and - if at all - only
used to say goodbye to people with whom you are on a first-name basis.
People with whom you are on friendly terms can be said neutrally with
“Goodbye” (or “Goodbye”) or with “Adieu”.
Punctual as a Swiss watch
is not just an empty phrase. Arriving too early or too late for an
invitation with a fixed time is not welcomed.
Further: The Swiss
are proud of their identity (multilingualism, dialects, culture and
direct democracy) and they should honor this with respect. If they
criticize Switzerland or make derogatory comments, they are usually met
with contempt and incomprehension. Please address other topics and
respect Switzerland and its people as they are. This way you will
quickly make friends. The Swiss are a very friendly people, a little
reserved at first, but they are very helpful and consider politeness,
manners and mutual respect to be very important.
The international area code is: +41 or 0041. If this international
area code is used, the leading zero is omitted from the numbers. So 044
123 45 67 becomes 0041 44 123 45 67. This must also be dialed when
calling from a landline within the same area code. Within Switzerland,
the normal telephone number has ten digits (044 999 99 99) and should be
dialed that way. For international calls to Switzerland, the zero should
be omitted (+41 44 999 99 99). If you want to make an international call
from Switzerland, you should dial a double zero in front of the country
number. Example: Germany 0049 + national phone number.
The last
public telephone booth was moved to the museum in 2019 and telephone
taxi cards were also taken out of circulation.
There are three
mobile network providers, each operating their own network: Swisscom,
Salt and Sunrise. There are also more than a dozen service providers
that offer SIM cards for private customers. The differences in costs and
reception performance are negligibly small. However, a comparison is
advisable, especially when it comes to internet access tariffs. If you
rarely make phone calls or hardly need mobile internet, you should
consider a prepaid offer. For example from Lebara Mobile, whose SIM
cards can be easily purchased at post offices. For the price of just
under 15 CHF you get a card with 30 CHF credit; M Budget offers are
available at Migros supermarkets. SIM cards are only issued upon
presentation of an ID card in order to better monitor the population.
Mobile phone coverage is exemplary for all providers, even in rural
areas. Dead spots are rarely encountered, even in the Alps; Coverage is
excellent, particularly in ski areas. In areas close to the border, make
sure that roaming is switched off when using a Swiss SIM card. Roaming
tariffs are high and it can happen that you accidentally make calls on a
foreign network with heavy traffic.
In Switzerland, mobile phones
are not called cell phones, but rather Natel. This term originally meant
National Car Telephone Network and then transferred to the devices used.
90% of the population has access to a 5G network; for political and
ideological reasons, citizens' initiatives in many places are resisting
the construction of 5G antennas. 4G and 3G coverage is comprehensive,
the 2G network was switched off at the end of 2020.
Switzerland
is not part of the EU, so the EU roaming regulation does not apply here.
Some providers grant free roaming on a voluntary basis for Switzerland
(e.g. Telekom Deutschland), others (e.g. the Austrian providers)
mercilessly charge roaming fees for Swiss networks. It is advisable to
read the small print of your own cell phone contract here.
In Switzerland there is a dense postal network of the Swiss Post, the counters of larger post offices are open most Monday to Friday from 8 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. and are usually also open on Saturday mornings (smaller post offices often have very limited opening hours). Please note the emptying time for the yellow mailboxes; in rural areas they are only emptied once a day. In a number of smaller towns the post office was abolished and replaced by a branch in the village shop.
Switzerland is generally not a cheap travel destination and the prices for the tourist infrastructure are significantly higher than in the euro area. However, the actual travel costs depend heavily on the exchange rate of the € to the Swiss franc. A snack (e.g. bratwurst costs around 6 Fr) a main course in a restaurant is rarely available for less than 25 Fr and even simple accommodation rarely costs less than 80 Fr per night. The same applies to the fares for Buses and trains. For those who want to travel more around the country, a "half-fare" subscription (a type of rail card/advantage card that allows you to travel for half the price) can be useful.
For electrical devices, the plugs and sockets comply with the Swiss standard SEV 1011. These sockets can accept the two-pin Euro plugs, but not contour plugs such as. B. the German Schuko plug; Grounded devices are connected with a three-pin plug. The use of a suitable adapter is recommended. The mains voltage corresponds to the usual 230 V in Europe.
The name of the country goes back to the name of the canton of Schwyz, which was one of the three founding cantons of the confederation in 1291. In 970, the center of this canton is mentioned as Suuites, in 1281 - Switz, modern. Schwyz; the name comes from OE-German. suedan "uproot". Since the XIV century, the state as a whole has been called by the name of this canton. The inhabitants of the country themselves called themselves Eidgenossen (that is, Confederates), and only from the end of the 15th century did the self-name Schweizer (that is, the Swiss) come into use. From the name of the country Schweitz (German: Schweiz) the name of its inhabitants, the Swiss (German: Schweizer, Polish: Szwajcar), is derived, and from it the Russian name of the country Switzerland is “the country of the Swiss”.
The more recent history of Switzerland as a federal state begins with
the adoption of the Federal Constitution in 1848. The forerunners of
modern Switzerland were the Old Swiss Confederacy, which had been
organized as a loose federation since the end of the 13th century, the
centrally organized Helvetic Republic, which existed from 1798 to 1803,
and the "Swiss Confederation," founded in 1803 and reorganized in 1815.
The federal cantons gained sovereignty from the Holy Roman Empire of
the German Nation in the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. This sovereignty
was confirmed by the Congress of Vienna in 1815, and the borders of
Switzerland that existed before the "French period" and are still valid
today were recognized, with a few minor deviations. Important basic
principles in Swiss history are the pronounced federalism and, since the
Second Peace of Paris in 1815, international neutrality, based on the
decisions of the Congress of Vienna.
Modern Switzerland has three predecessors:
The "Old Swiss
Confederacy", a loose structure of various countries and city states
(confederation of states), partly in the area of today's Switzerland.
The year of its foundation is traditionally said to be the renewal of an
older alliance in 1291 by the three forest states of Uri, Schwyz and
Unterwalden. The so-called 13 "places" (cantons) fought for extensive
autonomy from the Holy Roman Empire, most recently in the Swabian War in
1499. The Peace of Westphalia made the Swiss cantons, their subject
territories and allies ("allied") sovereign under international law,
i.e. independent of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. The
French invasion of Switzerland and the Helvetic Revolution in 1798
marked the end of the structure, which had been internally divided since
the Reformation.
Under pressure from the French Republic, i.e. In
1798, under Napoleon Bonaparte's leadership, most of the territory of
the former Old Swiss Confederacy was combined to form the centrally
structured "Helvetic Republic". The previously independent states of the
Confederation were downgraded to administrative units, partially divided
or combined into larger units. After the withdrawal of the French troops
in 1802, the Helvetic Republic perished in the civil war between the
advocates of the unified state and the federalists. Due to the federal
tradition of the Old Swiss Confederacy and its roots in the population,
the federalists clearly had the upper hand, and the unified state was
never widely accepted.
In 1803, the representatives of the cantons
reached an agreement under the mediation (French: médiation) of Napoleon
Bonaparte. The "Swiss Confederation" was re-established as a
confederation of states through the Act of Mediation as a confederal
constitution. After the fall of Napoleon, this confederation dissolved
again in 1813. The 13 old cantons and the 9 newly founded cantons since
1798 then joined together to form a new confederation in the Federal
Treaty of August 7, 1815. The structure of the Swiss Confederation, its
territorial integrity and its "perpetual neutrality" were recognized by
the Congress of Vienna in 1814/15. In the 1830s, the aristocratic
families in the individual cantons, which had regained their power since
1815 and 1803 respectively, were finally politically disempowered and
the liberal-democratic form of government took hold. After the
Sonderbund War, the Swiss Confederation was transformed into the federal
state with the federal city of Bern on September 12, 1848, through the
adoption of a federal constitution that still exists today. The official
name is still "Swiss Confederation" or Confoederatio Helvetica.
The area of today's Switzerland has been populated since the Paleolithic period. It was only after the last ice age that the Swiss Mittelland became more densely populated, especially the areas around the lakes. Celtic settlement of the Mittelland began with the start of the Iron Age. Celtic finds near La Tène in the canton of Neuchâtel gave the entire period of the Late Iron Age its name. The Celts maintained trade relations as far as the Greek cultural area. The first signs of writing probably also emerged in Swiss territory during this phase.
Before the Roman conquest, according to records by the Roman general and politician Julius Caesar in his justification for the Gallic War, various Celtic tribes and peoples lived in the area of present-day Switzerland: the Helvetii (Central Switzerland), the Lepontii (Ticino), the Seduni (Valais, Lake Geneva) and the Raetii (Eastern Switzerland). As the Roman Empire expanded across the Alps, the area of present-day Switzerland was subjugated until the 1st century AD in order to secure the strategically important Alpine passes to Germania. During the imperial period, most of Switzerland was assigned to the Roman province of Germania Superior. Eastern Switzerland, Valais and Graubünden belonged to the province of Raetia, and parts of Ticino finally to the province of Gallia Transpadana. The centres of Roman Switzerland were the old Helvetic capital Aventicum (Avenches) and the Roman colonies Julia Equestris (Nyon), Augusta Raurica (Augst) and Forum Claudii Vallensium (Martigny). Until late antiquity, the Celtic population of Switzerland adopted Roman customs, culture and language, and ultimately Christianity. When the Roman provinces were reorganised in the 3rd century by Emperor Diocletian, northern Switzerland was assigned to the province of Maxima Sequanorum and a dense chain of fortified towns, castles and watchtowers was built along the Rhine. After the Goths invaded the Western Roman Empire, all Roman troops were withdrawn from the areas north of the Alps in 401 to protect Italy. Rule over western Switzerland passed to the Burgundian Empire, central and eastern Switzerland was controlled and settled by the Alemanni, while the Alpine regions remained in the hands of Celto-Roman local rulers. Some Roman structures shaped Switzerland even after the end of Roman rule: the road network, the Roman settlements and the old Roman spatial division, in particular the church organization with the bishopric boundaries.
Due to the increasing immigration of the West Germanic Alamanni
(Alemanni) from the year 259, the Romansh population of eastern and
central Switzerland adopted the Alemannic language in the early Middle
Ages, while in western Switzerland the Burgundian language could not
prevail, but Latin dialects prevailed. Later, the Franco-Provençal
language emerged from this. Latin dialects also survived in Graubünden
and Ticino, from which the Italian and Romansh languages developed.
After a brief period of independence, the kingdoms of the Burgundians
and the Alemanni were incorporated into the Frankish Empire in the 6th
century AD.
Under Frankish rule, the entire area of what is now
Switzerland was Christianized through the work of missionaries and the
founding of numerous monasteries, such as St. Gallen, Reichenau,
Moutier-Grandval and Romainmôtier. In the early Middle Ages,
feudalization also took place: peasants entered into a hereditary
relationship with spiritual or noble landowners. With the division of
the Frankish Empire of Charlemagne by his grandchildren in the Treaty of
Verdun (843), western Switzerland first became part of Lotharingia, then
a new Kingdom of Burgundy, while eastern Switzerland, as part of the
tribal duchy of Swabia, became part of the East Frankish Empire, later
the Holy Roman Empire (of the German Nation). After the Ottonian
imperial dynasty acquired Burgundy (1033), the entire area of what is
now Switzerland belonged to the Holy Roman Empire.
For the
Roman-German emperors, the Alpine passes were of crucial importance for
controlling Italy, especially for the journeys to Rome on the occasion
of the imperial coronations. For this reason, the emperors owned
extensive areas in the Alpine region from the early Middle Ages, which
they administered directly as imperial property and did not grant as
fiefs. In addition, various noble families in the Alpine region
competed, the Zähringen, Kyburg, Lenzburg, Habsburg and Savoy. Large
areas of Switzerland belonged to various church institutions, for
example monasteries, foundations or even directly to the bishops. Some
of them rose to the status of princes in the High Middle Ages, such as
the Prince-Abbots of St. Gallen or the Prince-Bishops of Basel, Chur,
Sitten and Constance.
The extinction of powerful noble families and the disputes between
the emperor and the pope in the 13th century favored the independence of
the more important cities and valleys in Switzerland. In 1218, Zurich,
Bern, Freiburg and Schaffhausen became imperial cities after the
Zähringen family died out; Uri (1231) and Schwyz (1240) also received
the privilege of imperial immediacy. This meant that these cities and
regions were directly under the emperor or king and were exempt from the
authority of the local counts. In this way, Emperor Frederick II secured
the route from the north over the Gotthard Pass to Italy while he was at
war with the Lombard cities, and secured the cities' loyalty in the
fight with Pope Innocent IV. After Frederick II was excommunicated and
deposed by the pope in 1245, Bern, Basel and Zurich remained loyal to
the emperor. The end of the Hohenstaufen dynasty and the beginning of
the interregnum in the empire also marked the transition to the late
Middle Ages for the area of present-day Switzerland. At the same time,
around 1230, the Gotthard Pass became a trade route with the
construction of the Devil's Bridge. The Graubünden passes, however,
continued to be more important.
The three forest settlements of
Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalden form the core of the Old Swiss Confederacy.
After the death of the Roman-German King Rudolf I of Habsburg in July
1291, they renewed an older alliance, which since 1891 has been
mythologically regarded as the "foundation" of the Old Swiss
Confederacy. In 1309, King Henry VII confirmed the imperial immediacy of
Uri and Schwyz and now also included Unterwalden; the three forest
settlements were placed under the authority of a royal governor. In
recent research, the privileges of 1309 are seen as an important step
towards the later formation of the alliance, but the importance of the
Federal Charter is considered to be overestimated. The core alliance of
the three forest states in what is now central Switzerland gradually
expanded to include other partners, especially imperial cities in the
Swiss Mittelland between the Rhine and the Aare. In particular, the
alliances with the imperial cities of Zurich in 1351 and Bern in 1353,
after Bern had won the Laupen War in 1339, contributed significantly to
the consolidation of power and territorial expansion, as the cities had
large subject territories. It was only through the three cities that the
Swiss Confederation achieved stable political importance; this was
tolerated by the European court centers of Vienna, Paris and Milan.
Since the first confrontation in 1315, about which little is known
and which was only romanticized in retrospect at a later date, there
have been repeated conflicts between the noble Habsburg family and the
Old Swiss Confederacy (Battle of Sempach in 1386), which led to the
annexation of the Habsburg lands to the left of the Rhine by 1460. At
the same time, however, there were always changing alliances in which
parts of the so-called Swiss Confederation came to an agreement with the
Habsburgs in order to pursue their own expansionist interests. This was
one reason for the old Zurich War. Recent research has criticized the
fact that source reports were often taken out of context and interpreted
one-sidedly in the sense of national heroic tales, which led to a
distorted public view of history that still has political effects today.
Rather, the early Swiss Confederation was loosely structured and not
without role models; it was only the conquest of Aargau in 1415 that
forced people to cooperate more in order to be able to administer the
so-called "common dominions".
In the Appenzell Wars from 1401 to
1429, communities in Appenzell fought against the Prince Abbot of St.
Gallen. The Appenzell Wars provided the decisive impetus for the
separation of the region of Appenzell from the rule of the Princely
Abbey of St. Gallen and the rapprochement with the Swiss Confederation.
The expansionist policy of the city of Bern, which was itself the
center of a "Burgundian Confederation" in what is now western
Switzerland, led the loosely connected Confederation into its first
confrontation on a European level with the Burgundian Duke Charles the
Bold. The Burgundian Wars ended with a sensational victory for the
Confederation over Burgundy and established the good reputation of Swiss
mercenaries. From then on, "Reislaufen", military service in foreign
pay, formed an important part of the economy of the Old Confederation,
especially in central Switzerland. Internal disputes between countries
and towns were regulated by the Stanser Verkommnis in 1481 following the
Burgundian Wars.
After the victory over Burgundy, the Swiss
Confederation had become the dominant power in southern Germany. The
Swabian nobility, especially the Habsburgs, tried in vain to counter the
growing influence of the Swiss Confederation in Central Europe in the
Waldshut War of 1468 and the Swabian War of 1499. The Swabian War was
ostensibly about implementing the Imperial Reform of 1495, but in fact
it was the last attempt by the House of Habsburg to assert itself
against the Swiss Confederation. In the Peace of Basel, the German King
Maximilian I had to recognize the de facto independence of the Swiss
Confederation within the Holy Roman Empire. The Swiss Confederation's
affiliation to the empire remained in place until 1648. The Swabian War
marked the end of the Swiss Confederation's expansion northwards. In
1513, Appenzell became the last and 13th canton to join the Old Swiss
Confederacy, which were linked by a complicated network of alliances.
They ruled common subject territories and almost every canton had
individual, "individual local" subject territories, especially the city
cantons, in which only the city citizens were actually equal
confederates. The allied places, which were connected to the
Confederation but had no say in the only common body, the Diet, were
grouped around the "13th local Confederation". At that time, areas such
as the Valtellina or the city of Mulhouse still belonged to the
Confederation. The roots of today's multicultural Switzerland can also
be reconstructed based on the developments at that time: the
Romansh-speaking areas were integrated into the confederation either as
a result of conquests at the time or on a voluntary basis (due to a need
for military protection or economic interest).
The
Habsburg-French conflict that arose after 1477 over Burgundy and the
Duchy of Milan drew the Swiss Confederation into a conflict on a
European level as the main supplier of mercenaries to both warring
parties and as an independent power. The military importance of the
Swiss Confederation reached both its peak and its end in the Ennetbirg
campaigns as part of the Milanese Wars between 1499 and 1525. The
campaigns to Italy were initially victorious and gave the Swiss
Confederation control over Ticino and Valtellina as well as the
protectorate over the Duchy of Milan. The beginning of the Reformation
in Switzerland divided parts of the Swiss Confederation even further and
weakened its position in the Italian disputes between Habsburg, the Pope
and France. In 1515, the French King Francis I defeated a Swiss army
that had been decimated by the withdrawal of numerous cantons at
Marignano. The Thirteen Places concluded the Eternal Peace in 1516 and a
mercenary alliance with the Kingdom of France in 1521, in return for
which they received pensions, customs and trade concessions and
political support in internal and external conflicts. In addition, a
large part of the Ennetberg area was finally awarded to the Swiss
Confederation.
In traditional Swiss history, this marked the end
of the expansionist phase of the Confederation and gave way to
neutrality due to internal weakness. Whether neutrality can be spoken of
in view of the mercenary alliances with France is controversial,
especially since Vaud was conquered in 1536. The export of Swiss
mercenaries by various Swiss Confederation places continued after 1515
until it was finally banned in 1859. The only exception since then has
been the Papal Swiss Guard.
In Zurich, Ulrich Zwingli, after surviving the disaster at Marignano
and a bout of plague and now seeing the Bible as the most important
measure of religious decisions, began to reform the church in 1519,
which led to the founding of the Reformed Church. Zwingli preached
against the veneration of images, relics and saints, and he was also
committed to opposing celibacy and the Eucharist. He tried to spread his
Reformation throughout Switzerland; as a politician, he dreamed of a
strengthened Swiss Confederation of the Reformed faith. An important
success for Zwingli was the introduction of the new faith in his
hometown of Zurich in 1528. At that time, Zurich was on the side of the
French-German coalition against Habsburg and the Pope - the introduction
of the Reformation can also be seen from this political perspective.
Later, the cities of Basel, Schaffhausen and St. Gallen followed
Zurich's example, as did Bern. The Reformation was also largely
successful in the estates of Appenzell, Glarus and the Three Leagues, as
well as in Thurgau, the Rhine Valley and the Princely Abbey of St.
Gallen.
The estates in Central Switzerland, which were allied
with the Pope and opposed the city cantons, fought bitterly against the
Reformation. Zwingli's policies also contributed to alienating the
people of Central Switzerland, as he advocated a strong leadership role
for the cities of Bern and Zurich in a politically reformed
confederation and the abolition of mercenary services. In contrast to
the trading cities in the Mittelland, however, the local elite in
Central Switzerland was dependent on the lucrative mercenary service.
The disputes between the Catholic and Reformed estates over the
spread of the Reformation in the common dominions led to the two Kappel
Wars between Zurich and the cantons of Central Switzerland in 1529/31. A
compromise was found in the Second Peace of Kappel: Religious
sovereignty was given to the cantons, who could decide what faith should
apply in their territory. In 1536, for example, Bern forcibly introduced
the new faith in the newly conquered areas of Vaud. The spread of the
Reformation in the common dominions was also stopped. Toggenburg, among
others, was recognized as a religiously mixed area. In the Three
Leagues, the choice of religion was left to the judicial communities,
which is why a religious patchwork developed. The conflict between the
religions there lasted until the 17th century (Grisons turmoil).
Numerous monasteries in the reformed areas were closed in the 1520s and
1530s.
Geneva (an affiliated town since 1526) was the last city
to introduce the Reformation in 1541 under the influence of Bern. The
reformer there, Jean Calvin, founded "Calvinism" with his particularly
strict interpretation of the Bible. In 1559 Calvin founded the Geneva
Academy as a university of the Reformed faith, which developed a
Europe-wide influence and made Geneva a "Protestant Rome". Calvinism
spread in France ("Huguenots" is a French form of "Confederates"),
England (Puritans), Scotland and the Netherlands, and from there to
America. It was only when Calvin reached its extreme peak that the
Reformation gained worldwide significance. While in the Swiss
Confederation, the collaboration of Heinrich Bullinger from Zurich with
Calvin in the Consensus Tigurinus of 1549 led to an agreement between
the Reformed and Calvinists on the question of the Lord's Supper, the
fronts between the Reformed and Lutherans remained hardened until modern
times. Calvinism continued to spread until the 17th century, especially
among the active leading classes and in the cities of Germany and
Eastern Europe. According to Max Weber's controversial thesis of the
Protestant ethic, the special work ethic of Calvinism was largely
responsible for the later economic success of the reformed countries. On
the Catholic side, the Valais Cardinal Matthäus Schiner should be
mentioned as an influential advisor to the young Emperor Charles V, who
also narrowly failed with his candidacy for the Pope.
The
Catholic towns of central Switzerland became the starting point of the
Counter-Reformation in the Swiss Confederation in the 16th and 17th
centuries. The initial spark of the Counter-Reformation is considered to
have been the visitation trip of the Italian Cardinal Charles Borromeo
to the Swiss Confederation in 1570. In 1574 the first Jesuit school was
opened in Lucerne and in 1579 the Collegium Helveticum was founded in
Milan, a university for Catholic Swiss priests in accordance with the
Council of Trent. The first official university in the country was
founded in Basel in 1460 (by a papal bull), but due to its later
Protestant affiliation it ceased to be a Catholic institution of
education. In 1586 the papal nuncio for the Swiss Confederation,
Giovanni Francesco Bonomi, settled in Lucerne and the Capuchins were
called to Switzerland. The Counter-Reformation led to constant conflicts
in the mixed cantons. For this reason, the canton of Appenzell split
into two half-cantons in 1597. By the 17th century, the
Counter-Reformation had won large areas of the Confederation back to the
Catholic faith, particularly in northwestern Switzerland (Bishopric of
Basel) and in eastern Switzerland (Fürstenland, Uznach, Gaster,
Sargans).
The Reformation had a long-term, severely weakened the
Confederation, as joint decisions by the Reformed and Catholic places in
the Diet became practically impossible. The Diet was a congress of
envoys from the various federal places and, as the only common
institution, had only very limited legislative and executive powers. In
some places, the Catholic places even contributed to the loss of
territory by Reformed places. For example, an alliance of the Catholic
places with Savoy forced Bern and Valais in 1567/69 to cede the Chablais
and the Pays de Gex, which they had conquered in 1536, back to Savoy.
The Catholic towns also prevented the full acceptance of the allied
Reformed cities of Mulhouse, Geneva, Strasbourg and Constance into the
Confederation. Nevertheless, Reformed Geneva was able to hold its own
against the Savoyard attacks (Escalade 1602). The confessional and
political division of the Confederation was sealed in 1586 by the Golden
League of the seven Catholic cantons. In the Huguenot Wars in France,
the Confederates fought in different camps depending on their
confession: the Catholics supported Henry III, later the League, the
Reformed Henry of Navarre.
The division of the Confederation
along confessional lines was somewhat alleviated in 1602 by a mercenary
alliance between the 13 towns, excluding Zurich, and France. The focus
of European politics with regard to the Swiss Confederation shifted to
the Three Leagues, where Spain and France had been fighting for control
of the Alpine passes since the outbreak of the Thirty Years' War in
1618. As a result, Graubünden was the only country in the Swiss
Confederation to be devastated by the Thirty Years' War during the
"Grisons Troubles" of 1618–1641. However, the 13th places refused to
support the Three Leagues and were thus not drawn into this war; only
Bern and Zurich intervened briefly and unsuccessfully directly in
Graubünden in 1620. The Swiss Confederation as a whole remained neutral
during the Thirty Years' War (see Naval War on Lake Constance
1632–1648), but provided France - and the Catholic places also Spain -
with mercenaries in accordance with the treaty. The main reasons for the
neutrality were the outdated military facilities and the religious
division. Any taking of sides would have meant civil war and thus the
end of the Swiss Confederation: in 1634, an alliance between Zurich and
Bern with Sweden was about to be concluded and the Catholic regions
negotiated with Spain; only the Swedish defeat at Nördlingen prevented
civil war. In the Defension of Wil, the first federal military
constitution, the 13 regions decided on armed neutrality in 1647.
Throughout the war, from the German perspective, Switzerland was a calm,
storm-swept island of prosperity and relative peace. In economic terms,
many regions in Switzerland even benefited from the war, as food prices
rose sharply due to the widespread devastation in Germany and Italy.
In the Peace of Westphalia of October 24, 1648, the Swiss cantons
obtained their exemption through their representative Johann Rudolf
Wettstein in Art. VI IPO or § 61 IPM: a privilege under imperial law,
with which an imperial estate lost its direct subordination to the
emperor and empire and was thus no longer subject to its courts. In the
peace treaty, the Swiss Confederation was not granted sovereignty under
international law that would break imperial law (as was the case with
the Netherlands in the Spanish-Dutch Peace Treaty), but rather "full
freedom and exemption from the empire" with the additional declaration
that the federal places were no longer subject to imperial jurisdiction.
The interpretation and consequences of this measure were already
controversial among contemporaries, but in the 18th century, following
the spread of French sovereignty doctrine, it was generally understood
as a separation from the Holy Roman Empire and mostly interpreted as
recognition of sovereignty under international law. Since then, all
federal towns have considered themselves sovereign states and have dealt
diplomatically with other European states on an equal footing. The
Confederation's position under constitutional and international law was
therefore described as a sovereign, neutral republic. However, some
imperial jurists (e.g. Ludwig Friedrich von Jan in 1803) held on to the
fiction that the Confederation belonged to the empire as the "highest
free class" until the end of the empire.
The strong
aristocratization of the towns as a result of the centralization of the
regional governments, the absolutist tendency in the exercise of power
and the economic crisis that followed the "boom" of the Thirty Years'
War in Switzerland caused great discontent in the subject territories of
the cities in the Mittelland, especially among the peasants. In 1653,
the Swiss Peasants' War broke out in the territories of the cities of
Bern, Lucerne, Solothurn and Basel, and was brutally suppressed. The war
therefore even strengthened aristocratic tendencies and widened the gap
between town and country. After the Peasants' War, numerous farmers
emigrated to depopulated Germany, where various states attracted
immigrants through privileges and financial incentives.
A few
years after the Peasants' War, the federal reform project in 1655 caused
religious disputes to flare up again. In the First Villmergen War in
1656, Bern and Zurich tried in vain to use force to change the Second
Peace of Kappel in their favor. The victory of the Catholic towns in the
First Battle of Villmergen on January 24, 1656 again confirmed the
disadvantaged position of the Reformed Church in the common dominions.
The internal weakness and discord of the Confederacy did not, however,
call into question the mercenary alliance with France, which was also
renewed with Louis XIV by all towns and allies. From then on, the Swiss
allowed the recruitment of up to 16,000 mercenaries, in return for which
they received trade concessions and regular large payments of money,
so-called "pensions". Later, France was also declared the arbitrator for
internal conflicts within the Swiss Confederation and was granted free
passage through Switzerland. Due to the close ties with France, the
Swiss Confederation effectively declined into a French protectorate in
the 18th century. Nevertheless, after the annulment of the Edict of
Nantes in 1685, around 20,000 Huguenots were taken in by reformed
Switzerland. They brought a strong revival to the textile and
watchmaking industries in the cities and in the Jura. On September 5,
1687, two ships carrying Huguenot refugees crashed on the Aare between
Aarberg and Lyss. 111 people drowned.
Since the 13th century,
young Swiss have sought their fortune as mercenaries, also known as
Reisläufer (from the word Reise). For centuries, mercenary work was the
second most important economic sector in Switzerland - after
agriculture. At times, one in ten Swiss fought in a foreign army. The
beginning of the end of mercenary work came with the Battle of
Malplaquet during the War of the Spanish Succession in 1709. At that
time, Swiss mercenaries served on both sides of the war and fought and
killed each other. Around 8,000 Swiss died in this civil war, which led
to heated discussions in Switzerland. Thanks to better employment
opportunities within Switzerland, fewer and fewer Swiss went into
foreign service. In 1859, eleven years after the founding of the modern
federal state, military service for a foreign power was finally banned.
The economic boom in the cities caused the military advantage of the
rural towns to dwindle, which is why the Reformed towns had the upper
hand in the Second Villmergen War in 1712, which was triggered by
religious tensions in the Princely Abbey of St. Gallen. In the Peace of
Aarau concluded after the Second Battle of Villmergen, the Catholic
towns lost their influence in the common lordships of Baden, Free
Offices, Rapperswil and had to include Bern in the administration of the
lordships of Thurgau, Rhine Valley and Sargans. The principle of parity,
i.e. the equal rights of both denominations in the common lordships,
ended the Catholic supremacy in the Confederation.
The
68-meter-long Urnerloch was opened in 1708 in the Schöllenen Gorge, on
the way to the Gotthard Pass, the first traffic tunnel in Switzerland.
In the 18th century, the Old Swiss Confederacy resembled a relic of
the late Middle Ages, given the centrally governed monarchies that
predominated in Europe. It was by no means a state in the modern sense.
Rather, it consisted of a network of small, sovereign states that had
joined together in a loose federation. However, not all areas of
Switzerland were equally included in this federation. The core was
formed by the Thirteen Old Places, which were either urban or rural
places. Zurich, Bern, Lucerne, Freiburg, Solothurn, Schaffhausen and
Basel were considered urban places or city republics, while Uri, Schwyz,
Glarus, Zug, Obwalden and Nidwalden as well as Appenzell Innerrhoden and
Ausserrhoden were counted as "countries". In addition, there were the
subject territories that were subordinate to the fully entitled places
and in which a considerable part of the population lived. They were
either directly subordinate to one of the 13 places or were administered
as common dominions by several places. With the exception of the
Appenzell towns, all of the towns with full rights had such subject
territories, with the majority of the most important belonging to the
cities. Bern and Zurich alone accounted for around two fifths of the
Swiss population. In addition to the thirteen towns and their subject
territories, there were also the affiliated towns of St. Gallen,
Graubünden and Valais, which had a loose relationship with the core. The
only common institution of the alliance network was the Tagsatzung, in
which the full rights towns were represented by two envoys each and the
affiliated towns by one each. Its most important tasks were the
administration of the joint dominions, foreign policy and defense.
However, its power was very limited and decision-making in votes, which
required unanimity, was rather difficult given the envoys instructed by
the towns. As was later to be seen, it was also unable to offer serious
military resistance when the French invaded.
The strengthening of
state power following the French model of absolutism gave rise to three
types of constitution in various parts of Switzerland, which combined
aristocratic forms and divine right with republican traditions:
In the cities of Bern, Solothurn, Freiburg and Lucerne, the patriciate,
the rule of a few long-established families;
The guild
aristocracy in Zurich, Basel and Schaffhausen; it limited the oligarchy
of the long-established families through the influence of the guilds;
Finally, in the Landsgemeinde towns, a common aristocracy of the old
landed nobility and the families who had become rich and noble through
mercenary service also developed.
The absolutist tendencies in
the exercise of power caused a whole series of uprisings in the affected
subject areas in the 18th century, but all of these were suppressed with
the utmost severity by 1798.
Despite Europe-wide outrage, the
maid Anna Göldi was executed in Glarus on June 13, 1782 after the last
witch trial in Europe. The earliest known witch trials in Switzerland
were the Schaffhausen witch trials of 1402. According to a rough
estimate, around 10,000 witch trials took place in the area of what is
now Switzerland.
Despite the aristocratic tendencies, the
Enlightenment was able to gain a foothold in the Swiss Confederation.
Albrecht von Haller and Jean-Jacques Rousseau sparked a real enthusiasm
for Switzerland in Europe and a first wave of tourism through their
glorification of the naturalness, simplicity and innocence of the Swiss
Confederation. (The sharp criticism of the Englishwoman Helen Williams
of the conditions of the Ancien Régime, however, fell on deaf ears.)
With his theory of the state, Rousseau also made an important
contribution to the later emergence of direct democracy. At the same
time, Zurich became the "Athens on the Limmat" thanks to a collection of
scholars known throughout Europe, such as Johann Jakob Bodmer, Salomon
Gessner, Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi and Johann Caspar Lavater. The
advent of reason and planning not only improved infrastructure and the
economy, but also loosened the strict religious discipline in the
reformed towns and brought about a rapprochement between the
denominations in the spirit of mutual tolerance.
By defending the
existing or imagined Swiss characteristics, contemporary poets and
scholars gave rise to a Swiss national consciousness for the first time.
In 1761/62, these patriotic and enlightened currents manifested
themselves in the founding of the Helvetic Society, which campaigned for
freedom, tolerance, the overcoming of class differences and the
patriotic solidarity of the Swiss. In the second half of the 18th
century, literature also discovered the motif of the shared heroic past
before Marignano, which from then on determined the historical image of
Switzerland as a "battle story" until the late 20th century. By
referring back to the shared idealized past, the confrontation with the
difficult period of confessional tensions could be avoided.
After
almost 300 years, the Three Leagues lost control of their southern
subject territories of Bormio, Chiavenna and the Valtellina in 1797.
Napoleon annexed the territories to the newly founded Cisalpine
Republic. The later canton of Graubünden was reduced to its current
size.
In 1798, during the French invasion, the Old Swiss Confederacy was
occupied by Napoleon Bonaparte's troops and the centralized unitary
state of the Helvetic Republic was founded based on the French model.
The cantons (previously independent states) were downgraded to
administrative units and reorganized based on the model of the French
departments. During the "Helvetic" period, the cantons of Léman,
Oberland, Aargau, Waldstätte, Säntis, Linth, Thurgau, Bellinzona,
Lugano, Rhaetia, Baden and Fricktal were newly created. Geneva, Mulhouse
and the Jura with Biel became part of France; Neuchâtel remained
Prussian, but no longer had any links with Switzerland. The capital of
the unitary state was initially Aarau. Between 1799 and 1803, there were
four coups in the Helvetic Republic (among them, the Vaudois F. Laharpe
wanted to establish a sole rule - based on Napoleon's model in France).
The division of the cantons and the constitution were changed several
times.
In 1802, after the withdrawal of the French troops, a
short civil war ("Steckli War") broke out between the Unitarians, who
advocated a centralized state based on the French model, and the
Federalists, who wanted to restore the old cantons. However, the
Unitarians had little support among the population due to their deeply
rooted federal traditions. It was only when Napoleon Bonaparte
intervened in 1803 that Switzerland regained peace. Napoleon gathered
the Swiss political elite in Paris at the Helvetic Consulta and worked
with them to develop the Act of Mediation, a new federalist constitution
that Napoleon guaranteed. The independence of the cantons was
strengthened again; the unitary state became a confederation of states.
According to the Act of Mediation, the "Swiss Confederation", as the
state was now officially called, comprised 19 cantons, whose
constitutions were also included in the Act of Mediation. The 13 old
cantons were restored. New cantons were added: St. Gallen, Graubünden,
Aargau, Thurgau, Ticino and Vaud. Valais first became an independent
republic due to the strategic importance of the Simplon Pass for France,
and then became part of France in 1810.
Until Napoleon's defeat
in the Wars of Liberation in the autumn of 1813, Switzerland was a
vassal state of France. Swiss troops and mercenaries therefore took part
in both the war in Spain and the Russian campaign. In December 1813, the
Swiss state created by Napoleon dissolved again under the pressure of
the domestic counter-revolution and the advancing troops of the Sixth
Coalition. There was briefly considerable tension between the old and
the new cantons; Switzerland was on the verge of civil war. It was only
under external pressure from the victorious coalition of the great
powers that the sovereign cantons, which were only loosely organized in
the Federal Union of 1813, moved closer together in the summer of 1814,
so that on August 7, 1815, with the new cantons of Geneva, Valais and
Neuchâtel joining, 22 cantons again constituted Switzerland as a
confederation with the so-called Federal Treaty.
457 people and
323 farm animals died in the Goldau landslide on September 2, 1806. 220
stables and barns, 111 houses, two churches and two chapels were
destroyed. In 1807, the Linth correction was started as a charitable
federal project to protect the Linth plain from flooding and to rid it
of malaria.
In 1815, the inner and outer borders of the Swiss Confederation were
redefined at the Congress of Vienna and internationally recognized for
the first time. After that, only a few border corrections were agreed
with neighboring states in the 19th and 20th centuries, mainly in
connection with the settlement of border conflicts, road construction,
waterway corrections and the use of water power, or to simplify the
complicated border line.
Strengthening the Swiss Confederation by
expanding to include Geneva, Neuchâtel, Valais, and the former
Prince-Bishopric of Basel was intended to create a stable buffer state
between France and Austria. Bern received the areas of the former
Prince-Bishopric of Basel, including the city of Biel, as compensation
for Vaud and Aargau. The northern, Catholic part of this area now forms
the canton of Jura. The acquisition of further areas for Switzerland,
such as the area around Geneva, the city of Constance, or the
Valtellina, failed, however. In order to free the strategically
important Alpine region from the sphere of influence of France, the
great powers decreed "perpetual armed neutrality" for Switzerland in the
Second Peace of Paris on November 20, 1815.
Internally, the
Confederation was held together during the Restoration period by the
Federal Treaty of 1815, which replaced the Act of Mediation and allowed
the cantons to have a very large degree of independence. Defense,
coinage and customs sovereignty were transferred back to the cantons. As
in the old days, the Federal Diet acted as the central authority,
meeting annually in the three suburbs of Zurich, Bern or Lucerne. The
only permanent institution was a Federal Chancellery, which moved to the
suburbs with the Diet every year. In the cantons of the Mittelland, the
phase of conservative restoration then led to the liberal "regeneration"
of 1830/31: the aristocratic dominance was finally broken and replaced
by liberal-democratic systems. However, during a transitional phase,
tensions within the cantons arose again under somewhat different
circumstances: either liberals fought against Catholic conservatives or
"old liberals" (supporters of representative democracy with census
voting rights) against "democrats" (supporters of direct democracy with
universal equal voting rights).
In April 1815, the Tambora
volcano on the island of Sumbawa in what is now Indonesia erupted with a
magnitude of 7 on the volcanic explosivity index. Huge amounts of ash
and sulphur dioxide were distributed around the world by the jet stream,
leading to a volcanic winter. The summer of the following year, 1816,
popularly known as the "year without a summer", was the coldest since
weather records began. Many European countries, including Switzerland,
experienced crop failures, famines and economic crises, which caused or
forced many people to emigrate.
With the Concordat on a common
Swiss system of weights and measures of August 17, 1835, the metric
system was introduced in Switzerland as a reference (not measurement)
system.
In 1838, the situation between Switzerland and France
escalated in the course of the so-called Napoleon trade. Prince Charles
Louis Napoléon Bonaparte (Napoleon III), who grew up at Arenenberg
Castle in the canton of Thurgau and had Thurgau citizenship, had been
back in Switzerland since August 1837 after going into exile from France
to the USA in 1836. He visited his mother (died October 5, 1837) on her
deathbed. When France demanded his expulsion on August 1, 1838, the
Thurgau radicals lined up behind the prince, who was popular in the
canton. When France again mobilized troops against Switzerland, the
liberals throughout the country showed solidarity with Thurgau; the
federal troops were also mobilized and Charles-Jules Guiguer de Prangins
was appointed general. An escalation was avoided by Napoleon's voluntary
departure.
In January 1841, the Grand Council of the Canton of
Aargau decided to immediately close all monasteries in the canton,
including the Benedictine Abbey of Muri, the Habsburgs' private
monastery. The canton thus violated the Federal Treaty of 1815 and
caused great discontent in neighboring Catholic countries, especially in
Vienna. The Aargau monastery dispute and the two Freischarenzügen of
1844 and 1845 further increased the great tensions between Catholics and
Protestants throughout Switzerland. These finally erupted in the
Sonderbund War in 1847.
Due to a continuing polarization between the liberal (mostly
urban-reformed) and conservative (mostly rural-Catholic) cantons after
the Freischarenzügen, the Catholic cantons of Lucerne, Uri, Schwyz,
Unterwalden, Zug, Freiburg and Valais joined together in 1845 to form a
Sonderbund in order to protect their interests. As a result, the liberal
majority of the Diet decided to violently dissolve the Sonderbund,
despite a threatened military intervention by the Viennese guaranteeing
powers, which happened in November 1847 under General Henri Dufour.
The Sonderbund War, which only lasted from November 3 to 28, 1847,
was the last armed conflict on Swiss territory. According to official
figures, the Sonderbund War cost 130 people their lives and left around
450 wounded. The victory of the liberal cantons paved the way for the
centralization and liberalization of the previously loose confederation
of more or less democratic individual cantons into a more unified and
tighter parliamentary federal state with a federalist basic structure.
The new Swiss Federal Constitution came into force on September 12,
1848. The new constitution united Switzerland from a confederation into
a federal state. It was approved by the Swiss people (men only) in
cantonal votes in July and August 1848 with 145,584 votes in favor
(72.8%) and 54,320 against (27.2%). Voting in favor: ZH, BE, LU, GL, FR,
SO, BS, BL, SH, AR, SG, GR, AG, TG, VD, NE, GE. Voting against: UR, SZ,
OW, NW, ZG, AI, TI, VS. The Federal Constitution has only been revised
in its entirety twice so far, in 1874 and 1999 ("total revision"). The
Sonderbund War of 1847 brought victory for the Liberals at the national
level. As a result, the Swiss Federal Constitution of 1848 was liberal.
In its early days, the newly created Swiss federal state was politically
dominated by the liberal movement. It formed the majority in the Federal
Assembly and the entire Federal Council. Another key feature of the new
Federal Constitution was the standardization of measurement and coinage
as well as the abolition of the many internal tariffs, which created a
unified economic area in Switzerland. The "Federal Law on Federal
Coinage" of May 7, 1850 introduced the Swiss franc as the currency of
Switzerland. New coins were minted from 1850 and issued the following
year. Banknotes were initially issued by commercial and cantonal banks;
in 1907, the newly founded Swiss National Bank (SNB) was granted the
sole right to issue banknotes (monopoly on banknotes) as the central
bank. After the first cantonal stamps, Zurich 4 and Zurich 6, were
issued in 1843, the Swiss Post was founded in 1848. German, French and
Italian were declared equal national languages, and Romansh was not
added as a fourth national language until 1938.
As early as 1849,
the young federal state under General Dufour had to endure its first
military conflict. During the so-called Büsinger trade, Hessian troops
violated the Swiss border when they penetrated the German exclave of
Büsingen during the Baden Revolution. The Swiss northern border was also
violated when the Baden revolutionary army retreated. The secession
movements in Neuchâtel from the Kingdom of Prussia in 1857 represented
another major foreign policy challenge. While mobilization was again
underway under General Dufour, the so-called Neuchâtel trade was settled
diplomatically at the last moment. Further border occupations took place
during the Austro-Italian wars in 1859 and 1866. The controversy over
the role of Swiss mercenaries in Italy ultimately led to the banning of
the traditional "Reislaufen" in 1859. In 1860, the cession of Savoy by
Sardinia-Piedmont to France caused another foreign policy crisis, as
nationalist-minded circles led by Federal Councilor Jakob Stämpfli
wanted to exercise Switzerland's right to occupy Chablais, Faucigny and
parts of Geneva. However, a plebiscite in Savoy resulted in a clear
majority in favor of joining France. The so-called Savoy trade was
settled by the establishment of a free zone around Geneva. In 1870/71,
the Franco-Prussian War made a border occupation under General Hans
Herzog necessary. In February 1871, under the watchful eye of the Swiss
army, around 87,000 men from the defeated French "Bourbaki Army" crossed
the border in the cantons of Neuchâtel and Vaud and were interned. The
reception and care of the exhausted soldiers is the largest humanitarian
action that Switzerland has ever carried out.
The conflicts
between radicals and conservatives continued at the cantonal level after
1848. From 1863 onwards, a new so-called Democratic Movement also fought
for the transition from representative to direct democracy and for
economic and social reforms. The supporters of the Democratic Movement
were given a boost by the social question that was becoming increasingly
urgent as a result of industrialization, which is why the Grütli
Workers' Education Association, founded in 1838, and left-wing idealists
supported the radical democratic demands. Although individual cantons
issued protective regulations for factory workers and children, the
problems of the working class remained urgent. In 1851, eight
"Grütlians", including the early socialist Karl Bürkli, founded the
Zurich consumer cooperative. The company is considered the oldest truly
successful consumer cooperative in Switzerland and on the European
continent. In 1995, Coop took over the cooperative.
In the first
half of the 19th century, thousands of "homeless" people lived in what
is now Switzerland; people who did not have citizenship in any community
or corporation. Most of them had already lost their citizenship due to
their ancestors; the reasons for this were lack of means, "dissolute
lifestyles", births outside of wedlock, illegal marriages or religious
conversions. The smaller group were the travelling people. Homeless
people were not allowed to settle anywhere and therefore moved from
place to place. They were not allowed to marry legally and were excluded
from municipal welfare. They lived in abject poverty. The Homeless Law
of 1850 laid the foundation for the formal legal integration of the
homeless into society. By 1878, around 30,000 people had been forcibly
naturalised, sometimes against the resistance of the communities
concerned. However, the law also aimed to make the travelling way of
life disappear. A large proportion of the new citizens and their
descendants were able to free themselves from their predicament and
integrated into civil society. Some of the travellers evaded
assimilation and continued their life on the country roads.
During the second half of the 19th century, Switzerland was hit by a
strong wave of industrialization and railway construction. On August 9,
1847, the first railway line in Switzerland was opened between Zurich
and Baden, which was popularly known as the "Spanish Bread Railway". A
few years earlier, the French had built the Strasbourg–Basel railway
line. Like no other personality of the time, the politician, business
leader and railway entrepreneur Alfred Escher influenced the political
and economic development of Switzerland. In addition to his political
offices, he played a key role in the founding of the Federal Polytechnic
(now ETH Zurich), the Swiss Credit Institute (now Credit Suisse), the
Swiss Life Insurance and Pension Institute (now Swiss Life), the Swiss
Reinsurance Company (now Swiss Re), the Swiss Northeastern Railway and
the Gotthard Railway. Under the influence of Alfred Escher, the
expansion of the Swiss railway network was initially carried out by
private railway companies. After serious political and economic disputes
over the construction of the railway, many railway companies fell into
crisis in the 1870s. Nevertheless, the Gotthard Railway was opened in
1882 with financial help from Germany and Italy. After 1898, the
railways were gradually nationalized until 1909 and transferred to the
Swiss Federal Railways (SBB). On June 14, 1891, the worst railway
accident in Switzerland to date (as of 2020) occurred. The railway
bridge over the Birs below the village of Münchenstein, built by Gustave
Eiffel, collapsed under a train of the Jura-Simplon Railway (JS) coming
from Basel. 73 passengers died and 171 were injured. During the Belle
Époque, the period between 1884 and 1914, tourism became an increasingly
important economic sector. The number of hotels, especially grand
hotels, rose sharply. Numerous narrow-gauge railways and mountain
railways were built, particularly in the foothills of the Alps and the
Alps, such as the lines of today's Rhaetian Railway and the
Matterhorn-Gotthard Railway, the Pilatus Railway, the Gornergrat Railway
and the Jungfrau Railway. The industrialisation of the Swiss Mittelland
transformed Switzerland from an agricultural state into an industrial
state, and the population grew from 2.4 million to 3.3 million between
1850 and 1900. The textile industry in eastern Switzerland was the
leading industry until the First World War. In its wake, the machine
industry developed, and the chemical industry, especially in Basel.
After the rise of the electrical industry, the first large European
river power station was built between Rheinfelden AG and Rheinfelden
(Baden), soon followed by numerous hydroelectric power stations to
generate electricity for the Swiss economy (e.g. the textile and
aluminium industries), and later also for private households and the
railways. In agriculture, grain cultivation was increasingly abandoned
in favour of dairy and livestock farming due to cheaper imports. Cheese,
chocolate and condensed milk became important export goods. Despite the
industrial boom, many Swiss were forced to emigrate to North and South
America and Russia due to the poor economic conditions. Rural exodus and
population growth led to strong growth in cities; the percentage of the
urban population in the total population grew from 6.4 to 27.6 percent
between 1850 and 1920 (see also Demographics of Switzerland).
On
the initiative of the Genevan Henry Dunant (1828–1910), what would later
become the International Committee of the Red Cross was founded in
Geneva in 1863. The Geneva Convention, which all European states had
joined by 1868, recognized the Red Cross as an auxiliary service of the
army and neutralized the medical service. As the headquarters of the Red
Cross, Geneva became a metropolis with international appeal and
attracted other important international organizations well into the 20th
century.
In 1873, the "Kulturkampf" between the state and the
Catholic Church broke out in Switzerland as a result of the First
Vatican Council's dogma of infallibility. The primary issue was the
influence of the church in the new liberal-secular state. There were
strong tensions between the Roman Catholic Church and the liberal
cantons in the area of the diocese of Basel, particularly in the
Catholic northern Jura, which was dominated by the Reformed Bern. The
conflicts escalated until the Federal Council broke off diplomatic
relations with the Vatican in December 1873. The apostolic nuncio, who
had been based in Lucerne since 1586, left Switzerland. A small part of
the Roman Catholic faithful split off to form the new Christian Catholic
Church. In 1920, the re-establishment of a nunciature was permitted,
this time with its seat in Bern. Only the deletion of the exceptions in
the Federal Constitution - the ban on Jesuits and the ban on new
monasteries - paved the way for a Swiss representation at the Holy See.
In 1991, the Federal Council appointed an "ambassador on a special
mission to the Holy See", and from 2004 the Swiss ambassador in Slovenia
was also responsible for the Vatican via a side accreditation.
In
the course of flood protection and the acquisition of arable land,
numerous waterways were corrected, sometimes massively, in the 19th and
20th centuries, for example the Aare during the Jura water corrections
(1868–1891/1935–1973) or the regulation of the Alpine Rhine around 1900.
In the 21st century, some areas were renaturalised.
The Democrats
gradually fought for constitutional revisions in the cantons, which for
example led to the creation of a new cantonal parliament. In Zurich, for
example, in 1869, the introduction of the popular initiative, the
obligatory legislative referendum and the popular election of the
government was included. After a first failed attempt in 1872, the
Federal Constitution was revised in 1874 in the interests of the
Democrats. In addition to the expansion of direct democracy with the
introduction of the optional referendum, the centralization of the
military system and a general standardization of the law, the
Kulturkampf was also reflected in the revised Federal Constitution, for
example in the ban on the Jesuit order, the introduction of civil
marriage and divorce, the granting of full freedom of religion and
worship as well as compulsory, free and non-denominational primary
school education for all children. Swiss Jews were also granted complete
freedom of religion after they had already received full civil rights
and freedom of settlement throughout Switzerland in 1866. As part of the
total revision, the Federal Court was upgraded to a permanent court of
law, which from then on was also based on a real separation of powers.
Especially since the 1870s, Switzerland became a center of the
anarchist movement in the international labor movement. This included
people such as Mikhail Bakunin, Peter Krapotkin and Johann Most, but
also unorganized anarchists such as the murderer of Empress Elisabeth of
Austria-Hungary, Luigi Lucheni. A regional focus emerged in the Jura,
where many journeymen from the watchmaking industry joined the movement.
Saint-Imier had been a meeting place for international anarchists since
1872. In 1882, a federal law abolished gender guardianship. This gave
unmarried women full legal capacity and capacity to act. Married women
only achieved full legal equality with the new marriage law of 1988.
Towards the end of the 19th century, the traditional lines of
conflict between liberals and conservatives were softened by the
strengthening of the labor movement. In 1888, cantonal workers' parties
merged to form the Socialist Party (SP), today's Social Democratic
Party. Just a few years later, the conservative and liberal-democratic
movements also united into parties at the national level: in 1894, the
Free Democratic Party (FdP), the Catholic Conservative Party (KK) and
the Christian Democratic People's Party (CVP) - today's Die Mitte - were
founded. At that time, federal politics was dominated by the Free
Democrats, the founders of the liberal democratic state, with clear
majorities. In 1891, the Federal Assembly elected Joseph Zemp from
Lucerne as the first Catholic and representative of the moderate wing of
the Catholic-conservative movement to the Federal Council. This marked
the beginning of the integration of the conservative-Catholic forces,
which had been defeated in 1848 and 1874, into the federal state.
On August 1, 1891, the Swiss Federal Day was celebrated for the
first time. The date of 1 August was chosen in reference to the Federal
Charter of early August 1291.
In 1891, the direct democratic
instrument of the popular initiative to adapt the Federal Constitution
was introduced. In 1892, the Federal Law on Debt Enforcement and
Bankruptcy (SchKG) came into force. It is the oldest part of civil law
codified at the Swiss (federal) level and older than the Swiss Civil
Code (ZGB), which came into force in 1912, and the Code of Obligations
(OR), which is the fifth part of the ZGB. In 1894, the Federal Council
introduced a uniform time in Switzerland. Central European Time (CET)
replaced the various regional time zones.
In 1907, Switzerland
signed the Hague Convention on the Rights and Duties of Neutral States
in War. The agreement prohibits neutral countries from supplying warring
states with troops, weapons or ammunition, among other things. The Swiss
War Material Act is also based on this. The most important right from
the agreement is the right to the inviolability of one's own territory.
Since the founding of the federal state, ten federal interventions
(with and without the use of troops) have taken place in cantons,
including the Tonhalle riots in Zurich in 1871, the unrest in Göschenen
in 1875, the Ticino coup of 1890 and most recently the unrest in Geneva
in 1932.
On August 1, 1914, the Swiss National Park was founded
in the Engadin, making it the oldest national park in the Alps.
During the First World War, Switzerland maintained armed neutrality.
The border was occupied under General Ulrich Wille. The German
Schlieffen Plan had already envisaged attacking France via Belgium and
not via Switzerland before the war. Although French and Italian plans
existed to attack the Central Powers by marching through Switzerland,
Switzerland was spared military attacks on its territory.
Almost
more dangerous for Switzerland's continued existence was the country's
political and cultural division along the German-French and
bourgeois-socialist lines of conflict. Parts of the German-speaking
Swiss population sympathized with the Central Powers (primarily
Germany), while France was supported in western Switzerland. After the
"Colonel Affair" in western Switzerland, the German-speaking Swiss
military elite around General Wille and Chief of Staff Theophil Sprecher
von Bernegg in particular were suspected of colluding with Germany and
Austria-Hungary.
The population's trust in the Swiss military and
politics was repeatedly shaken by affairs and scandals. In 1917, for
example, Federal Councillor Arthur Hoffmann attempted to mediate peace
between Russia and Germany. Hoffmann was ultimately forced to resign
under pressure from the Entente because he was accused of trying to help
Germany to relieve pressure on the Eastern Front. Throughout the war,
Switzerland offered humanitarian services, such as repatriating civilian
internees from both sides, organising the exchange of wounded and
offering recuperative stays for the wounded in health resorts.
Economically, the world war was a heavy burden for Switzerland and its
population. The sharp rise in federal expenditure caused debts to grow,
so that a one-off war tax was introduced in 1915 and a war profits tax
in 1916. In 1918, the stamp duty was introduced as a second federal tax.
In order to ensure the country's supply of coal, food and steel, the
Federal Council agreed to the warring parties monitoring foreign trade
and granted them large loans. Rationing was only introduced very late,
in October 1917, initially for bread, and in March 1918 for fat. Due to
the late introduction of rationing and the lack of a wage replacement
scheme for the soldiers, as well as rising unemployment as a result of
the lack of raw materials and foreign demand, poverty in Switzerland
increased.
The political parties agreed to a truce in August
1914, so that party disputes were put on hold at the start of the war.
However, after the international socialist conferences in Zimmerwald
(1915) and Kiental (1916) in the canton of Bern, the influence of
anti-militarist and revolutionary-minded forces within the SP grew
significantly. In 1917, the SP adopted a new anti-militarist and
revolutionary party program that signaled a clear break with the rest of
the party landscape. The worsening social problems strengthened the
socialists, especially in the cities. Since November 1917, tensions have
erupted in the form of violent unrest, strikes and demonstrations. The
national strike of November 1918 is considered the high point of the
political confrontation between the "citizens' bloc", the traditional
liberal and conservative forces, and the workers' movement. The strikers
demanded, among other things, a 48-hour week, pensions and women's
suffrage. The national strike put Switzerland to a serious test for the
first time since 1848. 25,000 workers went on strike, facing 95,000
soldiers who were called up by the Federal Council to ensure peace and
order. Overall, despite substantial tensions, the strike was resolved
relatively peacefully after three days. In total, there were three
deaths in Grenchen.
Between 1914 and 1917, the future Russian
revolutionary leader Lenin lived as a refugee in Switzerland. The Swiss
socialist Fritz Platten played a key role in organizing Lenin's journey
to St. Petersburg in a sealed car in April 1917. After the February
Revolution of 1917 ended the Russian tsarist rule and the Bolsheviks
seized power by force, many Russian-Swiss fled back to their old
homeland and had to leave all their belongings behind. In Russia they
had achieved a certain level of prosperity. Many of them subsequently
became dependent on welfare in Switzerland.
In 1915, the
International Olympic Committee (IOC) moved its headquarters from Paris
to Lausanne. Numerous world and European sports associations followed
suit in the decades to come.
In 1918 and 1919, the Spanish flu
was rampant in Switzerland, as it was in much of the world. According to
official statistics, 24,449 people died of the flu in Switzerland
between July 1918 and the end of June 1919. That corresponds to 0.62
percent of the entire population in 1918. Due to the lack of mandatory
medical reporting, it is assumed that a large number of unreported cases
are not reported. Many people also contracted tuberculosis. Between 1916
and 1925, over 50,000 people died of the disease in Switzerland.
In 1919, the bourgeois Federal Council implemented reforms that
largely met the demands of the workers' movement, such as the
introduction of the 48-hour week. In October 1919, the National Council
was elected for the first time using proportional representation, which
put an end to the dominance of liberalism and led to a strong upswing
for the socialists. Despite this, at the end of the year the SP adopted
a party program that placed it in clear opposition to the
bourgeois-democratic state order. Despite this, radical socialists split
off into the Communist Party of Switzerland. In response, the major
bourgeois parties formed the "Citizens' Bloc," which formed the Swiss
government during the interwar period and politically isolated the SP at
the federal level.
Swiss domestic politics in the interwar period
was shaped by the growing conflicts between farmers and tradespeople on
the one hand and employees or the parties and organizations that
represented them on the other. In 1918, the peasant leader Rudolf Minger
founded the Farmers', Tradesmen's and Citizens' Party (BGB) in the
canton of Bern as a new bourgeois force. Originally a centrist farmers'
party, it was opposed to the existing bourgeois and socialist parties,
but was nevertheless integrated into the bourgeois bloc relatively
quickly and, with Minger's election to the Federal Council in 1929,
received a seat in government.
After the end of the war, the
Austrian state of Vorarlberg attempted to join Switzerland. In the Paris
Peace Treaties, Switzerland's neutrality was reaffirmed, but Vorarlberg
was definitively assigned to Austria and the neutrality of Upper Savoy
was lifted. In 1920, following a referendum, Switzerland joined the
League of Nations, which had its headquarters in Geneva. This marked the
beginning of a phase of differentiated neutrality for Switzerland. It
took part in economic, but not military, sanctions imposed by the League
of Nations.
After the end of the war, Switzerland experienced its
first economic crisis, which particularly affected eastern Switzerland,
where the textile industry practically collapsed due to the lack of
foreign demand for luxury products. After the economic situation in
Germany stabilized in 1924 (after hyperinflation in 1923 and currency
reform), the economy recovered, but in the course of 1930/31 it was also
caught up in the global economic crisis (in and around Germany and
Austria, the German banking crisis from June 1931 exacerbated the
economic situation). The collapse of exports to almost a third led to a
sharp fall in prices and a rise in unemployment. The public sector at
federal, cantonal and municipal levels attempted to bring an end to the
crisis through emergency work, major projects and various other economic
policy interventions. However, the state's price and wage reduction
policy actually exacerbated the crisis with its deflationary effect. The
crisis led to a strong radicalization among the workforce. At the end of
1932, 13 workers died in the violent military suppression of protests in
Geneva.
The relationship between Switzerland and the Principality
of Liechtenstein has been regulated by a customs treaty since 1923
(officially: "Treaty between Switzerland and Liechtenstein on the
annexation of the Principality of Liechtenstein to the Swiss customs
territory").
In the fight against "vagrancy", the Pro Juventute
relief organization Children of the Road was founded in 1926 to snatch
Yenish children from their parents. The goal was the forced integration
of the Yenish. From 1972 onwards, the practice was investigated by the
federal government under pressure from the media. Another dark chapter
in the history of Switzerland in the early 20th century was the
treatment of so-called indentured children. Children from poor or
socially difficult backgrounds were usually placed with farmers by the
guardianship authorities, who often exploited and/or mistreated the
children as cheap labor. The responsible authorities looked the other
way. The practice was not abandoned until the 1970s. At the beginning of
the 21st century, the media took up this topic more intensively, after
it had been suppressed by society for a long time. The issue of
administrative care was also addressed and dealt with. People who did
not fully conform to social norms were locked away without a court
order. This practice was only abandoned after the ratification of the
European Convention on Human Rights in 1974.
In the interwar
period, companies and institutions were founded that have continued to
shape Switzerland to this day: In August 1925, Gottlieb Duttweiler
founded Migros. First in sales vans, and later in shops, he sold a basic
range of cheap food and household products. Established food retailers
felt threatened. Together with parties, politicians and unions, they
tried to ruin Migros, for example with the unconstitutional ban on
branches that existed between 1933 and 1945. Female consumers in
particular recognized the value of Migros. The company became
increasingly successful and rose to become the largest retailer in the
country. In keeping with his social attitude, Gottlieb Duttweiler and
his wife Adele bequeathed Migros to their customers in 1941 by turning
the company into a cooperative.
In February 1931, the Swiss Radio
and Television Corporation SRG was founded, organized as an association.
The SRG operates its radio and, from 1953, television programs under a
federal license and is largely financed by broadcasting fees. During the
Second World War, the SRG supported the "spiritual defense of the
country" with its three national broadcasters, Radio Beromünster
(German), Radio Sottens (French) and Radio Monte Ceneri (Italian), and
thus assumed an important political function. The private company
Swissair - Schweizerische Luftverkehr AG was also founded in 1931. Until
the opening of Zurich-Kloten Airport in 1948, Dübendorf Airport was
Swissair's home base.
The ongoing crisis also led to the
emergence of a right-wing, anti-Marxist, national renewal movement in
Switzerland, the Fronten movement. After the Nazi regime seized power in
Germany (and parallel to the establishment of the Austro-fascist
corporate state in Austria), the Swiss renewal movements felt a boost in
the "Frontenfrühling" (spring 1933), but were unable to record any
notable political successes. Despite strong political tensions and a
crisis of confidence in the national government, the popular initiative
launched by the National Front for a total revision of the federal
constitution, which was intended to bring about a fascist transformation
of Switzerland, failed on September 8, 1935.
The fascist-National
Socialist threat brought the SP and the trade union movement closer
together with the bourgeois parties. The SP gave up its opposition role
and spoke out in its 1935 party program for national defense and against
the dictatorship of the proletariat. By resolution of September 27,
1936, the Federal Council devalued the Swiss franc by 30 percent; This
contributed to a recovery in the export economy and an end to the
economic crisis. The peace agreement in the metal and watchmaking
industry in July 1937 between employers' and employees' organizations
marked the beginning of the era of social partnership and collective
labor agreements.
In the 1930s, further federal laws replaced
cantonal solutions. In 1932, road traffic became a federal matter, which
led to the Federal Law on Motor Vehicle and Bicycle Traffic. In 1938,
after twelve years of preparatory work, the people adopted the Swiss
Criminal Code (StGB), which came into force on January 1, 1942. This
abolished the death penalty. The last person to be executed after a
civil criminal trial was the 32-year-old triple murderer Hans
Vollenweider on October 18, 1940. During the Second World War, 17
traitors were shot under military criminal law. The death penalty has
been banned at constitutional level since 1999. The penal code of 1942
only sanctioned homosexual acts with minors. This meant that consensual
homosexuality between adults was legalized, making Zurich the center of
the European gay movement.
After the annexation of Austria to the
German Reich (March 1938), Switzerland returned to integral neutrality,
which was recognized by the League of Nations. Under the impression of
German expansion (armament of the Wehrmacht), Swiss politicians,
scholars and military officers reaffirmed Switzerland's will to resist
and assert itself. Federal Councilor Hermann Obrecht proclaimed:
"Whoever attacks our independence [...] will face war! We Swiss will not
go on pilgrimages abroad first."
In the late 1930s, 800 Swiss
fought in the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War.
After the introduction of the Nuremberg Race Laws in Germany, the
emigration and flight of German Jews to Switzerland increased. In 1938,
Germany began to stamp Jewish passports with a J stamp (Ordinance on
Jewish Passports). Switzerland only granted asylum to political refugees
(and not to those persecuted "on racial grounds"). At the Evian
Conference in July 1938, Switzerland also refused to permanently accept
a certain contingent of refugees and insisted on remaining solely a
transit country, which is why only emigrants who could credibly
demonstrate that they would be able to travel on as soon as possible
were allowed to enter Switzerland. In response, Jewish National
Councilor David Farbstein resigned in 1938.
From 1933 onwards,
parliamentarians, intellectuals and media representatives demanded
measures to ward off fascist, National Socialist and communist
totalitarianism. In a message dated December 9, 1938, the Federal
Council therefore called for spiritual national defense, i.e. a return
to Switzerland's fundamental values: belonging to three European
cultural areas, cultural diversity, the confederal character of
democracy and respect for human dignity and freedom. This mandate led to
the founding of the Swiss cultural foundation Pro Helvetia in 1939, and
it also shaped the Swiss National Exhibition "Landi" in Zurich, which
took place in the summer of 1939. The diversity and protection of
minorities in Switzerland was also emphasized by the fact that the
people recognized Romansh as the fourth national language (but not an
official language) in 1938.
After the outbreak of the Second World War, Switzerland again invoked
armed neutrality and ordered the general mobilization of the army under
the commander-in-chief, General Henri Guisan. Parliament granted the
Federal Council, citing a state of emergency and applying
extra-constitutional emergency law, comprehensive powers that were
actually unconstitutional (cf. state of emergency), to take direct
measures to defend Switzerland and its economic interests, which only
had to be subsequently approved by the legislature. During the German
invasion of France, the German Wehrmacht in La Charité-sur-Loire came
across secret plans that revealed Swiss and French agreements in the
event of a German attack on Switzerland. On May 10, 1940, the army
triggered the second general mobilization. During the French campaign,
around 42,000 French and Polish soldiers fled to Switzerland in early
June 1940 and were interned until 1941 and then some were returned to
France. After the French defeat, General Guisan implemented the Réduit
Plan to further defend Switzerland, which was now completely surrounded
by the Axis powers. In the event of a German invasion, the Mittelland
and its civilian population would have been abandoned and resistance
would have been concentrated on the Alpine massif.
At times, the
Axis powers planned the invasion of Switzerland in general staff
simulations using the operational plan against Switzerland. In this
context, the foundation for a National Socialist policy in Switzerland
was laid from Rorschach with Wilhelm Gustloff, who was later murdered.
Switzerland was largely spared from military activities during the
Second World War, but was not completely untouched. In addition to
German airspace violations in the first phase of the war, the Allied
bombing campaign led to constant overflights and accidental bombings of
Swiss towns and villages until the end of the war, partly because
Switzerland introduced blackouts under pressure from the Axis powers.
Swiss territory was bombed a total of 77 times, killing 84 people. The
most serious incident, with 40 deaths, over 100 injuries and loss of
cultural assets, was the bombing of Schaffhausen on April 1, 1944.
During the Second World War, Switzerland, with a total population of
less than four million, housed a total of almost 300,000 people seeking
protection for shorter or longer periods of time. These included
categories as diverse as interned military personnel (103,000),
temporarily admitted border refugees (67,000), children on vacation
(60,000), civilian refugees (approx. 51,000, of whom approx. 21,000 were
of Jewish descent), emigrants (10,000) and political refugees (250).
Given the precarious supply situation, the acceptance of refugees was
controversial among politicians and the population. In this context,
Federal Councilor Eduard von Steiger coined the political slogan "the
boat is full". From 1942, the Federal Council ordered stricter measures
against illegal border crossings. Since Swiss asylum law only recognized
refugees for political reasons, Jewish refugees who attempted to leave
Germany or its sphere of influence "for racial reasons" were denied
entry to Switzerland. It was not until July 1944 that Jews were
recognized as political refugees. According to recent studies, around
24,398 refugees were turned back at the border. However, a study in
Geneva showed that, despite the theoretically closed border, 86 percent
of "illegal" refugees were accepted.
In contrast to the First
World War, from 1939 onwards the social burden of active service for
soldiers was reduced by the introduction of the wage and earnings
compensation system, so that social unrest did not occur. Despite this,
the SP became the strongest faction in the National Council in the 1943
parliamentary elections, with 56 seats. The election of the Social
Democrat Ernst Nobs to the Federal Council sealed the integration of the
SP into the Swiss party system and the end of the party struggles
between the bourgeois bloc and the socialists.
Public opinion was
controlled by censorship (Press and Radio Department), extremist and
subversive propaganda was banned. In 1940, the Communist Party of
Switzerland and the National Movement of Switzerland were banned.
Numerous Swiss and foreign nationals were arrested during the war for
spying for Germany. A total of 33 men were sentenced to death for
treason while serving in active service, with only 17 sentences being
carried out. Numerous other people were sentenced to prison terms or
expelled or deported. The deployment of troops against the Steiner
Uprising in 1942 is considered the largest military law enforcement
operation in the Second World War.
Around 1,000 Swiss citizens
suffered in Nazi concentration camps between 1933 and 1945, and at least
200 of them died. No violent conflict in the last 200 years has claimed
more Swiss lives. Many victims could have been helped if official
Switzerland had done more for them. In the last years of the war,
Germany showed great interest in exchanging a large number of Swiss
prisoners for Germans imprisoned in Switzerland. But official
Switzerland did not seize the opportunity. The Swiss authorities did not
want to promote an exchange for criminals and those "who had carried out
activities that are also punishable in Switzerland or that appear to be
at least detrimental to Swiss interests (such as espionage against
Germany for the benefit of third countries, participation in the
resistance movement in France, communist activities)". Swiss citizens
who had been actively involved in opposing the Nazi dictatorship could
not expect any help.
Through early economic preparation and the
rapid introduction of rationing and the "cultivation battle", the
Federal Council was able to ensure Switzerland's food supplies. The high
financial burden on the federal budget made it necessary, as had been
the case with the war tax in 1915, to raise one-off additional taxes and
finally, in 1941, to introduce a military tax on income and assets,
which has survived to this day as a direct federal tax. In order to
generate further tax revenue, the goods turnover tax (WUSt) was
introduced in mid-1941. This was replaced by value added tax in 1995. In
order to combat tax evasion, the fourth tax at federal level, the
withholding tax, which is still in force today, was finally introduced
in 1944. After Switzerland was completely encircled by the Axis powers,
the Federal Council was forced to conclude an economic agreement with
Germany to regulate the exchange of coal, steel and other goods
essential to the war effort. Switzerland had to grant Germany loans
totaling over a billion francs. Despite the blockade, Switzerland was
able to continue to supply the Allies with precision instruments that
were important for the war effort. The Allies had been keeping "black
lists" since 1939 to force the Swiss machine industry to stop exporting
to Germany. In March 1945, Switzerland and the Allies agreed in the
Currie Agreement to end Swiss exports to Germany and to hand over some
German assets. In the Washington Agreement of 1946, Switzerland finally
allowed the Allies to confiscate all German property in Switzerland. The
dispute over the so-called looted gold that had come to Switzerland via
the German Reichsbank was settled with the payment of 250 million Swiss
francs. The Allies then lifted all economic and financial measures
against Switzerland. In the same year, Switzerland and the Soviet Union
established diplomatic relations after relations had been severely
strained for 23 years due to the Conradi affair. Between 1952 and 1971,
the Federal Republic of Germany repaid 650 million Swiss francs of war
debts to Switzerland. Switzerland's role in the Second World War was
last revised in the 1990s by the Bergier Report.
Over 2,000 Swiss
National Socialists fought in the German Waffen-SS during the war.
Between October 1944 and February 1945, the Swiss Johannes Pauli
(1900–1969) was deputy camp commander in the Bisingen concentration
camp. At the end of the war, Pauli fled to Switzerland, where he was
arrested in Basel and sentenced to 12 years in prison. The fact that
Swiss citizens committed war crimes in the service of the Nazis has so
far been almost completely ignored by German historiography and only
inadequately addressed by Swiss historiography. Johannes Pauli was only
one of four war criminals in Swiss history to be found guilty and
convicted.
In its long tradition, Switzerland saw itself as politically and
militarily neutral during the Cold War, but ideologically it clearly
belonged to the liberal western camp. For reasons of neutrality (→
Neutrality of Switzerland), Switzerland did not join the United Nations
(UN) or NATO. Despite this, the European headquarters of the UN remained
in Geneva after the dissolution of the League of Nations, and numerous
UN sub-organizations also opened their headquarters in Geneva. In 1945,
the superpowers USA and the Soviet Union viewed Switzerland's stance
negatively, but the Soviet Union was nevertheless keen to formally
resume diplomatic relations. On the other hand, Switzerland concluded
the Washington Agreement with the USA, France and the United Kingdom in
1946 to regulate German assets in Switzerland. With Resolution 11 on
November 15, 1946, the Security Council laid down the conditions for
Switzerland's accession to the International Court of Justice, which it
finally did on July 28, 1948. As part of the Marshall Plan, 16 European
states founded the Organisation for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC)
(the predecessor of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and
Development (OECD)) in Paris in 1948. Switzerland participated in it.
Especially in the immediate post-war period, the undestroyed
Switzerland was an important factor in Central Europe, both economically
and militarily. The beginning of the Cold War led to a major costly
rearmament and modernisation of the Swiss army, particularly since 1951.
Conscription in the militia army lasted for all Swiss fit for service
from the age of 20 to 50 (Army Reform 60). By 1967, the first steps
towards nuclear rearmament were taken; Switzerland was considered a
nuclear threshold country. However, with the signing of the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1969, Switzerland voluntarily gave up the
nuclear option. To protect the population in the event of a nuclear war,
a network of shelters was built from the 1970s onwards, which is unique
in the world.
In the post-war period, the spiritual defence of
the country was directed against the danger of the country being
occupied by Warsaw Pact troops and against communist infiltration of
Switzerland. For this reason, around 13,000 Hungarians were taken in
during the Hungarian uprising in 1956 and around 12,000 Czechoslovakians
who had fled from Soviet intervention in their countries were taken in
after the suppression of the Prague Spring in 1968. Switzerland's
neutrality favoured the so-called "good offices" of Switzerland, so that
international peace conferences were repeatedly held in Switzerland,
mostly in Geneva, for example the Indochina Conference in 1954 or the
regular summits of the superpowers. For example, the President of the
United States Ronald Reagan and the General Secretary of the Central
Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev
met at the Geneva Summit Conference (1985). The World Economic Forum
(WEF) in Davos, founded by Klaus Schwab in 1971, also serves as an
opportunity for exchange between global elites.
The federal
popular initiative "Return to direct democracy" was launched in 1946
after it became apparent that the Federal Council was no longer willing
to abandon the plenary powers regime. It was narrowly approved in the
referendum on September 11, 1949. This popular initiative indirectly
ensured that the Federal Assembly repealed the last plenary powers by
the end of 1952.
In the night of December 19-20, 1947, a secret
Swiss army ammunition depot exploded above Mitholz in the municipality
of Kandergrund in the Bernese Oberland. The explosion disaster in
Mitholz claimed nine lives and injured seven other residents. Large
parts of the village of Mitholz were devastated, several houses and the
Blausee-Mitholz station of the Lötschberg railway were destroyed. After
the clearance work, the facility was partially rebuilt and used as a
warehouse and troop accommodation. In 2018, however, experts from the
VBS determined that the ammunition remains remaining in the facility
still posed an explosion hazard. As of 2022, the former ammunition depot
is therefore to be completely cleared from 2031. For safety reasons, the
village of Mitholz must remain evacuated for over ten years. The
clearance is expected to cost around one billion francs.
In 1952,
the Citizenship Act (BüG) was amended so that Swiss women who married a
foreigner did not automatically lose their Swiss citizenship. Up until
then, there had been repeated cases in which expatriated Swiss women
were deported to their husbands' often foreign country due to poverty or
illness. In some documented cases, the women were even murdered in Nazi
concentration camps.
Because Switzerland did not want to join the
European Economic Community (EEC) for political reasons, it founded the
European Free Trade Association (EFTA) in 1960 together with Denmark,
Norway, Austria, Portugal, Sweden and the United Kingdom. In 1961,
Switzerland was one of the founding members of the Organisation for
Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). On May 6, 1963,
Switzerland also joined the Council of Europe. In 1970, the Federal
Council took the first steps towards Switzerland's European integration,
which culminated in a free trade agreement with the EEC in 1972. In the
same year, Switzerland also signed the European Convention on Human
Rights. In 1973, it joined the Organisation for Security and
Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). Switzerland was a founding member of the
European Space Agency (ESA) in 1975. In 1992, Claude Nicollier became
the first Swiss astronaut to fly into space on board the Space Shuttle
Atlantis.
After 1945, Switzerland experienced an unprecedented
economic boom that lasted until the 1970s. During this time, exports
increased almost tenfold. With a steadily increasing population due to
the baby boom and immigration, the face of Switzerland changed due to
strong construction activity and increased mobility of the population.
The Mittelland between Geneva and Lausanne and between Bern and Zurich
and St. Gallen in particular lost its rural character due to urban
sprawl. The existing road network was no longer sufficient to cope with
the increased volume of traffic. The law on a national road network
passed by parliament in 1960 transferred authority for national road
construction to the federal government. The growing energy demand was
met by the construction of five nuclear power plants and the expansion
of hydroelectric power generation, including the construction of
numerous reservoirs. However, the large-scale Urseren power plant
project failed due to resistance from the population. Economic
development, particularly in the service sector, led to a strong
increase in private income and general prosperity. The expansion of the
welfare state (introduction of old-age and survivors' insurance (AHV) in
1947, disability insurance (IV) in 1959) and the reduction of working
hours, coupled with strong economic growth, ensured social peace in
Switzerland until the 1990s. The national exhibition Expo 64, held in
Lausanne in 1964, took place in the spirit of economic boom and belief
in progress.
Economic growth from the 1960s onwards made it
necessary to import "cheap" labour from abroad for the construction and
tourism industries. The proportion of the foreign resident population
therefore rose from 10 per cent to 17.5 per cent between 1960 and 1970,
with Italians making up the largest immigrant group, as Italy had signed
an agreement with Switzerland in 1948 to provide Italian labour. Since
the end of the economic boom in the 1970s, fears of foreign infiltration
have become noticeable among parts of the population. Several attempts
to limit the number of foreigners in Switzerland through so-called
"foreign infiltration initiatives" (James Schwarzenbach) failed in the
referendum. The Federal Council attempted to prevent the permanent
settlement of so-called "guest workers" by enforcing the seasonal worker
statute established in 1934, but this only created social hardship and
hindered the rapid integration of migrants.
In 1969 and 1970,
Switzerland was suddenly targeted by Palestinian terrorists. On February
18, 1969, four Fatah attackers opened fire on an aircraft belonging to
the Israeli airline El Al at Zurich Airport. The co-pilot and one
attacker died in the attack. On February 21, 1970, Swissair Flight 330
crashed near Würenlingen after a parcel bomb exploded. All 47 people on
board died. The attack by the Popular Front for the Liberation of
Palestine (PFLP) was actually aimed at the Israeli airline El Al. The
series of attacks culminated in September 1970 with the hijacking of
three passenger planes from Switzerland, the USA and Great Britain with
more than 300 hostages to Jordan. The 143 passengers and 12 crew members
of the Swissair flight SR100 were released, as were all the other
hostages. The terrorists then blew up the planes. In 2016, a journalist
from the Neue Zürcher Zeitung published the theory that the then Foreign
Minister, Federal Councillor Pierre Graber, mediated by SP National
Councillor Jean Ziegler, had concluded a secret ceasefire agreement with
the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), which was openly terrorist
at the time. Switzerland was to be spared from terrorist attacks from
then on. In return, Switzerland campaigned for the diplomatic
recognition of the PLO at the UN headquarters in Geneva. The prosecution
of a Palestinian suspect in the attack on Swissair Flight 330, which
left 47 people dead, was dropped by the judiciary for reasons still
unknown. In 1995, the then Federal Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte reopened
the case despite the statute of limitations, but dropped the proceedings
again in 2000.
The introduction of women's suffrage at the
federal level failed for the first time in a referendum in 1959.
However, Vaud and Neuchâtel introduced it at cantonal level in the same
year, followed by Basel-Stadt (1966) and Basel-Landschaft (1968) as the
first cantons in German-speaking Switzerland. Trudy Späth was the first
woman to be elected to a political authority in 1958. In 1971, women's
suffrage was approved in a referendum (among Swiss men) after decades of
struggle. At cantonal level, the canton of Appenzell Innerrhoden was the
last to allow women to take part in the Landsgemeinde in 1991 under
pressure from the Federal Court. After political equality with the
amendment of the Federal Constitution in 1981, women were also given the
same rights as men at constitutional level (Art. 8 BV). The new marriage
law came into force in 1988 and the Equality Act in 1996. Elisabeth Kopp
(FDP) was the first woman to be elected to the Federal Council in 1984.
In the autumn of 1973, the almost uninterrupted economic growth that
had been taking place since 1950 came to an abrupt end due to the oil
price crisis and gave way to a surprising economic crisis. Large parts
of the world economy were affected by it. However, the crisis was more
pronounced in Switzerland than in the other OECD countries. In 1975,
gross domestic product fell by almost 7 percent in real terms, partly
because around 200,000 Italian workers had to leave the country. The
oversized construction industry and the textile sector were particularly
badly hit, as were mechanical and equipment manufacturing. The watch
industry, which was so important for exports and had long failed to
recognise the importance of the quartz watch, found itself in
existential difficulties. In addition to falling demand, the export
economy suffered from the strong franc after US President Richard Nixon
removed the gold backing of the US dollar in 1971, thus ending the
Bretton Woods world monetary system. The oil price shock drove the
already high annual inflation rate in Switzerland to almost 12 percent
in December 1973.
Even before the outbreak of the economic
crisis, a new environmental awareness developed within a short period of
time from 1970 onwards due to the consequences of unbridled growth,
especially the burden on the population from noise, soot and exhaust
fumes from the rapidly increasing traffic, on rivers and lakes from
sewage and on the landscape from waste dumps. On June 6, 1971, in the
first vote with the participation of women, the people approved the
environmental article with the second highest yes percentage (92.7%) in
the history of the federal state. The Environmental Protection Act did
not come into force until 1985, but in the meantime the authorities were
mainly pushing ahead with the construction of sewage treatment plants.
Exhaust fumes from motor traffic and industry were considered to be the
cause of forest dieback, which caused concern in the 1980s, especially
in German-speaking countries. Switzerland therefore decided to
significantly expand public transport (Zurich S-Bahn, Rail and Bus
Project 2000) and to take measures to protect the air. In politics, the
fear of forest dieback led to the founding of green parties. They won
nine (GPS) and four (GBS) seats in the 1987 National Council elections.
The 1973 oil crisis caught Switzerland completely unprepared, as 80
percent of its energy supply was dependent on oil at the time. The
Federal Council lacked the basis to intervene in the markets and ensure
supplies due to the lack of a constitutional article. In 1974, it
therefore set up the Federal Commission for the Overall Energy Concept,
chaired by "nuclear pope" Michael Kohn. In its final report in 1978, the
commission presented four scenarios, from a market economy without state
intervention to a dirigiste one without nuclear power plants, i.e. with
a sustainable change in energy consumption and thus in lifestyle. The
Federal Council opted for the interventionist scenario, which called for
an energy article and, based on this, an energy tax. However, the energy
article failed in 1983 with a majority of 12 no votes to 11 yes votes.
Since the late 1960s, the electricity suppliers owned by the cantons
and cities have been pushing ahead with the construction of nuclear
power plants, initially in accordance with a broad consensus, especially
among conservationists who opposed the expansion of hydropower. The
Beznau 1 (NOK) nuclear power plant went into operation in 1969, Beznau 2
and Mühleberg (BKW) in 1972. The Gösgen nuclear power plant followed in
1979, the Leibstadt nuclear power plant in 1984, both built jointly by
several suppliers. When construction of the Kaiseraugst nuclear power
plant began in the spring of 1975, however, there was an occupation
lasting weeks because growth critics fundamentally rejected nuclear
power. The anti-nuclear movement submitted several popular initiatives
for a ban. The people rejected them in 1979, 1984 and 1990 by a narrow
majority; the Leibstadt nuclear power plant, however, remains the last
plant built to date.
It was not until 1975 that voters introduced
"unrestricted freedom of residence" for Swiss citizens throughout the
country by a large majority. Until then, cantons could send welfare
recipients back to their hometown.
In terms of domestic politics,
Switzerland was shaped by the concordance achieved between the leading
parties since 1959, which manifested itself in the so-called magic
formula for the distribution of Federal Council seats. The concordance
only fell into crisis after the end of the Cold War in 1989 and the rise
of the right-wing conservative Swiss People's Party (SVP), which led to
the magic formula being blown up in 2003. During this time, however, the
population's trust in the authorities was repeatedly put to the test by
political affairs and scandals, such as the Mirage affair in 1964 and
the file scandal in 1989, as well as the discovery of the secret
organization P-26 in 1990.
The crisis surrounding the separatist
movement in the Bernese Jura was resolved democratically in 1979. The
new canton of Jura was founded by the separation of the French-speaking
administrative districts of Delémont, Ajoie and Freiberge from the
canton of Bern. The founding of the canton made the Laufental a Bernese
exclave. After a cascade of votes, the Laufental changed canton to the
canton of Basel-Land on January 1, 1994.
The international youth
movement led to conflicts between young people and the authorities in
1968 and 1980, with some bloody riots, particularly in Zurich.
Politically and socially, the old elites were replaced and the spiritual
national defense was broken up, but at the same time a conservative
countermovement emerged in the bourgeois parties, which was mainly
initiated by the SVP Zurich with its president Christoph Blocher. A
significant sociopolitical debate arose in 1989 during the vote on the
abolition of the Swiss army (“army abolition initiative”) brought about
by the Group for a Switzerland without an Army (GSoA). Despite strong
commitment from politicians, authorities and the army to retain the
army, 35.6 percent of those eligible to vote approved the initiative.
Together with the shock of the file affair, the controversy surrounding
the army brought about the final end of the spiritual national defense.
From the 1980s onwards, the welfare state was further expanded: BG
on accident insurance (UVG) in 1981, BG on occupational old-age,
survivors' and disability benefits (BVG) in 1982, BG on compulsory
unemployment insurance and insolvency compensation (AVIG) in 1982, BG on
health insurance (KVG) in 1994.
Since the 1970s, the number of
popular initiatives submitted has increased sharply. The parties
discovered the popular initiative as a tool for political marketing with
a view to the next parliamentary elections. This also increased the
number of initiatives accepted. In 1987, the double yes with tie-breaker
question was introduced for popular initiatives with a counter-proposal
at federal level.
Between 1980 and 1989, 21 children disappeared
in Switzerland, 14 of whom were found abused and murdered. Despite
intensive searches, there is still no trace of 7 children, including
Sarah Oberson, to this day (as of 2020). In August 1989, Werner Ferrari
was arrested and in 1995 sentenced to life imprisonment by the District
Court of Baden AG for five counts of murder. In 2007, he was acquitted
in one of the cases. With the arrest, the series of missing children
stopped. The faces of the missing children in the police photos burned
themselves into the collective memory of two generations, that of the
parents and that of the children of that time.
From 1986, the
Platzspitz park in Zurich became an officially tolerated meeting place
for drug addicts from all over Central Europe. The park attracted
international attention as Needle Park until it was closed in 1992. The
expulsion of drug addicts from Platzspitz shifted the open scene to
neighboring districts before it settled again at the disused Letten
train station. In 1995, the open drug scene in Zurich was finally
closed. It became clear that police repression alone could not eliminate
the drug problem. The establishment of drug rooms and the widespread
supply of methadone enabled almost all addicts to reintegrate into
society and escape drug-related crime.
In the summer of 1987,
Switzerland was hit by several natural disasters. These were the most
serious floods of the century. On the night of August 24-25, torrential
rain fell on the cantons of Valais, Ticino and Uri. The dams in the Uri
valley floor broke and the Reuss overflowed its banks. Houses, streets
and the Gotthard railway line were torn away, and a motorway bridge on
the A2 near Wassen collapsed because the Reuss had washed away a pillar.
The storms in the summer of 1987 cost a total of eight people their
lives. The federal government estimated the total financial damage at
1.2 to 1.3 billion Swiss francs, half a billion Swiss francs in the
canton of Uri alone.
The Federal Council failed repeatedly when it tried to end
Switzerland's political self-isolation. In 1986, voters rejected
Switzerland's accession to the UN and in 1992 also to the European
Economic Area (EEA). Despite growing opposition from right-wing
bourgeois circles, the Federal Council stuck to its European integration
course and submitted an application to Brussels in the same year for
Switzerland to join the EU. The rise of the Swiss People's Party (SVP),
the only Federal Council party to clearly oppose European integration,
and the negative mood among the people forced the Federal Council onto
the "bilateral path". Without formal accession, Switzerland implemented
EU law autonomously and agreed twice with the EU in bilateral treaties
on partial integration of Switzerland into the EU internal market and
the liberalization of passenger and freight transport.
Switzerland joined the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in
1992. Together with Central Asian states and Poland, it founded a voting
group that was derisively referred to as "Helvetistan". Switzerland has
been cooperating within NATO's Partnership for Peace since 1994 and the
Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council since 1997. This enables it to bring
forward its foreign and security policy concerns.
The 1990s were
marked by a long-term economic crisis and low economic growth, which led
to a sharp increase in public debt. At the same time, the cantons and
municipalities found themselves exposed to intense tax competition that
largely ruled out tax increases. The decline of the Swiss machine and
textile industries led to deindustrialization, particularly in eastern
Switzerland, which has continued to this day, for example in the cantons
of Glarus and St. Gallen. For the first time since the Second World War,
unemployment rose again for a longer period to over four percent. The
industrial workforce was hit particularly hard. The crisis only ended
with the international economic upturn around the turn of the
millennium. Whether Switzerland's failure to join the EEA or the EU, the
federal government's misguided economic policy or the National Bank's
monetary policy were the decisive factors in the long crisis is still a
matter of political debate today.
During the 1990s, Switzerland
took in numerous refugees from various international conflict regions,
particularly from Sri Lanka, Turkey and the former Yugoslavia. During
the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina (1992–1995), Switzerland took in
almost 30,000 asylum seekers, and during the Kosovo conflict (1998/99)
the figure was around 53,000. The significant influx of people from
rural areas of southeastern Europe led to socio-political tensions,
particularly because of the refugees' difficult cultural integration.
The defense policy debate about the future of the Swiss army
continued in the 1990s. In 1993, the GSoA narrowly failed in a
referendum with its proposal to forego the costly procurement of new
F/A-18 fighter aircraft. Although the army regained trust through an
initial army reform in 1995, it was only through Army Reform XXI that it
was able to partially overcome the structural crisis that had broken out
with the end of the Cold War and the elimination of real threat
scenarios. Since the end of the 1990s, the continuation of the militia
or the professionalization of the army had been under debate.
In
the 1990s and the beginning of the new millennium, several natural
disasters struck Switzerland. On September 24, 1993, a flood disaster
occurred in Brig in the canton of Valais. Heavy rainfall caused the
water level of the Saltina mountain stream to rise sharply. Debris and
tree trunks blocked the flow near a city bridge. The masses of water and
debris sought a new path. As a result, the old town of Brig was flooded
with meters of mud and debris. Two people lost their lives. The
avalanche winter of 1999 claimed 17 lives in Switzerland in non-tourist
avalanche accidents, 12 of them in the avalanche accident in Evolène on
February 21, 1999 alone. On July 27, 1999, 21 young people from a
canyoning group died in the Saxetbach in the Bernese Oberland. They were
swept away and killed by a water roller caused by a thunderstorm. On
December 26, 1999, Hurricane Lothar swept across Central Europe and
Switzerland. On Zurich's local mountain, Uetliberg, wind speeds of 241
km/h were measured, while in the lowlands, gusts of 140 km/h were
recorded. In Switzerland, 10 million trees (around 13 million cubic
meters of wood) were knocked down. 14 people died in the storm. In
October 2000, the Alpine region was hit by severe flooding. On October
14, 2000, large masses of rock, earth and water destroyed 10 houses in
the small community of Gondo on the Simplon Pass in the canton of
Valais. 13 people died.
Switzerland entered the new millennium with the implementation of the
completely revised Federal Constitution, which had been approved by the
people the previous year. The Federal Council described the revision as
an "update" in which unwritten constitutional law was codified. Among
other things, nine different fundamental rights that had previously only
been recorded in decisions of the Federal Court and in legal
commentaries were included. In addition, the position of the Federal
Assembly vis-à-vis the Federal Council was significantly strengthened.
As part of the judicial reform approved by the Swiss people in 2000,
three new first-instance federal courts were created in the following
years, namely the Federal Criminal Court, the Federal Patent Court and
the Federal Administrative Court. This took over the tasks of 36 federal
appeals commissions and departmental appeals services.
As one of
the last internationally recognized states, Switzerland joined the
United Nations (UN) after a referendum on September 10, 2002. The only
opposition to joining the UN was from right-wing conservative forces
around the SVP.
The 12-week time limit for regulating abortion
has been in place since October 2002.
On December 10, 2003,
Christoph Blocher, the leading figure of the SVP, was elected to the
Federal Council in place of Ruth Metzler (CVP). The last time a
governing official was not re-elected was in 1872. The "de-election" of
Christoph Blocher as Federal Councillor on December 12, 2007 by a prior
agreement between the centre-left factions CVP, SP and the Greens
clearly revealed the disunity among the Federal Council parties. The SVP
no longer saw itself represented by the moderate SVP politician Eveline
Widmer-Schlumpf, who had been newly elected to replace Blocher, and
announced that it would step up its opposition to the state government.
The effects of this implementation of the opposition while maintaining
representation in the government on national politics remained modest,
but led to strong tensions within the party and ultimately to the split
of the Civil Democratic Party (BDP) from the SVP. Since the two SVP
Federal Councillors Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf and Samuel Schmid joined the
BDP, the SVP was no longer represented in the Federal Council until
Samuel Schmid resigned at the end of 2008. In the by-election, the SVP
managed to regain a seat in the Federal Council with former party
president Ueli Maurer, but the attack on Federal Councillor
Widmer-Schlumpf's seat held by the BDP failed in the 2011 general
election. Since Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf announced her resignation at the
end of 2015, the SVP was able to enter the general election on 9
December 2015 with a claim to a second seat. Guy Parmelin from Vaud won
in the third round of voting, meaning that the SVP once again has two
seats in the Federal Council.
In 2005, Switzerland joined the
Schengen and Dublin agreements and is therefore part of the Schengen
area.
In the 2007/2008 financial crisis (subprime crisis), the
Swiss major bank UBS, like other banks around the world, found itself in
dire straits. In order to avert serious, long-lasting economic
consequences of an impending bankruptcy, the Swiss Confederation and the
Swiss National Bank (SNB) rescued UBS with two financial injections. On
October 16, 2008, the Federal Council announced that the federal
government had subscribed to a mandatory convertible bond from UBS in
the amount of 6 billion Swiss francs and that the Swiss National Bank
had created a special purpose vehicle ("bad bank") into which UBS could
outsource non-tradable securities worth up to 60 billion US dollars. By
removing the illiquid securities from its balance sheet, the threat of
UBS becoming over-indebted was averted.
The 2011 parliamentary
elections largely confirmed expectations. The relatively new Green
Liberal and BDP parties were definitely able to establish themselves at
the national level and made the biggest gains in terms of both voter
shares and seats. All other parties lost voter shares, most notably the
FDP and SVP. The SVP's disproportionate seat losses and the SP's seat
gains can be explained by the proportional representation system and the
Council of States elections, which went very badly for the SVP. This
resulted in the following shifts in the United Federal Assembly: SVP −10
seats (now 59 seats), SP +5 (57), FDP −6 (51), CVP −5 (41), Greens −5
(17), GLP +10 (14), BDP +10 (10). In the Federal Council, an alliance of
the center-left parties SP, CVP and BDP formed a majority with four
seats after the SVP failed in its attack on Federal Councilor
Widmer-Schlumpf in the general elections. Even after the elections, the
SVP continued to oppose European policy, immigration policy and
migration issues. For example, against the recommendation of the
government and parliament, it was able to persuade voters to accept
popular initiatives aimed at automatically deporting criminal foreigners
(deportation initiative) and limiting immigration through quotas.
Under great international pressure, on May 6, 2014, Switzerland
joined the OECD declaration on the future automatic exchange of
information in tax matters, which largely lifted the strict Swiss
banking secrecy vis-à-vis the tax authorities of third countries.
On May 21, 2017, the Swiss population approved the Energy Strategy
2050 with 58.2% voting in favor. As a result, the construction of new
nuclear power plants is prohibited. Furthermore, renewable energies and
the more efficient use of energy are to be promoted (see measures of the
Energy Strategy 2050).
The narrow adoption of the mass
immigration initiative on February 9, 2014 was followed by a lengthy
domestic and foreign policy crisis. The initiative called for
immigration to Switzerland to be regulated by quotas, which called into
question the continued existence of the bilateral agreements with the
EU. Switzerland refused to extend the free movement of persons to the
new EU member Croatia, citing the vote, whereupon the EU suspended
negotiations with Switzerland on participation in the Horizon 2020
research program and the Erasmus+ student exchange. Switzerland was thus
treated as a third country in these programs. It was not until the end
of 2016 that the parties agreed, despite fierce resistance from the SVP,
to implement the initiative in a way that was compatible with the free
movement agreement. This implementation in the form of a job
registration requirement was accepted by the EU, and Switzerland
extended the free movement of persons to Croatia on January 1, 2017.
With the "limitation initiative" submitted in August 2018, the SVP
directly attacked the bilateral agreements with the EU for the first
time. In September 2020, the people clearly rejected the initiative with
61.7% of the votes against.
Relations between Switzerland and the
EU have been shaped since 2017 by negotiations to conclude a framework
agreement for the bilateral agreements. This is intended to form an
institutional umbrella for the existing and possible new market access
agreements and to regulate the ongoing adaptation and uniform
interpretation of the agreements as well as the legal settlement of
disputes. The EU decided back in 2012 not to conclude any new market
access agreements with Switzerland without a solution to these issues.
The negotiating mandate for a framework agreement was adopted by the
Federal Council on December 18, 2013, but negotiations dragged on until
December 2018 after they officially began on May 6, 2014. The fully
negotiated agreement was not signed by the Federal Council, however, but
was submitted to parties, associations and cantons for consultation. The
discussion focused on wage protection, the adoption of EU law and the
question of jurisdiction in disputes with the EU. Negotiations were
terminated on May 26, 2021.
On September 26, 2021, the Swiss
electorate approved the introduction of marriage for all with 61.1% of
the votes, and all cantons adopted the law.
On June 9, 2022, the
UN General Assembly elected Switzerland as one of ten non-permanent
members of the UN Security Council with 187 of 190 valid votes. The
two-year mandate runs from January 1, 2023 to December 31, 2024. All
major parties supported the candidacy, with the exception of the SVP,
which expressed concerns about neutrality.
On September 27, 2001, a gunman carried out an attack in the
parliament of the canton of Zug, leaving 15 people dead. One week later,
one of the biggest economic collapses in Swiss history occurred:
Swissair's aircraft fleet had to remain on the ground from October 2 due
to insolvency (commonly referred to as grounding in Switzerland), and a
year later the company finally had to cease operations. The remnants of
the airline were absorbed into the new company Swiss. On October 24,
2001, 11 people died in the Gotthard road tunnel when two trucks
collided and a fire broke out. The tunnel was then closed for two months
for renovation work.
For the first time since 1954, a major
sporting event took place in Switzerland in summer 2008 in cooperation
with Austria: the European Football Championship. The venues in
Switzerland were (stadiums in brackets): Basel (St. Jakobspark), Bern
(Stade de Suisse), Zurich (Letzigrund) and Geneva (Stade de Genève). The
St. Jakobspark in Basel had 42,500 seats and thus accommodated the most
spectators in Switzerland. With tennis player Roger Federer, Switzerland
produced one of the world's most famous and successful athletes.
While the economic upturn around the turn of the millennium was
short-lived, the Swiss economy again achieved strong growth of an
average of 3 percent between 2004 and 2008. The highest growth was
recorded in 2007 with +3.8 percent. As a result of the subprime crisis,
Switzerland also experienced a short recession in 2009 (-1.9 percent),
but this was followed by a new phase of growth in 2010 (+3 percent).
Overall, Switzerland has weathered the effects of the financial crisis
and the franc shock in 2015 surprisingly well, achieving an average GDP
growth of 1.4 percent since 2008. However, this was mainly due to
immigration, which is why GDP growth per capita only reached 0.3
percent. Switzerland was one of the first countries to conclude a free
trade agreement with the People's Republic of China in 2014.
Economists and politicians also see the recovery of the Swiss economy in
connection with the free movement of people with the EU, which was
introduced in 2002 and allows numerous skilled workers from the EU,
especially from Germany, to immigrate to Switzerland. Switzerland is one
of the few countries in Europe to experience population growth due to a
positive migration balance (2022: +81,345 people). Due to strong
immigration, the proportion of permanent foreign residents in the total
population rose from around 15 percent in 1980 (0.9 million people) to
over 25 percent at the end of 2022 (2.24 million people). During the
same period, the permanent resident population grew from around 6.3
million to 9 million by 2023.
Between 2007 and 2020, the three
base tunnels at Lötschberg, Gotthard and Ceneri were opened to traffic
as part of the New Railway Transversal through the Alps (NRLA).
According to a 2020 study by the Zurich University of Applied Sciences,
around 700 Swiss couples adopted a baby from Sri Lanka in the 1980s and
1990s. Many of the children were given up for adoption using false
identities. Some of the children were also stolen from their biological
parents or deliberately conceived on a "baby farm" for their parents
from Europe. Under pressure from the children affected, who are now
adults, the Federal Office of Justice had the circumstances of the
adoptions investigated. According to the study, the Swiss authorities
had known about child trafficking since 1981 and collectively turned a
blind eye.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Federal Council
banned events with more than 1,000 visitors at the end of February 2020.
As a result, the Engadin Ski Marathon, the Geneva Motor Show and the
Basel Carnival, among others, had to be cancelled. On March 16, 2020,
the Federal Council declared an "extraordinary situation" under the
Epidemic Act. Among other things, all shops (except grocery stores),
restaurants, bars and entertainment and leisure establishments had to be
closed. Public and private events were banned. Schools and universities
had to switch to distance learning. According to a decision by the
Federal Council, up to 8,000 members of the Swiss army could be called
up for assistance to support the civilian authorities. This was the
largest troop deployment of the Swiss Army since the Second World War.
And it was the first time since the Second World War that the Federal
Council ruled under emergency powers for an extended period of time.
On June 15 and 16, 2024, the high-level conference on peace in
Ukraine took place at the Bürgenstock Resort.
The landlocked country of Switzerland lies between the 46th and 48th
parallels, with the headwaters of rivers that flow into the North Sea,
the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. The maximum north-south extension
is 220.1 kilometers (from Bargen to Chiasso), the greatest west-east
extension is 348.4 kilometers (from Chancy to Val Müstair).
The
highest point in Switzerland is the 4634 m above sea level Dufourspitze
on the border with Italy, the lowest point is the shore of Lake Maggiore
at 193 m above sea level, also on the Italian border. The highest
settlement, Juf in the canton of Graubünden, is at 2126 m above sea
level; the lowest settlements are on Lake Maggiore in the canton of
Ticino at 196 m above sea level. The geographical center of Switzerland
is in the canton of Obwalden on the Älggi Alp.
Switzerland's
national border is 1,935 kilometers long. The longest border is with
Italy in the south at 782 kilometers. In the west, Switzerland borders
France for 585 kilometers; in the north, it borders Germany for 347
kilometers, most of which runs along the Rhine. In the east, Switzerland
borders Austria for 180 kilometers and the Principality of Liechtenstein
for 41 kilometers.
23.9 percent of Switzerland's area is
agricultural land, 13 percent is alpine farming land. Settlement land
accounts for 6.8 percent, and 25.5 percent - mainly in the Alps and Jura
- is considered unproductive natural land. Around 30.8 percent is forest
and woodland.
Switzerland can be divided into three major landscape areas that show
great differences: the Jura, the densely populated Mittelland and the
Alps with the Pre-Alps. Around 48 percent of the country's surface area
belongs to the Alps in the narrower sense, 12 percent to the Pre-Alps.
30 percent is considered to be the Mittelland, and the Jura takes up the
remaining 10 percent of the country's surface area.
The Swiss
Mittelland is geographically and geologically delimited in the northwest
and north by the long ridges of the Jura. In the south, towards the
Alps, the relatively abrupt rise to heights of over 1500 m above sea
level in some places is usually used as a criterion for delimitation.
The southwestern border of the Swiss Mittelland is formed by Lake
Geneva, the northeastern border is formed by Lake Constance together
with the Rhine. The population density of Switzerland is determined by
the metropolitan areas, all of which are located in the Mittelland, with
the two modest-sized but nevertheless important global cities of Zurich
and Geneva.
In Switzerland, the Prealps are the areas that mark
the transition from the gently rolling Swiss plateau to the mountainous
region of the Alps and are characterized by their elevations as a local
recreation area, especially during periods of high fog. Together with
the Alps, they form an arc between the southwest and northeast of
Switzerland.
The Alps form an important climate and watershed in
the "heart of Europe" with additional alpine and inner-alpine weather
effects, which means that Switzerland usually has several weather
conditions despite its small size. The Swiss Alpine arc contains
well-known holiday destinations for summer and winter tourism as well as
the only Swiss national park. The public transport network in
Switzerland, which also exists in the Alps, was given a UNESCO World
Heritage Site with the Albula Line, and the mountain landscapes of the
Sardona Tectonic Arena and the Jungfrau-Aletsch Swiss Alps are
considered natural heritage.
South side of the Alps is a term
that is used primarily in weather forecasts, as the weather conditions,
climate and vegetation are usually different from those on the north
side of the Alps. The southern side of the Alps includes the canton of
Ticino, the southern valleys of Graubünden, Misox, Calanca, Bergell,
Puschlav and Val Müstair, as well as the area south of the Simplon Pass
in the canton of Valais, and is part of the Alps in natural terms.
The Swiss Jura can be roughly bordered in the east and southeast by
the Swiss Mittelland, in the north by the High Rhine, and in the
northwest by the Burgundian Gate. The Jura is a geologically young
folded mountain range with a length of around 300 kilometers and
describes a large crescent-shaped arc that opens to the southeast. On
the Besançon–Yverdon line, the greatest width of the mountain range is
around 70 kilometers. At Biel/Bienne, the chains change direction more
and more to the east, the mountain system becomes narrower, and the
number of adjacent chains decreases. The easternmost Jura chain, the
Lägern chain, runs exactly in a west-east direction and ends at
Dielsdorf, where the mountain-forming layers descend beneath the molasse
of the Swiss Mittelland.
The geological structure of Switzerland is essentially the result of
a plate collision between Africa and Europe over the last million years.
This phenomenon is particularly clearly visible in the Glarus thrust, a
UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Geologically, Switzerland is divided
into five main regions: the Alps are essentially made of granite, the
Jura is a young folded mountain range made of limestone. Between the
Jura and the Alps lies the partly flat, partly hilly Mittelland. In
addition, there is the Po Valley in the southernmost tip of Ticino, the
Mendrisiotto (Mendrisio), and the Upper Rhine Plain around Basel, which
lie for the most part outside Switzerland.
The topography of
today's Switzerland has been shaped and formed over the last two million
years by the huge masses of ice that advanced far into the Mittelland
during the various ice ages.
Compared to other European
countries, Switzerland has a medium risk of earthquakes, although there
are regional differences: In Valais, Basel, the St. Gallen Rhine Valley,
central Graubünden, the Engadine and central Switzerland, earthquakes
occur more frequently than in other areas. An earthquake of magnitude 6
or greater can be expected every 60 to 100 years. The last time an
earthquake of this magnitude occurred was in 1946 near Sierre in Valais.
The earthquake that occurred near Basel on October 18, 1356 is the
strongest documented in Central Europe in historical times. The Swiss
Seismological Service (SED) at ETH Zurich monitors earthquake activity
in Switzerland and in neighboring countries.
In Switzerland there are more than 3,350 peaks over 2,000 meters
high. The sixteen highest peaks in Switzerland are all in the Valais
Alps. The highest peak is the 4,634 m above sea level. The Dufourspitze
is the highest point in Switzerland. The highest mountain that lies
entirely on Swiss territory is the Dom. It belongs to the Mischabel
group and is 4546 m above sea level.
The most famous mountain in
the Swiss Alps is the Matterhorn, which is 4478 m above sea level. In
the Bernese Oberland, the Eiger (3967 m above sea level), the Mönch
(4110 m above sea level) and the Jungfrau (4158 m above sea level) form
a well-known group that is also visible from the Mittelland. Notable
points in the Eastern Alps are the Piz Bernina (4048 m above sea level),
the easternmost four-thousand-meter peak in the Alps and the only
four-thousand-meter peak in the Eastern Alps, the Tödi and the Piz
Kesch, other mountains with more than 1500 meters of prominence.
In the foothills of the Alps, the elevations are lower, but the
mountains are no less impressive due to their dominance and height.
Well-known mountains are the Lucerne local mountain Pilatus (2132 m
above sea level), the Mythen (1898 m above sea level), the Rigi (1797 m
above sea level) in the canton of Schwyz or the Säntis (2502 m above sea
level) in the Alpstein in eastern Switzerland.
The highest Swiss
Jura mountain is the Mont Tendre at 1679 m above sea level. Other
important mountains are La Dôle (1677 m above sea level), Chasseral
(1607 m above sea level), Chasseron (1607 m above sea level) and Suchet
(1588 m above sea level). The easternmost foothill of the Jura is the
Randen in the canton of Schaffhausen.
The Swiss high mountains are largely shaped by the many glaciers. The largest and longest glacier in the Alps is the Great Aletsch Glacier, followed by the Gorner Glacier (by area). The Swiss glaciers last reached their peak during the Little Ice Age, which lasted from the beginning of the 15th to the middle of the 19th century. Since the middle of the 19th century, a significant decline in glaciers has been observed in Switzerland, as in almost all parts of the world. This glacier loss has increased in recent decades. Between 1973 and 2010, the area of all glaciers in the Swiss Alps decreased by 28 percent to around 940 square kilometers. In the hot summer of 2015, the glaciers lost several times more mass than in previous years. Glacier loss became even more extreme in 2022 and 2023, when the mass of the glaciers decreased by around 10 percent in just two years.
The Hölloch in the canton of Schwyz is the second longest cave system in Europe, and the Lac Souterrain de Saint-Léonard in the canton of Valais is the largest natural underground lake in Europe.
In water-rich Switzerland, two of the longest rivers in Europe, the
Rhine and the Rhone, have their source in the Gotthard massif. Several
main European watersheds run through Switzerland: they separate the
catchment areas of the North Sea, the Mediterranean and the Black Sea.
The Rhine and its tributaries flow into the North Sea, the Rhone and the
Ticino into the Mediterranean, while the water of the Inn flows into the
Black Sea via the Danube. A triple main watershed can be found on the
Lunghin Pass.
Within Switzerland, the Rhine has the longest
course at 375 kilometers, ahead of the Rhine tributary, the Aare, at 295
kilometers. The Rhone flows 264 kilometers within Switzerland, while the
Reuss, the fourth largest river in Switzerland, reaches a length of 158
kilometers. Other important rivers are the Saane in the west, the Ticino
in the south, the Birs and the Doubs in the northwest, the Linth/Limmat
and the Thur in the northeast and the Inn in the southeast. Near
Schaffhausen, the Rhine forms the largest waterfall in Central Europe
(Rhine Falls). At one point, there was an idea to connect the North Sea
and the Mediterranean with a waterway using a transhelvetic canal
between the Rhine and the Rhone, but this project was never realized.
Due to its topographical structure and above all due to glaciation
during the ice ages, Switzerland has around 1500 lakes, the majority of
which are smaller mountain lakes. In total, around four percent of
Switzerland's surface is covered by lakes, but this total is mainly
determined by the largest lakes in Switzerland: The largest lake in
Switzerland is Lake Geneva (580.03 square kilometers) on the French
border. Almost 60 percent of it lies on Swiss soil. Lake Constance,
which borders Germany and Austria, is slightly smaller at 536.00 square
kilometers (23.73 percent of the shoreline is on Swiss soil). Lake
Maggiore on the Italian border (19.28 percent on Swiss territory) is the
lowest point in Switzerland at 193 m above sea level. The largest lakes
located entirely in Switzerland are Lake Neuchâtel (215.20 square
kilometers), Lake Lucerne (113.72 square kilometers) and Lake Zurich
(88.17 square kilometers).
There are numerous large and small
islands in the Swiss lakes and rivers. The most famous are the Isole di
Brissago, the St. Peter's Island and the Ufenau.
North of the Alps there is a temperate suboceanic climate (according
to Troll & Paffen), mostly influenced by Atlantic winds; south of the
Alps it is more Mediterranean. However, the climate varies greatly from
region to region, due to the geographical elements.
Basically,
the weather from the Jura Arc across the Central Plateau and the Prealps
is similar during the day, but in the inner Alps and southern
Switzerland it is often very different. In central Switzerland, the Alps
and Ticino, the average rainfall is around 2000 millimetres per year.
The place with the most rainfall is Säntis (2502 m above sea level) with
an average of 2840 mm; the driest place is Ackersand in the Vispertal
with an average of 543 millimetres per year (both values for the
standard period 1991–2020). In the standard period 1961–1990, the value
for Ackersand was still 521 millimetres. In the Central Plateau, the
amount is around 1000 to 1500 millimeters per year. The Central Plateau
is the only region in Switzerland to have recorded a statistically
significant increase in annual precipitation since 1864, mainly due to
the increase in the winter months. The amount of precipitation in
Switzerland is about twice as high in summer as in winter. Primarily
dependent on the altitude, a lot of precipitation falls as snow in
winter, so that the Alps and the foothills of the Alps are covered in
snow for months. It snows relatively rarely in the Geneva and Basel
regions and in southern Ticino, where winters can also have no snow
cover. The greatest snow depth in Switzerland was measured on the Säntis
in April 1999 at 816 cm.
Temperatures in Switzerland depend
primarily on the altitude. In addition, they tend to be statistically
somewhat higher in the west than in the east (approx. 1 °C). In general,
the average temperature in January in the lowlands is around −1 to +1
°C. In the warmest month, July, it is 16 to 19 °C. The annual average
temperatures are around 7 to 9 °C. The average warmest place with
available measurement series is Lugano with an annual average of 13 °C
(standard period 1991–2020). As at almost all measuring stations,
climate change is also evident here: in the standard period 1961–1990,
the average value was still 11.6 °C. The average coldest place is the
Jungfraujoch with −6.7 °C (standard period 1991–2020). Here, too, the
average temperature has increased by 0.7 °C since the standard period
1961–1990. Absolute records were measured in Grono with 41.5 °C on
August 11, 2003, and in La Brévine with −41.8 °C (January 12, 1987).
Compared to places at the same altitude in the Swiss Plateau,
temperatures in the Rhone Valley, the Rhine Valley and the Basel region
are on average one to two degrees Celsius warmer, and two to three
degrees in the Magadino Plain in Ticino. Although the Engadin is part of
southern Switzerland in terms of climate, temperatures there are on
average ten degrees Celsius colder. This is because the Engadin is a
high alpine valley. The same applies to the side valleys and the Goms in
the Valais.
The Napf region, Ticino and the Jura are considered
hotspots for hail precipitation, where two to four hail days are
expected per summer half-year.
Fog can be observed throughout the
Swiss Plateau, while the Alpine regions are less frequently affected.
Fog is particularly common along the Aare and the northern Reuss, as
well as in Thurgau, where it can occur for several weeks, especially in
autumn, winter and early spring. With the exception of high fog, fog is
a comparatively rare phenomenon in the Jura Arc and in the Basel region.
The frequency of fog in the Swiss plateau has decreased significantly
since the 1970s. The Zurich-Kloten weather station, for example, used to
regularly record years with 50 to 60 days of fog. Today, there are
around 40. The reasons for the decrease in fog are likely to be a change
in the prevailing weather patterns and improvements in air quality.
Winds that frequently occur in Switzerland are the mild foehn on
both sides of the Alpine ridge and the cold bise, which southern
Switzerland is often spared. The highest wind speed ever measured is 285
kilometers per hour (Jungfraujoch, February 27, 1990).
The
Federal Office of Meteorology and Climatology (MeteoSwiss) is the state
weather service of Switzerland. Other well-known private weather
services are: SRF Meteo, Meteomedia and MeteoNews. The Institute for
Snow and Avalanche Research is based in Davos.
There are around 56,000 species of plants, animals and fungi known in
Switzerland. These include around 45,000 animal species, of which around
30,000 are insect species and around 99 are mammal species. Around 40
percent of animal species are endangered, particularly amphibians and
reptiles.
The Swiss water network comprises around 65,300
kilometers of rivers and streams. The right of public access in
Switzerland allows everyone to move freely in nature under certain
restrictions. Collecting berries and mushrooms is also permitted with
restrictions. In some cantons, fishing is permitted in certain waters
under certain conditions under the free fishing law without a permit,
otherwise a license is required. Hunting is organized as a hunting area
in the northern cantons, and as a license hunt in most other cantons;
see also Hunting law (Switzerland).
One third of Switzerland's land surface is forested. Conifers (firs,
spruces, larches and Swiss stone pines) predominate in the Alps. The
forests in the Alps have important functions as avalanche protection
forests and flood protection (the forests absorb the rainfall and
release it slowly). In the Mittelland, in the Jura and on the southern
side of the Alps, mixed deciduous forests and broadleaf forests grow
below 1000 metres. Particularly well-known forest areas in Switzerland
are the Aletschwald, the Sihlwald and the Pfynwald as well as the alpine
primeval forests Bödmerenwald (untouched core area approx. 150
hectares), the primeval fir forest of Lac de Derborence (22 hectares),
the Scatlè spruce forest near Brigels in the canton of Graubünden (9
hectares) and the Val Cama - Val Leggia forest reserve in Misox. The
Tamangur in the Lower Engadine is the highest Swiss stone pine forest in
Europe. In Ticino and Misox there are extensive chestnut forests, which
in earlier times played a major role in the population's diet. The three
largest contiguous forests in Switzerland are in southern Switzerland
and on the Jura heights. These are forest areas west of the Maggia (169
square kilometers), between Monte Tamaro and Roveredo (162 square
kilometers) and at the Col du Mollendruz up to the national border at La
Dôle (117 square kilometers). Over 700 plant species in Switzerland are
considered to be threatened with extinction.
In the valleys of
Ticino and occasionally in the central plateau, some palm species grow
as ornamental plants, such as the dwarf palm or the Chinese hemp palm.
The latter palm species has become wild and, because it is threatening
native woody plants, it is listed as an invasive neophyte on the black
list of invasive neophytes.
The fauna in Switzerland includes around 99 species of mammals in the
wild, the majority of which are bats and other small mammals. All large
predators have disappeared from Switzerland in the last hundred years.
The importance of predators in a healthy ecosystem has been recognised,
and lynx, wolves and bears have been protected. The lynx has been
reintroduced to Switzerland. The wolf has immigrated independently from
Italy and France. A pack lives in the Piz Beverin region, for example.
In the south-east of Graubünden, brown bears from Italy, which had
disappeared due to hunting in 1910, have also been found on Swiss
territory since 2005, although no population has yet been able to form.
The most frequently observed is the red fox. It also feels at home in
Swiss cities. Badgers often share the same den with foxes, which is why
they have suffered greatly from the fox's persecution. Other burrow
dwellers in some Alpine regions include marmots. In addition to the
lynx, there are isolated populations of wild cats in the Jura in
Switzerland. In 1952, the otter, which was designated for extinction
under the Fisheries Act of 1888, was placed under protection.
Nevertheless, it had disappeared from Switzerland by 1990, and the last
traces were found in 1989 on Lake Neuchâtel. The main reason for its
extinction was probably the state of the waters and the resulting
reduction in fish stocks. It has been spotted again occasionally since
2009. The stone marten is often found in settlements. Its relative, the
pine marten, is rather rare and keeps its distance from people. The
first golden jackal was spotted in 2011.
Various species of
ungulates have also disappeared from Switzerland, such as the bison and
the elk. Some extinct species, such as the Alpine ibex, have now been
reintroduced; it populates the high mountains of the Alps. In Lower
Valais there are two colonies of European mouflons that have migrated
from France. The chamois is very common in the higher regions of the
Alps and the Jura. The largest species of deer is currently the red
deer. The smallest native species of deer is the roe deer. The roe deer
is also the most common species of deer and inhabits the Mittelland and
Jura. The sika deer is found in the Zurich-Schaffhausen border area near
Rafzerfeld. In the turmoil of the Second World War, some animals escaped
from southern German enclosures and settled in Switzerland from there.
The wild boar is also quite common in some areas of northern
Switzerland. Of the rodents, the beaver has been reintroduced. In
September 2023, a test herd of bison was released into supervised
semi-freedom in the Thal Nature Park in the canton of Solothurn.
Numerous species of birds live in Switzerland. The Swiss lakes and
rivers are important resting and wintering areas for waterfowl. Every
year, several thousand herons, pochards and red-crested ducks, as well
as coots, goosander and great crested grebes spend the winter in
Switzerland. Of the birds of prey, the kestrel and buzzard are
particularly common. Red and black kites are also regularly seen. The
golden eagle is once again inhabiting the entire Alpine region. The
populations of goshawks and sparrowhawks have also recovered and are
stable. The extinct bearded vulture was released into the Swiss National
Park; in 2007, three pairs bred in Switzerland for the first time.
Of the grouse, hazel grouse, rock ptarmigan, black grouse and
capercaillie inhabit the Swiss Alps and partly the Jura arc. However,
capercaillie populations are seriously threatened by alpine tourism and
the intensification of forestry. The capercaillie has already
disappeared from many areas of the foothills of the Alps and the
northern Jura. However, nature conservation organizations are making
intensive efforts to preserve the species. The rock partridge inhabits
the areas near the tree line. The partridge, the corncrake and the
curlew are at high risk of extinction.
Owl species such as the
tawny owl, the long-eared owl, the eagle owl, the pygmy owl, the boreal
owl and the barn owl live in Switzerland. Many species of woodpecker
live in the old mountain forests. Songbirds are numerous in Switzerland.
Due to the expansion of settlement areas, the intensification of
agriculture even in ever higher mountain regions and winter tourism,
many bird species in Switzerland are endangered. In total, almost 40
percent of bird species in Switzerland are on the Red List of endangered
species. According to Daniela Heynen from the Sempach Ornithological
Institute, electric shock is one of the most common known causes of
death for eagle owls and white storks (see bird strike).
The most
notable reptiles are the many species of snake that thrive in the sunny
southern valleys of the Alps, such as the asp viper. The adder also
lives in the high altitudes of the Alps and the Jura. However,
non-venomous snakes such as the grass snake and the dice snake are far
more common and widespread. Various species of lizard are very common.
The European pond turtle is the only native species of turtle.
Amphibians are widespread in Switzerland. Common species include the
common frog, the common toad and the alpine newt. Much rarer, however,
are the tree frog, the midwife toad and the Alpine crested newt. The
most typical vertebrate in Switzerland is the Alpine salamander - the
largest population of which and the center of its distribution are the
Swiss Alps.
There are around 65 native fish species and
subspecies in Swiss waters, including a unique variety of whitefish. In
addition, there are around 20 introduced fish species. There are also
four native species of crayfish (noble crayfish, Italian crayfish,
common crayfish, stone crayfish) and four introduced species of
crayfish. Since the 19th century, fish stocks have been artificially
renewed through stocking measures, especially since the 1980s. Several
hundred million young fish are released each year.
Insects make
up the largest proportion of all animal species, about a quarter.
As with plants, biological invasion is also increasing in animals.
Invasive alien species include:
Quagga mussel
Japanese beetle
Tiger mosquito
Asian hornet
Red-eared slider turtle
Raccoon
Black Sea goby
The aim of nature conservation in Switzerland is to "preserve and
protect the local landscape and townscape, the historical sites and the
natural and cultural monuments of the country and to promote their
preservation and care". Nature conservation is legally regulated in the
Federal Law on Nature and Heritage Conservation (NHG). Partial
regulations also exist in the forest and agricultural legislation of the
federal government and cantons. There are around 300 rangers in action
throughout Switzerland.
Currently (as of May 2016), 16 parks of
national importance are in operation and 3 are in the construction
phase. The best known of these is the Swiss National Park in the canton
of Graubünden, founded in 1914. Two parks have also been designated as
biosphere reserves. 165 protected landscapes are listed in the Federal
Inventory of Landscapes and Natural Monuments of National Importance.
There are 1,073 natural forest reserves in Switzerland, including
the Swiss National Park, with a total area of 46,199 hectares, which
corresponds to 3 percent of the Swiss forest area (as of December 2018).
Appenzell Innerrhoden is the only mountain canton without a wildlife
rest zone.
Private organizations also take care of local nature
conservation, such as Pro Natura, which contractually protects over 600
nature reserves in Switzerland with a total area of almost 600 square
kilometers, or the Swiss Bird Protection Association.
Since 1987,
moors and raised bogs have been strictly protected by the Federal
Constitution (Rothenthurm Initiative). In 2007, the Federal Inventory of
Lowland Moors of National Importance recorded 1,163 moors worthy of
protection with a total area of around 20,000 hectares, and the
Federal Inventory of Raised Moors of National Importance includes 549
moors with a total area of around 1,500 hectares. This corresponds to
around 0.04% of the country's surface area.
In 2019, Lancy was
the first municipality to be certified by Bio-Suisse.
By 2020,
not enough areas had been registered for the Emerald Network. So far,
only 37 Emerald areas exist. Of all European countries, Switzerland has
the lowest proportion of protected areas in relation to the country's
surface area. Tourism, the expansion of settlement areas, the
intensification of agriculture, environmental pollution and the overuse
of resources, among other things, contribute to the loss of
biodiversity. In 2020, BirdLife Switzerland concluded that Switzerland
had done far too little for its rich biodiversity. The OECD and the
European Environment Agency also point out that the measures taken to
date to protect biodiversity are far from sufficient.
Various zoos and animal parks show visitors native as well as exotic animals. The most famous zoos in Switzerland include Basel Zoo, Zurich Zoo with its Masoala Hall, Knie's Children's Zoo and Bern Zoo.
The culture is influenced by neighboring countries, but over the years an independent Swiss culture has developed. The division of Switzerland into several language and cultural regions makes it difficult to speak of a uniform Swiss culture. The three larger language regions are strongly influenced by their respective neighboring countries as well as by the Anglo-Saxon countries, while the Romansh culture has no "big brother".
Customs are part of the cultural diversity and intangible heritage of
Switzerland. They are part of the folk culture and always have a local
or regional character. In some cases (Carnival, Easter customs,
Christmas customs) they can also be supra-regional. Customs include
various traditional forms of expression in music, dance, folk poetry,
e.g. at the Basel Carnival, and in traditional crafts. They also include
various rites and religious festivals.
In 2008, Switzerland
ratified the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural
Heritage (2003) and the Convention for the Protection and Promotion of
the Diversity of Cultural Expressions, which expresses concern about the
disappearance and commercialization of customs.
Examples of
customs in Switzerland are: the Lucerne Carnival, the Basel Carnival,
the Unspunnenstein throwing in Interlaken, the Sechseläuten in Zurich or
the Fête des Vignerons (Winegrowers' Festival) in Vevey.
In Switzerland, only August 1st is set as a public holiday for the whole country at federal level (see also Swiss Federal Holiday). The regulation of all other public holidays is the sole responsibility of the cantons, which can set up to eight additional days as legal rest days. Due to this fact, apart from the Federal Holiday, there are only three other days that are also recognized throughout Switzerland: New Year's Day, Ascension Day and Christmas Day. Good Friday, Easter Monday, Whit Monday and St. Stephen's Day (second day of Christmas) are still celebrated in large parts of the country. The majority of holidays have a Christian background. Corpus Christi, the Assumption of Mary, All Saints' Day and the Immaculate Conception are only celebrated in the Catholic cantons, while Berchtold Day (second day of New Years) is largely restricted to the Protestant cantons. Labour Day, which is often referred to as the day of struggle of the workers' movement, has no religious connection. There are also a number of local holidays such as the Knabenschiessen in Zurich or Dirty Thursday.
Swiss cuisine combines influences from German, French and Italian
cuisine. It varies greatly from region to region, with the language
regions providing a kind of rough division. Many dishes have crossed
local borders and are popular throughout Switzerland.
Typical
Swiss dishes are cheese fondue, raclette, Älplermagronen and Rösti. This
also defined the Röstigraben, the border between German- and
French-speaking Switzerland. To the east of this border, Rösti is one of
the most popular national dishes, but not to the west. Birchermüesli,
which is now known worldwide, was developed in Zurich around 1900 by a
Swiss doctor, Maximilian Bircher-Benner. The honey-almond-nougat
chocolate Toblerone has only been produced in Bern for over 100 years
and is sold from there to over 120 countries. Cervelat is probably the
most popular sausage in Switzerland.
Very popular Swiss products
are Swiss cheese and Swiss chocolate. Local specialties include: Basler
Läckerli, Vermicelles, Appenzeller Biber, Meringue, Aargauer Rüeblitorte
or Zuger Kirschtorte.
The sweet drink Rivella is very popular in
Switzerland. However, the drink produced in Aargau has so far only been
able to establish itself internationally in the Netherlands. Ovomaltine
is also one of the most popular Swiss drinks. In contrast to Rivella,
Ovomaltine has spread worldwide, mostly under the name Ovaltine.
Twelve cultural and natural assets are registered as World Heritage sites in the UNESCO World Heritage list in Switzerland.
The most famous and important Swiss architect is probably Le Corbusier. Atelier 5, Mario Botta and Diener & Diener are other well-known Swiss architects of the present day who have helped to shape modern architecture abroad. The architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron (Herzog & de Meuron) have made a name for themselves in recent years with the Tate Modern building in London and the National Stadium ("Bird's Nest") in Beijing, among others, and have received the Pritzker Prize. Peter Zumthor, whose most famous building is the thermal baths in Vals, is also a Pritzker Prize winner. In 1928, the Goetheanum was built in Dornach near Basel, one of the first reinforced concrete buildings, which with its sculptural form is still considered one of the well-known buildings of expressionism and organic architecture.
Neutral Switzerland was – with the exception of the city of
Schaffhausen – almost completely spared from the great destructive wars
of modern times. As a result, many historical buildings have been
preserved throughout the country to this day.
In the emerging
cities of the 11th and 12th centuries, there was intensive construction.
New churches were built in towns, villages and monasteries. All five
episcopal churches of the time in what is now Switzerland (Basel, Chur,
Geneva, Lausanne, Sitten) were rebuilt in the second half of the 12th
century. In addition to the fully developed repertoire of Romanesque
forms, its replacement by Gothic was already visible. The Romanesque
style can be found in Switzerland, among others, in the Basel Minster,
the Cathedral of Our Lady in Sitten, the Cathedral of St. Mary of the
Assumption in Chur and the Cathedral of St. Peter in Geneva. The All
Saints Minster in Schaffhausen is today considered the largest
Romanesque religious building in Switzerland.
In the area of
present-day Switzerland, Gothic architecture appeared extremely early.
The Notre-Dame Cathedral in Lausanne, built from 1190 onwards, is now
considered one of the most important Gothic buildings in Switzerland.
The monastery church in Einsiedeln, the collegiate church in St.
Gallen and the St. Ursen Cathedral in Solothurn were built in the lavish
Baroque style.
The oldest wooden houses in Europe are in the
canton of Schwyz. The houses Nideröst (1176) and Bethlehem (1287) were
built as log houses from the highest quality spruce heartwood before the
founding of the Old Swiss Confederacy. There are proven to be over a
dozen of the ancient wooden houses in the area between Arth and the
Muota Valley. According to new research results, homeowners at the time
were able to dismantle the houses into their individual beams and take
them with them when they moved to a neighboring village. Experts say
that this is by far the oldest group of wooden houses in all of Europe.
The social, political and economic conditions for the construction
of monumental Renaissance, Baroque and Rococo castles were lacking in
Switzerland. Some of the few exceptions were the prince-bishop's
residence in Chur, the episcopal residence in Pruntrut and the Princely
Abbey of St. Gallen. Castles in Switzerland mostly date back to medieval
castles. Between the 10th and 15th centuries, around 2000 castles were
built in the area of present-day Switzerland, mostly by noble or count
family groups, by the minor nobility or knights. The Swiss cantons
exercised a certain degree of restraint in the remodeling of their
castles, which were used as bailiwicks. As a result, valuable medieval
building fabric was preserved. In contrast, the rural and especially the
urban upper classes, the so-called patricians, developed a lively
private building activity in the construction of representative country
estates. The most famous castles in the country today include Chillon
Castle, Thun Castle, the moated castle of Bottmingen, the Habsburg,
Tarasp Castle, Grandson Castle and Sargans Castle. The three castles of
Bellinzona are UNESCO World Heritage sites.
Modern weapons
technology made the medieval city fortifications useless in the 18th
century. The demolition of the city fortifications in the first half of
the 19th century went hand in hand with city expansions as
industrialization began to take hold. Road and especially railway
construction blew up the city walls and displaced the tower-topped
defensive rings and ramparts. Some places were able to preserve their
medieval fortifications, such as the small town of Murten. In other
cities only a few parts of the fortifications remained, such as the
Zytglogge Tower in Bern, the Spalentor in Basel or the Munot in
Schaffhausen. During this time, Bahnhofstrasse was also created in
Zurich by filling in the Fröschengraben.
In the young federal
state at the end of the 19th century, a return to its own history was of
great importance. This return to history led to the use of historical
stylistic elements in architecture and their fusion into a new whole.
For several decades, historicism prevailed as a new architectural style
in Switzerland. The most famous buildings of this period include the
Federal Palace in Bern (1852–1902), the Elisabethenkirche in Basel
(1857–1864), the Stadthaus in Winterthur (1865–1869), the Zurich main
station (1870–1871), the Bern Historical Museum (1892–1894) and the
Swiss National Museum in Zurich (1897).
In the 20th century, a
few buildings were also built in the neoclassical style, such as the
Bern City Theater in 1903 and the Palais des Nations in Geneva in the
early 1930s. Between 1922 and 1927, the Federal Court building was built
in Lausanne in the classical style.
The rural building culture
has produced a wide range of different architectural styles, each one
perfectly adapted to the different landscapes and climatic conditions.
The villages of eastern Switzerland are characterized by the typical
timber-framed buildings, in the Valais the log houses, darkened by the
sun, dominate (e.g. in Grimentz), in the Bernese Mittelland the
farmhouses with the wide-spreading roofs, the typical round roofs, are
everywhere, and the houses richly decorated with sgraffito are an
unmistakable part of every Engadine village (e.g. in Ardez). The
Ballenberg Open Air Museum offers a comprehensive overview of the
various types of farmhouse in Switzerland with its more than 100
original exhibits.
In 2013, the Swiss Heritage Society (SHS)
selected 50 outstanding buildings from the period between 1960 and 1975
as witnesses to the more recent building culture, such as the two large
Telli developments in Aarau and the Cité du Lignon in Vernier. Objects
from this period characterize many communities in Switzerland, but are
often still considered architectural sins or "energy guzzlers". There
has been little discussion of the building culture of this era.
The Wakker Prize is a prize awarded by the Swiss Heritage Society since
1972 to political communities for exemplary protection of their
townscape. The first award went to the small town of Stein am Rhein for
its townscape, which grew on a medieval ground plan and has been
excellently preserved.
In the 16th century, Protestantism had a strong influence on the visual arts in Switzerland. Since then, several Swiss artists have been able to make an international name for themselves. In the 18th century, Johann Heinrich Füssli achieved considerable fame in England under the name Henry Fuseli with his grotesque, fantastic pictures. From the 19th century, Arnold Böcklin, Albert Anker and Ferdinand Hodler are among those to be mentioned. Alberto Giacometti and HR Giger became internationally famous in the 20th century. Jean Tinguely fascinated people with complex, moving sculptures made of scrap metal. Paul Klee is sometimes celebrated as the most important painter in Switzerland. Johannes Itten's Theory of Colours is considered an outstanding standard work. Sophie Taeuber-Arp is a representative of concrete, rhythmic-geometric art and is one of the most outstanding abstract artists of the 20th century.
The Schauspielhaus Zurich is considered one of the most important
German-speaking theaters. Numerous plays by Bertolt Brecht had their
premieres here. Most of the plays by Max Frisch and Friedrich Dürrenmatt
were also premiered here. In 2002 and 2003 it was voted Theater of the
Year by critics of the magazine Theater heute.
The Zurich Opera
House, which opened in 1891, is also the venue for many premieres and
world premieres. International opera stars are regular guests on the
Zurich opera stage. Initially, spoken and musical theater was also
performed. After the Schauspielhaus opened, however, the opera house
limited itself to opera, operetta and ballet.
Other important
theaters are the Theater Basel, the Grand Théâtre de Genève, the
Stadttheater Bern and the Cabaret Voltaire, the birthplace of Dadaism.
The Hans Reinhart Ring, awarded annually since 1957 by the Swiss
Society for Theater Culture (SGTK), is considered the highest award in
theater life in Switzerland.
The history of music in Switzerland has been shaped by two factors:
Due to the lack of royal courts and large cities, there were no
style-defining centers in earlier centuries. In addition, in
multilingual Switzerland, music was significantly influenced by the
surrounding cultures. As a result, an independent Swiss musical style
never emerged.
In the 20th century, the country produced a number
of well-known composers of classical modernism. Arthur Honegger, Othmar
Schoeck and Frank Martin all achieved international fame.
Since
the 1950s, there has been a lively music scene in the pop and rock
genres. Especially since the late 1970s, pop/rock music with dialect
lyrics (dialect rock) has become more and more established in
German-speaking Switzerland. The forerunners of this music in the 1960s
were the Bernese Troubadours. They performed their own songs in dialect
and usually accompanied themselves on the guitar. The most famous of
these music poets was Mani Matter. Today, dialect lyrics can be found in
all areas of music. Well-known dialect singers are or were Polo Hofer,
Toni Vescoli, Züri West, Patent Ochsner, Endo Anaconda, Peter Reber,
Trio Eugster, Vera Kaa, Dodo Hug, Sina, Gölä, Plüsch, Mash, Florian Ast,
Sandee and Adrian Stern. Only a few dialect interpretations such as
Hemmige by Stephan Eicher or Nach em Räge schint Sunne by Artur Beul
also became internationally known.
Switzerland won the Eurovision
Song Contest three times: at the first event in 1956 with Lys Assia, in
1988 with Céline Dion and in 2024 with Nemo. The trio Peter, Sue & Marc
took part in the ESC four times.
Successful hip-hop artists include Greis, Gimma, Bligg, Wurzel 5 and Sektion Kuchikäschtli, who rap in Swiss German, and Stress and Sens Unik from western Switzerland with French lyrics.
Pop and rock musicians who have also been successful abroad include DJ BoBo, Patrick Nuo, Stephan Eicher, Krokus, Yello, The Young Gods, Gotthard, Eluveitie, Double, DJ Antoine and Andreas Vollenweider. Among the musicians and pop stars known throughout the German-speaking world are Lys Assia, Vico Torriani, Hazy Osterwald, Paola Felix, Pepe Lienhard, Nella Martinetti, Francine Jordi, Leonard and Beatrice Egli. Rock star Tina Turner, who has lived in Switzerland since the 1990s, gave up her US citizenship after she was granted Swiss citizenship.
Jazz music has a firm place in the cultural life of Switzerland. The two Swiss jazz musicians who were well-known beyond the jazz scene were George Gruntz and Claude Nobs. The jazz festivals in Montreux, Willisau and Lugano are among the best-known events of their kind internationally.
Traditional Swiss folk music, which is part of Alpine folk music, is highly regarded in the country. It is also known as Ländler music. Typical Swiss instruments are the alphorn and the Schwyzerörgeli, but violin, bass violin and clarinet are also common. In contrast to the rest of the German-speaking world, Ländler in Switzerland does not just refer to 3/4-bar Ländler melodies, but also to dance and entertainment music that emerged at the beginning of the 20th century from the folk music of the 19th century. Instrumental Swiss folk music is played in numerous local groups, most of the players have amateur status, some are also known throughout Switzerland, for example the Streichmusik Alder, Carlo Brunner or the Swiss Ländler Gamblers. The music is predominantly dance music such as Ländler or Schottisch, but is often played without the opportunity to dance. Brass bands are very common throughout the country. Traditional yodeling is also practiced in many clubs. In order to better distinguish the Swiss yodel from the Tyrolean yodel, which was popular at the time, and to make the almost extinct alphorn popular again, the current Federal Yodeling Association was founded in 1910. Federal festivals in various musical styles take place at regular intervals, such as the Federal Music Festival, which is considered the largest brass music festival in the world.
Switzerland is a real stronghold of music festivals of all musical
styles. The international music festival, the Lucerne Festival, takes
place annually in Lucerne. Similar events are also held in other places.
In addition, numerous open-air events take place every summer, such as
the Gurten Festival, the Paléo Festival or the Open Air St. Gallen. The
annual Zurich Street Parade with around a million visitors is the
world's largest techno event.
The Swiss Cooperative Society of
Authors and Publishers of Music (SUISA) represents the copyright usage
rights of composers, lyricists and publishers of musical works.
Switzerland has one of the youngest film histories in Europe. It was
only in the 1930s and only through the immigration of ambitious artists
and entrepreneurs that a Swiss film scene was able to emerge. The most
important in the early era of sound films up to around 1950 were the
Austrian-born Lazar Wechsler, who founded Praesens-Film, the only major
film production company at the time, and Leopold Lindtberg, the most
productive and successful director of Praesens-Film, which won a total
of four Oscars and awards at all major international festivals.
As in all European countries, filmmaking in Switzerland today is
dependent on state film funding. However, the funding is only enough for
a small annual film output. In recent history, therefore, only a few
Swiss films have achieved international fame. Due to a lack of
competitive alternatives, US films and television series are widespread
in all language areas of Switzerland. US productions predominate in
cinemas. Admission prices are among the highest in Europe.
The
most well-known film produced in Switzerland is probably The
Swissmakers. Other comedies that have received a lot of attention are
Beresina or The Last Days of Switzerland by Daniel Schmid and Purchased
Happiness by Urs Odermatt. In contrast, the work Höhenfeuer by Fredi M.
Murer is much more serious: it is about incest in remote mountain
regions. Kleine Fluchten by Yves Yersin is also set in a rural setting.
In 1991, Xavier Koller's Reise der Hoffnung won an Oscar. This film is
about a Kurdish family who flee to Switzerland in search of a better
life. Various films with Swiss participation have also achieved further
success. The leading actress (Halle Berry) in the film Monster's Ball by
Swiss director Marc Forster received an Oscar for her role. The Swiss
film industry has had recent successes with Mein Name ist Eugen, Heidi
and Schellen-Ursli.
The most successful Swiss in the
international film business is the producer Arthur Cohn, who has been
nominated for an Oscar four times and won three Oscars in the category
of Best Documentary.
The Swiss Film Prize is awarded at the
Solothurn Film Festival at the end of January. The Locarno International
Film Festival, one of the most important international film festivals in
the world, also takes place every year in August. The most recent
festival is the Zurich Film Festival, which took place for the first
time in 2005.
Since Switzerland has four national languages, four areas are often
distinguished: the literature of German-, French-, Italian- and
Romansh-speaking Switzerland. There was already literary work in various
monasteries in the Middle Ages: the oldest German-language Easter play
was written in Muri Monastery around 1250 and the first Christmas play
was written a little later in St. Gallen. Although German-language Swiss
literature has always been in the shadow of Germany, there are works
that are known throughout the German-speaking world, including those by
Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Max Frisch, Friedrich Glauser, Jeremias Gotthelf,
Hermann Hesse, Gottfried Keller, Pedro Lenz, Conrad Ferdinand Meyer,
Adolf Muschg and Johanna Spyri. In addition to the dominant Swiss High
German literature, there are also important representatives of Swiss
dialect literature such as Ernst Burren, Pedro Lenz and Kurt Marti. The
bestsellers of the Francophone Joël Dicker have been translated into
over 40 languages and sold millions of copies.
Important
literary events in Switzerland are the Solothurn Literature Days and the
Basel Book and Literature Festival.
According to the museum statistics of the Federal Office of Culture
(FOC), the 1,111 Swiss museums recorded over 12 million admissions in
2015.
The Kunstmuseum Basel was opened in 1661, making it the
oldest public museum in Europe. Its origins lie in the Amerbach family's
cabinet, which included a collection of world-famous paintings and the
estate of Erasmus of Rotterdam.
The Kunsthaus Zürich has the most
important collection of works by Alberto Giacometti, as well as the
largest Munch collection outside Norway. The Kunstmuseum Bern houses
works from eight centuries.
The Fondation Beyeler in Riehen near
Basel is known for modern and contemporary art. It is the most visited
art museum in Switzerland.
The Swiss National Museum has its
headquarters in the Landesmuseum Zürich and houses the largest cultural
history collection in Switzerland. It covers all eras from prehistory to
the 21st century. Since 1998, the Swiss National Museum in western
Switzerland has been located in Prangins Castle in the canton of Vaud.
It focuses on the cultural, social and economic development of
Switzerland in the 18th and 19th centuries.
The second largest
historical museum in Switzerland is the Bern Historical Museum with
250,000 objects of various origins. Particularly worth mentioning are
the Burgundian carpets that were taken from the Burgundian Duke Charles
the Bold during the Burgundian Wars.
Another important museum is
the Anatomical Museum in Basel. This displays original specimens and wax
models of human body parts and organs. Among them is the oldest
anatomical specimen in the world, a skeleton prepared in 1543.
The most visited museum in Switzerland is the Transport Museum in
Lucerne with its large collection of locomotives, cars, ships and
aircraft.
The Technorama in Winterthur is the largest science
center (technology museum) in Switzerland. It carries out numerous
experiments that give visitors an understanding of technical and
scientific connections.
The Jewish Museum of Switzerland in Basel
is the national museum for Jewish religious and everyday history.
Founded in Basel in 1966, it is the first museum of its kind in the
German-speaking world after the Second World War.
In western
Switzerland, several museums focus on international organizations. The
International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum in Geneva documents the
history of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, and
the Olympic Museum in Lausanne documents the modern Olympic movement
since 1896.
The most important federal festivals include the Federal Wrestling
and Alpine Festival, the Federal Yodeling Festival, the Federal
Gymnastics Festival and the Federal Field Shooting.
The desire
for national festivals arose as early as 1799 during the time of the
Helvetic Republic. The Unspunnen Festivals of 1805 and 1808 are
considered the forerunners of the federal festivals. The first federal
festival was the Federal Shooting Festival in 1824. In the 19th century,
the emerging federal festivals, organized on a federalist basis by clubs
and associations, played an important role in the development of the
nation of will and the federal state. The joint festivals express the
solidarity of all participants, even though they belonged to different
linguistic, cultural groups or denominations.
Today, the federal
festivals, which take place at regular intervals, are a popular meeting
place for athletes and musicians from all parts of the country and are
the highlight of many clubs' club life.
The following six national exhibitions have been held since the
founding of the federal state:
1883 in Zurich (Swiss National
Exhibition 1883)
1896 in Geneva
1914 in Bern (Swiss National
Exhibition 1914)
1939 in Zurich (Landi)
1964 in Lausanne (Expo 64)
2002 in Biel/Bienne, Neuchâtel, Yverdon-les-Bains and Murten (Expo.02)
In 1991, to mark the 700th anniversary of the Swiss Confederation,
decentralized celebrations were held in all parts of the country,
including the national research exhibition Heureka in Zurich.
The
G59 was the first of two horticultural exhibitions to date, and took
place in Zurich in 1959. The Grün 80 followed in Basel in 1980.
There are over 700 different traditional costumes in Switzerland. The
umbrella organization for traditional costume people is the Swiss
Traditional Costume Association.
The Pro Helvetia Foundation,
financed by the Swiss Confederation, is responsible for the cultural
representation of Switzerland abroad and for cultural dialogue between
the different parts of the country.
The internationally known Circus
Knie is the largest and most visited circus in Switzerland. Other
well-known circus companies are: Circus Nock, Circus Monti, Circus
Conelli.
The Prix Walo, awarded annually since 1974, is the most
important award in Swiss show business. It is considered the "Swiss
Oscar". Many well-known Swiss actors, cabaret artists and singers have
won the award.
Jassen, a card game from the Bézique family, is
considered the national game in Switzerland. "French" cards are played
west of the Brünig-Napf-Reuss line, and "German" cards are played east
of it.
Cow fights, usually with Eringer cows, take place every spring
and summer in the French-speaking part of Valais.
The smallest political unit is the municipality. Cities are also
counted as municipalities. As of January 1, 2024, there were 2,131
political municipalities. This number is constantly decreasing due to
municipal mergers.
As of December 1, 2020, Zurich is the most
populous city in Switzerland with 433,989 inhabitants, the least
populated is Kammersrohr (SO) with 31 inhabitants. Other large cities
are Geneva with 206,635 inhabitants, Basel with 176,329, Lausanne with
144,160, the federal city of Bern with 136,988 and Winterthur with
119,315 inhabitants. The most populous cities with fewer than 100,000
inhabitants are Lucerne with 85,534, St. Gallen with 78,213, Lugano with
63,495 and Biel/Bienne with 55,932 inhabitants.
Around 1,369,000
people live in the Zurich agglomeration, 592,100 in the Geneva
agglomeration, 547,800 in the Basel agglomeration, 420,800 in the
Lausanne agglomeration and 418,200 in the Bern agglomeration (December
31, 2017). In total, almost three quarters of the population live in one
of the 52 Swiss agglomerations. In 2022, 49% of the population lived in
statistical cities, and 47% or 4.1 million people lived in the
agglomeration - the area that is not part of the country but not really
part of the central city either. Only 14% of the Swiss population live
in rural or village areas, which make up 57% of the country's area.
The largest political municipality in terms of area has been the
municipality of Scuol (GR), which was created through a merger on
January 1, 2015, with 438 square kilometers; previously, the largest
municipality in terms of area was the municipality of Glarus Süd (GL),
which was also created through a merger, with 430 square kilometers. The
smallest municipalities in terms of area are Gottlieben (TG) and Rivaz
(VD), each with 0.31 square kilometers.
The municipality of
Zwischbergen has the largest gender difference of all Swiss
municipalities, with 71% men and 29% women (as of 2022).
Swiss citizenship is the common term for citizenship of the Swiss
Confederation. According to Article 37, paragraph 1 of the Federal
Constitution, it cannot be acquired without simultaneously acquiring the
citizenship of a municipality and the citizenship of the canton.
Municipal and cantonal citizenship convey Swiss citizenship.
The
municipality whose (municipal) citizenship a Swiss citizen has is called
the place of citizenship (also hometown).
The Swiss passport and
identity card serve as proof of citizenship of the Swiss Confederation.
Swiss citizenship law is restrictive by international standards, and
the cantons have different regulations. Children born in Switzerland to
foreigners living in the country do not automatically receive
citizenship.
Swiss citizens who live abroad are called Swiss
Abroad and are also referred to as the Fifth Switzerland. This term is
explained by the four language regions of Switzerland. At the end of
2018, 760,200 Swiss citizens lived abroad, 62% of whom lived in Europe,
16% in North America, 8% in South America, 7% in Asia, 4% in Australia
and 3% in Africa (statistics of those registered with a Swiss diplomatic
mission abroad).
Since the beginning of the 20th century, the population has more than
doubled: from 3.3 million (1900) to 8.6 million (2019). Population
growth leveled off to 0.7 percent in 2018. Population growth peaked
between 1950 and 1970. Population declines only occurred in 1918 as a
result of the Spanish flu and in the economic recession years of
1975–1977. While a total of 148,799 people immigrated to Switzerland in
2012, 96,494 left the country.
The growth of the population with
a Swiss passport has been slower and more constant than that of the
total population since 1981. The development of the foreign resident
population was somewhat faster, but more irregular over the years - with
relatively high annual growth rates of around 3 percent between 1988 and
1993.
While the general birth rate was 2.67 in 1963, it then
steadily decreased to a value of 1.38 in 2001. Since then, there has
been a moderate increase to 1.46 in 2007. This also resulted in a
surplus of births of Swiss nationals (+400) for the first time in ten
years. In 2018, the birth rate was 1.52 children per woman.
According to the Federal Statistical Office, life expectancy in 2019 was
85.6 years for women and 81.9 years for men. According to the United
Nations, Switzerland was the country with the second highest life
expectancy in the world between 2015 and 2020.
The population
density in the flat central plateau is very high by Swiss standards,
with around 450 people per square kilometer on 30 percent of the
country's territory, and naturally low in the Alpine region and in the
Jura. In the canton of Graubünden, located in the Alpine region, the
population density is only a fraction of that (approx. 27 people per
square kilometer). In addition, the Mittelland, but also the canton of
Ticino, is highly urbanized.
Slower immigration has an impact on
the real estate market: according to the Federal Statistical Office, the
number of vacant apartments rose from 40,000 to 65,000 apartments
between 2013 and 2017. As a result, rents are also falling.
In
Switzerland, a distinction is made between foreigners (population
without Swiss citizenship) and the population with a migration
background (population with Swiss citizenship and foreign roots). The
term Secondo is the term used in Switzerland for second-generation
immigrants, some of whom are foreigners and some of whom are Swiss
citizens.
Foreigners are people without Swiss citizenship (the official term
for Swiss nationality). At the end of 2017, 2,126,400 residents without
Swiss citizenship lived in Switzerland, corresponding to a foreigner
share of 25.1 percent, most of them from Italy (317,300), Germany
(304,600), Portugal (266,600) and France (131,100). Every foreigner
receives a foreigner's ID card. Since the beginning of the 19th century,
the proportion of foreigners in the total Swiss population has been
higher than in other European countries. Reasons for this include the
many border regions, the central location in Europe and the small size
of the country. Others see the reason for this more in the restrictive
legislation that prevents faster naturalization. While the average
proportion of foreigners in the entire country is 26.0 percent (as of
2022), many communities have a proportion well above average. 29
municipalities have a foreign population of over 40 percent (as of
2022). In the same year, the municipalities of Rorschach (SG) with 50.6
percent, Spreitenbach (AG) with 50.9 percent and Kreuzlingen (TG) with
56.3 percent recorded the highest proportion of foreigners in
Switzerland.
At the federal level, foreigners have no right to
vote. In 605 municipalities (as of 2019), residents without a Swiss
passport are allowed to take part in elections and votes. Most of these
municipalities are located in French-speaking Switzerland in the cantons
of Neuchâtel (since 1984), Vaud (since 2002), Geneva (since 2005) and
Fribourg (since 2006). In the cantons of Graubünden, Appenzell
Ausserrhoden and Basel-Stadt, municipalities are free to introduce the
right to vote for foreigners. However, only a few municipalities make
use of this right.
The population with a migration background includes people who have
immigrated to Switzerland and whose parents were both born abroad. This
also includes the immediate (direct) descendants of these people
(so-called secondos, members of the second generation) who were born in
Switzerland.
A person with a migration background can have both
Swiss and foreign nationality.
Foreigners of the third generation
and native Swiss whose at least one parent was born in Switzerland are
therefore not considered to have a migration background. The Federal
Statistical Office (FSO) determined that 34.8 percent (2,374,000
inhabitants) of the resident population aged 15 and over throughout
Switzerland as of the end of 2013 were people with a migration
background.
Switzerland complies with its international legal obligations under
the Geneva Refugee Convention. The legal basis is the Asylum Act
(AsylG). The responsible federal authority is the State Secretariat for
Migration (SEM). Asylum seekers and refugees, like all other foreigners,
receive a foreigner's identity card: the "N" identity card is given to
asylum seekers, "F" to temporarily admitted foreigners and "S" to those
in need of protection.
In 2014, 23,765 people applied for asylum
in Switzerland. The majority of asylum seekers came primarily from
Eritrea, followed by Syria and Sri Lanka. In 2015, 39,523 people applied
for asylum, mainly from Eritrea, Afghanistan and Syria.
People who live in Switzerland without a valid residence permit are called sans-papiers (French, literally "people without papers"). Their number is naturally unknown. Estimates vary between 80,000 and 300,000 people; the Federal Statistical Office (FSO) puts the number at around 76,000 in a 2015 study. Most undocumented immigrants work in jobs for "low-skilled" workers. Undocumented immigrants work in industries whose personnel requirements are not fully covered by Swiss or EU nationals. They clean in private households, look after children and the elderly, work on construction sites or in agriculture.
For young men, joining foreign military service as mercenaries was
the most common form of emigration until the first third of the 19th
century. From the 14th century onwards, the so-called mercenaries were
in the service of the emperor, the French kings and Italian cities such
as Milan.
Hunger and poverty after the Thirty Years' War led to
waves of emigration to East Prussia and Russia. At the beginning of the
19th century, the general impoverishment caused by the war led to
emigration to Russia, while in the famine years of 1816–1817, Latin
America in particular was the destination. The agricultural crises of
the 1840s, 1870s and 1880s as well as restructuring problems during
industrialisation led to mass emigration on an unprecedented scale
overseas, especially to North America and South America. At the end of
the 19th century, North America was the destination for almost 90
percent of emigrants. Between 1851 and 1860, around 50,000 people
emigrated overseas, in the 1860s and 1870s 35,000 each year, and between
1881 and 1890 over 90,000. By 1930, the number of emigrants per decade
had stabilized at between 40,000 and 50,000. In some cantons, the
authorities urged poor people to emigrate on a large scale.
The
emigrants founded colonies in the New World, such as New Bern in North
Carolina in 1710, Nouvelle Vevay (now New Vevay) in Indiana in 1803, New
Switzerland in Illinois in 1831, and New Glarus in Wisconsin in 1845.
The most famous emigrant was probably Johann August Sutter. The
Californian landowner known as General Sutter founded the private colony
of New Helvetia. The Californian gold rush broke out on his land in
1848.
According to empirical data, the migration balance for the
area of present-day Switzerland was always negative from the second
half of the 16th century to the end of the 19th century.
Today, Switzerland is - like almost all wealthy western countries in
the world - a country of immigration. During the period of
industrialization, there was a large internal migration, especially from
the Alps. Since the great economic growth in the 1960s, guest workers
were specifically recruited, and later on, Switzerland was repeatedly
flooded with refugees, for example from the former Yugoslavia during the
Yugoslavian wars. Many guest workers came from Turkey to Western Europe
and thus also to Switzerland. After 8,544 people (4,876 of them Germans)
moved from Germany to Switzerland in 1992, the number was 14,792
(11,225) in 2003 and 35,061 (29,139) in 2008. After that, immigration
from Germany decreased to 25,881 (19,930 Germans) in 2014. In 2015,
106,805 people immigrated from the EU/EFTA and 55,111 EU/EFTA nationals
left Switzerland. In 2008, only a few more people, 113,235, immigrated
from the EU/EFTA. A few thousand people from third countries receive
labor market access each year.
In 2017, Italian citizens made up
the largest group of foreigners at 14.9 percent, followed by German
(14.3 percent), Portuguese (12.5), French (6.2), Kosovar (5.2), Spanish
(3.9), Turkish (3.2) and Serbian (3.1) citizens. 19.9 percent come from
the rest of Europe, 7.9 from Asia, 5.1 from Africa and 3.8 from America.
42,699 people, mainly from Italy, Germany, Portugal, France and
Kosovo, were naturalized in 2015. In 2008, 45,305 people were
naturalized, mainly from Kosovo, Italy, Germany and Turkey.
In
the first naturalized generation, the probability of participating in
elections remains around ten to twelve percent lower than among voters
who have been resident for several generations, said political scientist
Anita Manatschal in 2021, who researches the so-called participation
gap, i.e. the participation gap between people with and without a
migration background in democracy.
According to a 2021 survey, German is the most widely spoken language
in Switzerland; 62% of the permanent resident population aged 15 and
over speak it as their main language. In German-speaking Switzerland
(pale pink on the map), Swiss German dialects and, to a lesser extent,
(Swiss) High German are spoken, while written material is usually
written in Swiss High German. This is the name for the variety of
standard German used in Switzerland. It differs from the standard
variety of other German-speaking areas in vocabulary, word formation,
semantics, orthography (e.g. no ß) and pronunciation. The corresponding
peculiarities are called Helvetisms. Swiss German belongs to the
Alemannic dialect area. Only the municipality of Samnaun belongs to the
Bavarian dialect area.
French is spoken as a main language by
around 23 percent of the total population. The predominantly
French-speaking part of the country (purple) is known as Romandie,
Suisse romande, Western Switzerland or – less frequently – as
Welschland. In addition to the standard French that predominates today,
only a small minority still speaks Patois (dialect).
Italian is
spoken in the canton of Ticino and in four southern valleys (Misox,
Calanca Valley, Bergell, Puschlav) as well as the municipality of Bivio
in the canton of Graubünden (Grigioni italiano) (green). Italian is the
main language for 8 percent of the total population of Switzerland. A
large, but dwindling, part of the Italian-speaking population speaks
local dialects that belong to Lombardy («Ticinées»).
The fourth
national language, Romansh (yellow), accounts for 0.5 percent of the
total population and is spoken in Graubünden; however, practically all
Romansh speakers also speak German. The existence of Romansh has been
endangered since the 19th century and, despite support measures, is
gradually being displaced by German. Since 1860, 51 Graubünden
communities have switched from Romansh to German-speaking areas. In
1938, the people approved a constitutional amendment that made Romansh
the fourth national language of Switzerland; since 1996, Romansh has
been an official language of Switzerland alongside German, French and
Italian. Since 2001, the written language Rumantsch Grischun has been
the official written language in the canton of Graubünden and is also
used at federal level for communication with the Romansh-speaking
population. In the Romansh communities, however, one of the five
regional varieties serves as the official language.
The Federal
Constitution does not specify the language areas of Switzerland. Article
70, paragraph 2 of the Federal Constitution gives the cantons the
authority to determine their official languages. In doing so, however,
they must take linguistic minorities and the traditional composition of
the language areas into account. Anyone moving from a part of the
country where a different language is spoken has no right to communicate
with the new cantonal and municipal authorities in their native language
(territoriality principle).
Of the bilingual cantons, only Bern
and Valais have defined the language areas spatially; the bilingual
canton of Fribourg assigns the regulation of the official language to
the municipalities.
The municipalities of Biel/Bienne,
Evilard/Leubringen and Fribourg/Fribourg on the French-German language
border ("Röstigraben") are officially bilingual by cantonal
constitution. Some other municipalities, such as those in the
Murten/Morat school district and in the area around Biel, also offer
bilingual services and schools to accommodate the French-speaking
minority.
In the canton of Graubünden, according to Article 16 of
the Graubünden Language Act of 2006, municipalities are officially
considered monolingual Romansh if at least 40 percent of the inhabitants
speak this language, and bilingual if at least 20 percent speak it. In
practice, this can mean that Romansh is the administrative and school
language, but Swiss German is the general language of communication.
The canton of Ticino defines itself as belonging entirely to the
Italian-speaking area and the canton of Jura as belonging entirely to
the French-speaking area, although one municipality in each case (Jura:
Ederswiler, Ticino: Bosco/Gurin) has a German-speaking majority.
The number of travellers, among whom the Yenish form the vast majority
alongside a smaller number of Sinti and Roma, is not recorded in
censuses, but official estimates put it at 20,000 to 35,000. This would
correspond to a share of approximately 0.5 percent. Yenish live
scattered throughout Switzerland and, in addition to their internal
group language, Yenish, usually speak one of the national languages.
Yiddish (Western Yiddish) has an old tradition in Switzerland in the
Surbtal villages of Endingen and Lengnau due to the Jewish communities
there, which are now only marginal. Yiddish (Eastern Yiddish) has a more
recent tradition in the city of Zurich, where it is sometimes spoken in
ultra-orthodox circles. Since 1997, Switzerland has considered the
speakers of Yenish and Yiddish as national, non-territorial "minority
communities" within the framework of the European Charter for Regional
or Minority Languages, but their languages are not recognised as
national minority languages.
Sign languages are spoken by
around 10,000 people living in Switzerland. In Switzerland, the Swiss
German Sign Language (DSGS), the Langue des signes Suisse romande
(LSF-SR, French-speaking Swiss Sign Language) and the Lingua dei segni
della Svizzera italiana (LIS-SI, Ticino Sign Language) are used.
25 percent of the total population has another main language. Due to
immigration, 9 percent of residents now speak languages other than the
national languages. Of these, English, Portuguese, Albanian, Spanish,
Serbian-Croatian-Bosnian-Montenegrin are the most widely spoken (with
decreasing prevalence). Others are Turkish, Tamil and Tigrinya.
As foreign languages, students in public schools learn at least one
second national language and English. There are discussions about
whether English should be taught at the same time as or even before the
second national language. Due to protests from the other language region
and fundamental considerations regarding the cohesion of Switzerland,
purely English-language teaching has not yet been able to prevail
anywhere.
Of the total Swiss resident population in 2017, 3,213,411 people
(37.9 percent) were members of the Roman Catholic Church and 2,150,387
people (25.3 percent) were members of the Evangelical Reformed Church
(100 percent: 8,484,130 people).
According to a survey by the
Federal Statistical Office (FSO), of the resident population aged 15 and
over in 2017, 35.9 percent were Roman Catholic, 26.0 percent were
non-denominational, 23.8 percent were Evangelical Reformed, 5.9 percent
belonged to other Christian communities (free churches, Christian
Catholics and Orthodox Christians), 5.4 percent belonged to Islamic
communities, 1.6 percent belonged to other religious communities
(including 0.3 percent Jews) and 1.4 percent did not provide any
information. In 2022, the non-denominational, with a share of around 34
percent, were ahead of the Catholics for the first time, who reached a
share of around 32 percent.
According to a study by the Pew
Research Center from 2017, 75 percent of the adult population in
Switzerland describe themselves as Christians - regardless of whether
they officially belong to a particular Christian denomination or church,
e.g. by paying church tax. However, only 27 percent of Christians attend
a church service at least once a month. 21 percent of those surveyed do
not feel they belong to any religion, with almost half of them
describing themselves as atheists.
Freedom of religion in
Switzerland is enshrined as a fundamental constitutional right. It is up
to the cantons whether they want to grant selected religious communities
a special status as a public corporation and thus as a national church.
In most cantons, the Roman Catholic Church and the Evangelical Reformed
Church, in many cantons also the Christian Catholic Church and in some
cantons the Jewish communities have this status. In 1973, the Israelite
Community of Basel (IGB) in the canton of Basel-Stadt was the first
Jewish community in Switzerland to be recognized under public law by the
canton, with the cantons of Bern, Fribourg, St. Gallen, Vaud and Zurich
now having the same law. The Christian Catholic Church is only important
in parts of northwestern Switzerland. In the western Swiss cantons of
Geneva and Neuchâtel there are no national churches because church and
state are completely separate there; they are nevertheless recognized as
"organizations of public interest". In Basel there is the so-called
"limping separation" of church and state.
At 0.33 percent,
Buddhism is more strongly represented in Switzerland than in other
European countries. Synagogues, mosques and Buddhist temples exist in
several places in Switzerland. Historically, the inhabitants of the
cantons of Zurich, Bern, Basel-Stadt, Basel-Landschaft (except the
district of Arlesheim), Schaffhausen, Appenzell Ausserrhoden and Vaud
were almost exclusively Protestant around 1850, while those of the
cantons of Fribourg (except the district of Murten), Valais, Jura,
Solothurn (except the district of Bucheggberg), Lucerne, Obwalden and
Nidwalden, Uri, Schwyz, Zug, Appenzell Innerrhoden and Ticino were
almost exclusively Catholic. In contrast, the cantons of Glarus, Aargau,
St. Gallen, Graubünden and Geneva were denominationally mixed. The
distribution of denominations was the result of the application of the
territorial principle in the choice of denomination after the religious
wars of the 16th century; the denominationally mixed cantons either had
new cantonal borders (Aargau, St. Gallen, Geneva) or had a traditional
community-based definition (Glarus, Graubünden). Parity, i.e. the
simultaneous presence of both denominations in the same place, was the
exception; it applied in Toggenburg, in parts of the former subject
territories of the Confederation (Thurgau, Echallens) and in some
communities in Graubünden and Glarus.
A referendum in Vorarlberg
in 1919 on negotiations with Switzerland about joining the Swiss
Confederation resulted in a good 80 percent approval, but further
negotiations failed because of the Reformed Church in Switzerland, who
would have lost their then majority if an additional canton with
Catholics were added.
Politics
Switzerland's politics are shaped by its self-image as a
nation of will - the national identity is not based on a common language
and culture, but rather on a common history, common myths, liberal,
grassroots democratic and federalist traditions, and partly on the
feeling of being a "special case" as a neutral and multilingual,
self-reliant "small state" in Europe. A directorial system exists.
These conditions have been reflected in a political system that is
unique in its entirety, in which federalism, expanded political rights
of the people and elements of direct democracy, foreign policy
neutrality and domestic policy consensus are at the forefront.
See also: Direct democracy in Switzerland and List of federal
referendums
Political system
Switzerland is a republican
federal state. It differs from other republics in that it has
elements of direct democracy: the people can have a direct influence on
government activities through initiatives and referendums. In two
cantons, Appenzell Innerrhoden and Glarus, there is still an original
form of Swiss grassroots democracy: the Landsgemeinde.
the pronounced
federalism: the cantons, alongside the people, are the constitutional
legislators of the federal government and retain all tasks that are not
explicitly assigned to the federal government in the federal
constitution. In addition, the cantons are heavily involved in all
phases of political decision-making (consultation, Council of States,
majority of the cantons)
the consensus democracy
their
self-declared Swiss neutrality
As is usual in democracies, state
power is divided into three pillars, based on the Federal Constitution
of the Swiss Confederation:
The legislature (Federal Assembly)
consists of two chambers, the National Council with 200 members as
representatives of the people and the Council of States with 46 members
as representatives of the cantons. The Swiss parliament is a so-called
militia parliament: the National Council and Council of States members
exercise their mandate (at least nominally) part-time. The renewal
elections take place every four years.
The executive is the Federal
Council with the administration. It consists of seven equal members
(principle of collegiality), the so-called "Federal Councillors"
(ministers), each of whom heads a department (ministry) of the federal
administration. The Federal Councillors are elected by Parliament. A
member of the Federal Council is elected as Federal President by the
Federal Assembly for one year at a time. He chairs the meetings of the
Federal Council and carries out representative tasks at home and abroad,
but has no privileges over the rest of the Federal Council. The
presidency usually rotates based on seniority, the actual election is
generally considered a formality to confirm it; rejection by Parliament
is theoretically possible, however. During this year, the Federal
President is usually addressed in public as Mr. Federal President, Madam
Federal President, and no longer as Mr. Federal Councillor or Madam
Federal Councillor. During the presidential year, a Federal Councillor
fully carries out his usual government duties.
At federal level, the
judiciary consists of the Federal Supreme Court based in Lausanne and
two social law divisions of the Federal Supreme Court in Lucerne (until
2006: the Federal Insurance Court) as the highest judicial authority.
The lower federal authorities are the Federal Criminal Court in
Bellinzona, the Federal Administrative Court and the Federal Patent
Court, both in St. Gallen, and finally the Federal Valuation Commission,
a special administrative court. The federal judges, who usually belong
to a party, are elected by the Federal Assembly. The Criminal Court
began work in 2004; the Administrative Court did so in 2007.
There is
no special Constitutional Court in Switzerland as in other countries,
but all courts can exercise (limited) constitutional jurisdiction.
According to Article 190 of the Federal Constitution (BV), federal laws
are binding for the Federal Supreme Court and the other courts; they
cannot revoke them, declare them invalid or refuse to apply them.
The order of the individual Federal Councillors is as follows: The
Federal President is at the top of the list, followed by the Vice
President. The Federal Councillors then follow in order of length of
office for re-election according to the principle of seniority.
As part of the 2023 Federal Council elections, the United Federal
Assembly elected the seven Federal Councillors and the Federal
Chancellor on December 13, 2023. Six of the previous Federal Councillors
were re-elected and one was newly elected, Beat Jans was elected to
replace Alain Berset. The current composition of the Federal Council
with party affiliation and distribution of departments is:
Elisabeth
Baume-Schneider (SP/JU), Federal Department of Home Affairs (FDHA)
Guy Parmelin (SVP/VD), Federal Department of Economic Affairs, Education
and Research (EAER)
Ignazio Cassis (FDP/TI), Federal Department of
Foreign Affairs (FDFA)
Viola Amherd (Die Mitte/VS), Federal President
2024, Federal Department of Defense, Civil Protection and Sport (DDPS)
Karin Keller-Sutter (FDP/SG), Vice President 2024, Federal Department of
Finance (FDF)
Albert Rösti (SVP/BE), Federal Department of the
Environment, Transport, Energy and Communications (DETEC)
Beat Jans
(SP/BS), Federal Department of Justice and Police Department (FDJP)
Viktor Rossi (GLP/BE) has been the Federal Chancellor of the Swiss
Confederation and thus Head of the Federal Chancellery (BK) since
January 2024.
Public budgets in total (federal government, cantons and
municipalities)
The public budgets together included expenditure of
CHF 224.876 billion in 2019 and CHF 249.530 billion in 2021, including
extraordinary expenditure for the COVID-19 pandemic; this was offset by
revenues of CHF 232.389 billion in 2019 and CHF 242.820 billion in 2021.
This results in a budget surplus of 1.3 percent of gross domestic
product in 2019 and a deficit of -0.3 percent of GDP in 2021.
According to the Maastricht criteria, public debt was 25.6 percent of
gross domestic product in 2019 and 27.6 percent in 2021.
In 2020,
the share of government spending (as a percentage of gross domestic
product) in the area of social security was 16.1 percent, in the area
of education 5.3 percent, in the area of health 2.6 percent and in
the area of defense 0.9 percent.
In 2022, the federal government recorded revenues (income) of around
77 billion francs. The most important source of revenue was the direct
federal tax at 34 percent, followed by value added tax (three different
rates) at 32 percent, the mineral oil tax (6 percent), the withholding
tax (5 percent), the tobacco tax (3 percent), stamp duties (3 percent),
other fiscal revenues (9 percent) and non-fiscal revenues (5 percent),
as well as extraordinary revenues (2 percent).
In 2022, the
federal government spent around 81 billion francs on the following
sectors: social welfare (33 percent), finance and taxes (14 percent),
transport (13 percent), education and research (10 percent), security (8
percent), agriculture and food (5 percent), foreign relations (5
percent), economy (3 percent), and other expenses (10 percent).
The debt brake, which has been anchored in the constitution since 2003,
is intended to oblige the federal government to keep income and
expenditure in balance over the economic cycle.
The credit rating
agency Standard & Poor's has been giving Switzerland's government bonds
the top rating of "AAA" since 1989 (as of 2018). Long-term interest
rates on Swiss government bonds are very low by international
comparison.
Büsingen on the Upper Rhine and Campione d’Italia are enclaves in
Switzerland. The German municipality of Büsingen is surrounded by the
canton of Schaffhausen to the north of the Rhine, and to the south it
borders the cantons of Zurich and Thurgau. The Italian town of Campione,
known for its casino, is located on Lake Lugano within the canton of
Ticino. In terms of customs law, both enclaves have been treated
differently since January 1, 2020. While Büsingen is part of the Swiss
customs area, Campione has not been since January 1, 2020. Instead, the
municipality has been part of the Union's customs area since then.
The Italian town of Livigno was a functional enclave for a long
time. Since the construction of a pass road, Livigno can also be reached
from Italy. In order to make life in the remote location more
attractive, the municipality is now an Italian customs exclusion area,
after previously belonging to the Swiss customs area.
The
municipality of Samnaun was a functional exclave for a long time, as the
only access road ran through Austrian territory until 1912. Today the
municipality is a Swiss customs-free zone.
Switzerland sees itself as neutral in foreign policy, i.e. it does
not participate in wars between states. Switzerland's neutrality was
recognized at the Congress of Vienna in 1815. It is permanent and armed
and is still expressly recognized internationally today.
Switzerland is a member of many international organizations. Switzerland
was one of the last countries to join the UN in 2002, but was also the
first country whose people were allowed to vote on joining. Switzerland
is also active in the Organization for Security and Cooperation in
Europe (OSCE), the Council of Europe and the European Free Trade
Association (EFTA). Switzerland participates in NATO's Partnership for
Peace and has ratified the Kyoto Protocol. In 2024, Switzerland was
elected to the UN Human Rights Council for the fourth time and will hold
a seat there from January 2025 to the end of 2027. Switzerland
cooperates with several European organizations in research. It is a
founding member of both the European Space Agency (ESA) and the European
Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) and, together with Geneva, is
the location of the research facility. Switzerland is part of the
Schengen area.
Switzerland is neither a member of the European
Union (EU) nor the European Economic Area (EEA); however, important
bilateral agreements exist between Switzerland and the EU. Since 2004,
the Swiss Federal President has taken part in the annual meetings of the
heads of state of the German-speaking countries, a format that goes back
to the desire of the then Federal President Joseph Deiss to intensify
dialogue with the EU. Joining NATO would conflict with Switzerland's
neutrality.
The relationship between Switzerland and the Principality of
Liechtenstein has been regulated by a customs treaty since 1923
(officially: "Treaty between Switzerland and Liechtenstein on the
annexation of the Principality of Liechtenstein to the Swiss customs
territory").
After Austria lost the First World War and the
Austrian monarchy collapsed, Prince Johann II dissolved the 1852 customs
treaty with Austria in 1919 and sought proximity to Switzerland. Since
the signing of the customs treaty with Switzerland in 1923, the
principality has belonged to the Swiss customs territory and the
national currency is the Swiss franc. However, Liechtenstein did not
conclude an official currency treaty with Switzerland until June 19,
1980. The customs treaty continues to guarantee the full sovereign
rights of His Serene Highness the Prince of Liechtenstein. The treaty
ensures a close partnership between the two states to this day.
The good offices have a long tradition in Swiss foreign policy. In addition to the protecting power mandates, they play a central role in Swiss peace policy. Switzerland's good offices are not limited to making its territory available to conflict parties as a place of negotiation ("hotelier function"), but it also offers itself as a mediator (conflict mediation).
Protecting foreign interests as a protecting power is a classic
element of good offices and, historically, of great importance for
Switzerland.
The beginnings of the Swiss tradition of protecting
power date back to the 19th century. The Swiss Confederation represented
the interests of the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Grand Duchy of Baden in
France in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 and 1871. Switzerland laid the
foundations for its reputation as the most significant and important
protecting power in the world in the first half of the 20th century.
During the First World War, Switzerland took on 36 mandates to represent
interests. Switzerland's activity as a protecting power reached its peak
in the Second World War in 1943/44 with 219 mandates for 35 states.
After the end of hostilities, the number of mandates quickly decreased
again. During the Cold War, several countries again used Switzerland to
represent their interests. Switzerland is the most important country for
protecting power mandates, ahead of Sweden and Austria, and usually had
more than 20 mandates between 1966 and 1974. The main reasons for this
are its extensive experience, neutral stance and extensive diplomatic
representation network.
Switzerland currently holds seven
diplomatic mandates (as of September 2020):
United States in Iran
(1980): Comprehensive mandate that dates back to the Tehran
hostage-taking in 1979-1981 and the resulting severance of diplomatic
relations.
Iran in Egypt (1979)
Russia in Georgia (December 13,
2008)
Georgia in Russia (January 12, 2009)
Iran in Saudi Arabia
(2016)
Saudi Arabia in Iran (2016)
Iran in Canada (2019)
Only the representation of the interests of the United States in Iran is
a comprehensive mandate. The other mandates are of a more formal nature.
After Cuba and the United States resumed direct diplomatic relations
in 2015, Switzerland's mandate as protecting power for the United States
in Havana expired in July 2015 after 54 years.
According to the World Peace Index, Switzerland ranks eleventh in the list of the safest countries in the world in 2019 (out of 163 nations).
The Swiss Army is the armed force of the Swiss Confederation. It
consists of the army and air force. The annual budget is around 4.873
billion francs (2011).
The special feature of the Swiss armed
forces is their militia system. Professional and part-time military
personnel make up only about 5 percent of the army members; all the rest
are citizens aged between 20 and 34 (in special cases up to 50) who are
subject to military service. Swiss citizens are prohibited from serving
in a foreign army. The Vatican Swiss Guard is an exception to this, as
it is viewed by Switzerland as a security service only.
As part
of the militia system, members of the army keep their personal
equipment, including personal weapons (including pocket ammunition until
2008), at home. The peculiarities of the militia system gave rise to the
previously common saying "Switzerland has no army, Switzerland is an
army". All male Swiss citizens are required to perform military service.
Women can volunteer for military service, and since 2007 they have been
subject to the same physical requirements as men. Every year, around
20,000 people are trained to become soldiers in recruit schools lasting
18 or 21 weeks. Those unfit for military service serve in the civil
defence and also pay an annual military service tax. Conscientious
objectors have the option of performing civilian service, provided they
claim reasons of conscience and are prepared to complete one and a half
as many days of service as soldiers as proof of their actions. Refusal
to serve for other reasons (such as political or personal reasons)
necessarily leads to military court proceedings.
With the "Army
XXI" reform - approved by referendum in 2003 - the number of troops
planned in the previous "Army 95" model was reduced from 400,000 to
around 200,000. Of these, 120,000 are assigned to active units and
80,000 to reserve units.
A total of three general mobilizations
(GMob; also war mobilization, KMob) took place to protect the integrity
and neutrality of Switzerland. The first GMob took place on the occasion
of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71. In response to the outbreak of
the First World War and to prevent a German or French march through
Switzerland, the army's GMob was renewed on August 3, 1914. The army's
third GMob took place on September 1, 1939 in response to the German
invasion of Poland. Henri Guisan was elected general and during the war
years became the main integration figure of the Swiss Confederation,
which was surrounded by the Axis powers.
Since its founding in
1848, Switzerland today has never been confronted with open attacks by
enemy forces on land. During the Second World War, however, there were
frequent airspace violations by German and Allied fighter aircraft. In
the most serious attack, 40 people died in the bombing of Schaffhausen
on April 1, 1944, and 270 were injured, some seriously.
Since the
military threat situation for Switzerland in today's Europe has changed,
the army is repeatedly being questioned. The Group for a Switzerland
without an Army (GSoA) in particular has been campaigning for its
abolition for years - but so far without success: two votes to abolish
the army were clearly rejected by the people. The question of whether
peacekeeping army missions abroad are compatible with neutrality is also
controversial.
The civil protection organization, founded in 1934, is subordinate to the Federal Department of Defense, Civil Protection and Sport. In the event of a disaster, it is the second-tier operational resource (after the fire brigade, police and health/emergency services, but before members of the army) and is responsible for protecting, caring for and supporting the civilian population. The civil protection organization also takes care of protecting cultural assets, supports the management bodies at the municipal and regional level and repairs infrastructure.
The Swiss intelligence service NDB, which has existed since January
1, 2010, emerged from the merger of the Service for Analysis and
Prevention DAP and the Strategic Intelligence Service SND. The NDB
reports directly to the head of the Department of Defense, Civil
Protection and Sport (DDPS). The intelligence service obtains
information using intelligence or secret service means and analyzes and
evaluates it with the aim of creating a management-relevant intelligence
situation for decision-makers at all levels. With its operational and
preventive services, the NDB contributes directly to the protection of
Switzerland.
Switzerland is likely to want to participate in the
French espionage system Composante Spatiale Optique, as it does not
maintain its own satellites.
The Federal Office for Customs and Border Security (FOCA) was formed on January 1, 2021 through the merger and reorganization of the Border Guard Corps and the Federal Customs Administration (FCA). It is responsible for customs issues and border security.
Police sovereignty in Switzerland lies with the cantons. Each canton
has its own cantonal police to enforce police power. In some cantons,
basic police services are provided by city/municipal police, such as the
Zurich city police. The respective cantonal police are also responsible
for security at the airports located in their canton. The Federal Office
of Police (fedpol) is responsible for coordination between the cantonal
police and foreign police stations.
The general emergency number
for the police in Switzerland is 117. Anyone who dials the European
emergency number 112 is automatically connected to the operations center
of the responsible cantonal police.
In most cantons, adult men and sometimes women are required to join
the fire service. Organizing a fire service is primarily the
responsibility of the municipalities. However, more and more local fire
services are merging regionally. The fire service in Switzerland can be
reached via the emergency number 118.
In 2019, the fire service
was made up of 1,185 professional and around 80,110 volunteer
firefighters, who work in 1,272 fire stations and firehouses. The
proportion of women is nine percent. In the same year, the Swiss fire
services were called out to 70,939 missions, and 12,935 fires had to be
extinguished. The Swiss Fire Brigade Association represents the fire
services of Switzerland in the International Fire Brigade Federation
CTIF.
The Swiss Air Rescue Service (Rega) is an independent and non-profit private foundation and is responsible for air rescue in Switzerland. It works closely with the emergency services, police, fire brigade and medical services. Rega is a close partner of the Swiss Alpine Club SAC for alpine rescue and recovery operations. In the canton of Valais, it is not Rega, but Air-Glaciers and Air Zermatt that are responsible for air rescue. Rega can be reached in Switzerland on the emergency number 1414.
Switzerland is a very well-developed welfare state. There are several
social insurance schemes. These are compulsory insurance schemes, which
means that residents are required to be insured. The most important
social insurance schemes are:
Old age and survivors insurance (AHV),
state pension insurance
Health insurance
Maternity insurance
Accident insurance
Disability insurance (IV) for people who can no
longer work full-time due to disabilities or who need supplementary
benefits
The state pension insurance (AHV), occupational pension
provision (pension fund) and private pension provision are collectively
referred to as the three-pillar system. For employed people,
occupational pension provision, the pension fund, is compulsory. This is
regulated by the private sector and is the responsibility of the
employer. Private pension provision, on the other hand, is voluntary in
the form of life insurance, for example. These are tax-advantaged up to
a certain limit.
There is also the income replacement scheme, so
that those liable for military service receive a daily allowance while
performing military duties. Unemployment insurance is also compulsory.
In Switzerland, every resident - regardless of nationality - is
obliged under the Health Insurance Act to insure themselves with a
health insurance company of their choice to cover the costs of treatment
in the event of illness ("basic insurance", "compulsory health
insurance"). Health insurance companies in Switzerland are exclusively
private companies. They are legally obliged to accept anyone who submits
a corresponding application into basic insurance, provided that they are
resident in the area of activity of the insurance company. The payment
of the premium (membership fee) is the responsibility of the insured
person. This is a per capita premium, i.e. the premium is independent of
income, but varies from health insurance company to health insurance
company and from canton to canton. Low-income people are granted
individual premium reductions by the state. State hospitals are financed
on the one hand by income from treatments, and on the other hand by
subsidies from the cantons or municipalities. Private hospitals, on the
other hand, are usually financed only from treatment fees, which are
therefore significantly higher than those of state hospitals. The
statutory basic insurance does not therefore cover treatment in private
clinics. Outpatient treatment, on the other hand, is covered by the
basic insurance throughout Switzerland and by any approved service
provider. Dental treatment is not covered by health insurance, with a
few exceptions. There are contracts with the EU states that regulate the
mutual assumption of treatment in emergencies (form E111).
Every
employee is compulsorily insured for treatment costs in the event of
accidents under the Accident Insurance Act (UVG). Most employees are
also insured against loss of wages, with the exception of
non-occupational accidents for marginal employees who work less than
eight hours for one employer. On the one hand, there is an independent
accident insurance under public law (Swiss Accident Insurance Institute,
SUVA for short), and on the other hand, most private insurance companies
also offer accident insurance under UVG. The responsibility, whether
SUVA or private insurance, depends on the employer's industry and is
regulated by the Federal Council in an ordinance. Industries with a
higher risk of accidents, such as construction and forestry, are insured
with SUVA, for example. It is the employer's responsibility to insure
all employees - even in the event of accidents during leisure time.
Anyone who is not employed must take out insurance with their health
insurance company to cover treatment costs in the event of accidents.
The Swiss school system is a complex structure. The responsibility
for the school system does not lie exclusively with the federal
government, but is mainly the responsibility of the cantons due to
federalism. In Switzerland, the average length of schooling for the
population over 25 years of age in 2015 was 13.4 years, making it the
longest in the world.
The federal government and the cantons
share responsibility for the education system, although the cantons have
extensive autonomy. The federal level defines the guarantee of free
schooling, the start of a school year in August and the guarantee of
quality requirements. In other areas, the cantons have sole authority in
compulsory schooling.
The federal government has somewhat greater
authority in secondary schools. However, the cantons are still
responsible for implementation and the responsibility rests with them.
At the tertiary level, the powers are also distributed. The federal
government has regulatory authority for the universities of applied
sciences (FH) and the two Federal Institutes of Technology (ETH) in
Zurich (ETHZ) and Lausanne (EPFL), as well as for the Federal Institute
of Sport in Magglingen. The universities are in turn under the control
of the cantons.
Due to these facts, one can speak of 26 different
school systems in Switzerland, corresponding to the number of cantons.
The length of primary school, lower secondary level and the number
of levels (performance level) in lower secondary level vary from canton
to canton; in total it is usually nine years. There are also major
differences in the school subject matter. The teaching materials (school
books) are usually produced and distributed by the cantons themselves.
After the end of the compulsory period, however, all are at a similar
level. After compulsory schooling, one has the choice between a
secondary school that leads to the Matura, or starting vocational
training, an apprenticeship. The apprenticeship is accompanied by
regular attendance at a vocational school. Attending a vocational
secondary school (BMS) at the same time, which leads to the vocational
baccalaureate, is voluntary. Most Swiss students choose to do an
apprenticeship. The BMS provides access to study at a university of
applied sciences. The new so-called "Passerelle" also enables access to
a university without taking an exam after obtaining the vocational
baccalaureate certificate (BM certificate) by completing an additional
school year and taking an additional exam.
Switzerland is the depositary state of the Geneva Conventions. The
intergovernmental agreement is an essential component of international
humanitarian law.
In 1942, with the introduction of the Swiss
Criminal Code, the death penalty was abolished in civil criminal
proceedings in Switzerland. Since 1999, the death penalty has also been
banned at constitutional level.
In 1974, Switzerland ratified the
European Convention on Human Rights.
Switzerland has a national
human rights institution and a national commission for the prevention of
torture. The commission visits places of deprivation of liberty. A
referendum passed a constitutional amendment according to which foreign
nationals convicted of certain crimes must be immediately deported to
their home countries. Criminal law still did not contain a definition of
torture recognized under international law.
Amnesty International
has repeatedly criticized Switzerland's asylum policy. In 2010, the UN
Committee against Torture expressed concern that the Swiss Federal Law
on Foreign Nationals could violate the principle of non-refoulement. The
law allows the automatic expulsion of foreign nationals who are
considered a security threat, without the affected parties being able to
appeal. In the same year, the UN Committee on Economic, Social and
Cultural Rights expressed concern that, given the inadequate facilities
for receiving asylum seekers, people are being housed indefinitely in
underground civil defence facilities.
From February 2010, the
Federal Administrative Court suspended the transfer of several asylum
seekers to Greece under the Dublin II Regulation in order to await a
ruling on the question of the admissibility of these transfers to
Greece. Despite this, the Federal Office for Migration (BOM) deported a
total of 50 asylum seekers to Greece in the course of 2010.
Switzerland and its cantons are considered to be one of the few states that do not award orders or decorations.
The transport sector in Switzerland is responsible for more than a
third of CO2 emissions. Motorised transport is also the main contributor
to high ozone pollution. Most of the passenger transport in Switzerland
is for leisure travel. The well-developed public transport network is
noticeable in the fact that around a fifth of all Swiss households do
not have their own car. This proportion rises to as much as 57 percent
in cities, further supported by the fact that shared cars are also
widespread in Switzerland.
In the canton of Graubünden, motorised
private transport was banned from 1900 to 1925.
The railway network measured 5,317 kilometres in 2020. With around
122 metres per square kilometre, Switzerland has the densest railway
network in the world (excluding small states such as the Vatican City or
Monaco), although two thirds of the country is located in very
mountainous terrain and does not contribute to this record. The Swiss
standard gauge railway network is 3,778 kilometres long and is
completely electrified. The narrow-gauge, meter-gauge and broad-gauge
railways have a total length of 1,766 kilometers, of which 30 kilometers
(1.7 percent) are not electrified. 80 percent of the electrification was
carried out with AC (alternating and three-phase current) and 20 percent
with DC (direct current).
With a route of 3,265 kilometers, the
Swiss Federal Railways (SBB) operate the most railway lines. They alone
transport over 300 million passengers annually. The second longest route
network with 420 kilometers is operated by BLS AG, followed immediately
by the meter-gauge Rhaetian Railway with 384 kilometers, whose lines are
located exclusively in the canton of Graubünden. There are also a
further 47 private railway companies in Switzerland. In Switzerland,
private railways are those railway companies that are organized under
private law, i.e. usually as joint-stock companies under the Code of
Obligations. In most cases, the main shareholders are the public sector.
The public sector also plays an important role in financing rail
transport. In 2016, the federal government, cantons and municipalities
covered around 5.1 billion francs (45 percent) of the total costs.
In 2019, every Swiss citizen made an average of 74 train journeys,
covering a distance of 2,505 kilometers; this makes Switzerland the
world's leading rail travel nation.
As part of the New Railway
Transversal through the Alps (NRLA), the Gotthard and Lötschberg Base
Tunnels were built to serve the constitutionally prescribed traffic
shift of transit traffic. The Lötschberg Base Tunnel was put into
operation for regular passenger and freight traffic with the timetable
change on December 9, 2007; the Gotthard Base Tunnel, the longest tunnel
in the world at 57 kilometers, followed on December 11, 2016.
Since 1990, several S-Bahn trains have been built, which now handle a
large part of local rail transport. In order to make fares as simple as
possible, nationwide tariff associations were founded.
International long-distance rail passenger transport is to be promoted
more strongly again. To this end, the transport ministers from Germany,
France, Austria and Switzerland made a fundamental decision in December
2020 and the four state railways SBB, DB, ÖBB and SNCF signed a
corresponding declaration of intent.
In addition to the very dense rail network, buses, trams and light
rail provide the detailed public transport connections.
Bus:
Several dozen regional transport companies transport passengers in the
cities and in the countryside. There is hardly a place that is not
connected to public transport; even the town of Juf (Canton of
Graubünden), the highest settlement in Europe, is served by public
transport every day. Electric trolleybuses are also used in the larger
cities. The yellow post bus forms the backbone of public transport in
many rural and mountainous areas.
Tram: Until the 1960s, trams
operated in many cities and agglomerations. The growing road traffic
required more space, and so trams were replaced by buses in many places.
Many tram lines still exist today in the six cities of Basel, Bern,
Geneva, Neuchâtel, Lausanne and Zurich.
Light rail: In addition
to the S-Bahn, bus and trams, several light rail systems have been built
in recent years or are still in the planning stages. The most recent
light rail system is the Limmattalbahn near Zurich.
Underground:
Apart from the Skymetro at Zurich Airport, the Lausanne metro is the
only urban underground system in Switzerland.
The first passenger cars in Switzerland were on the road at the end
of the 19th century, after the automobile was first demonstrated in
Switzerland at the 1896 National Exhibition in Geneva. Since 1944, the
Swiss Road Transport Federation (FRS, Fédération routière suisse) has
been the coordinated umbrella organization of the very homogeneous
automobile organizations in their interests. The presidency of the Swiss
Touring Club (TCS) and the Swiss Automobile Club (ACS) is held in
rotation. Mass motorization began after the Second World War. The
majority of the population in the densely populated central plateau now
lives less than 10 kilometers from the nearest motorway or highway. A
large area of Switzerland with a relatively small population, on the
other hand, is accessible by main roads, and finally there are various
connections in the mountains over mountain passes and through tunnels,
most of which are closed in winter. In 2024, the total length of all
roads was 85,009 kilometers, of which 1,549 kilometers were motorways.
In 2020, more than a million people were affected by excessive road
traffic noise. In 2017, motorized private transport on the road caused
9.5 billion francs in external costs, which corresponds to 71 percent of
the total external costs of transport in Switzerland. Commuters can
claim a tax deduction for their commute.
The use of the Swiss
road network is generally free of charge for passenger cars. However,
for the use of motorways with white and green signs in Switzerland, a
vignette (sticker vignette or e-vignette) is mandatory for passenger
cars and trailers, the one-off national road tax (40 francs) to be paid
for one year. Fees on a private road accessible to the public are the
absolute exception (the best-known example: the tunnel at the Great St.
Bernard leading to Italy).
Since January 1, 2001, the
performance-related heavy goods vehicle tax (LSVA) has applied to
trucks. It is collected electronically and the amount of which does not
depend on the type of road traveled, but on the distance traveled and
the vehicle's emission category. On February 28, 2016, a referendum
approved the construction of a second tube of the Gotthard road tunnel
with a yes share of 57 percent. The new tunnel tube is needed because of
the renovation of the old Gotthard road tunnel.
As the number of
passenger cars and their size is constantly increasing, the energy
efficiency of road traffic is constantly decreasing. In 2018, a quarter
of all Swiss energy consumption was used in road traffic. In 2021,
17,436 accidents involving personal injury were registered on Swiss
roads, resulting in 16,601 minor injuries, 3,933 serious injuries and
200 road deaths. In 2022, the motorization rate (passenger cars per
1,000 inhabitants) was 540. In 2019, 13,197 purely electric cars were
registered, more than twice as many as in the previous year (+143.9
percent). During the economic crisis in 2020, 236,828 new passenger cars
were registered, the fewest since the oil crisis in the mid-1970s.
Nevertheless, the number of road vehicles has continued to grow.
In aircraft registration, the Swiss national emblem is HB, Swiss
airports are given ICAO codes that begin with LS.
Switzerland has
three national airports, eleven regional airports, 44 airfields and five
military airfields used by civilians. The largest airports and starting
points for long-haul flights are in Kloten (Zurich Airport) and Cointrin
(Geneva Airport). The third largest airport in Switzerland,
Basel-Mulhouse Airport, is located in Hésingue and Saint-Louis on French
territory. Regional airports are also located in Sitten (Sion Airport),
Belp (Bern-Belp Airport), Agno (Lugano Airport) and Altenrhein (St.
Gallen-Altenrhein Airport). One of the highest airports in Europe,
Engadin Airport, is near Samedan.
The most serious air accident
in Switzerland occurred in 1973 near Basel with Invicta International
Airlines Flight 435, which resulted in 108 fatalities.
Until the
debt restructuring moratorium in October 2001, Swissair was the national
airline and operated a global route network and the regional airline
Crossair. Its successor, Swiss, has been a subsidiary of Deutsche
Lufthansa AG since July 2007 and continues to operate
intercontinentally. Other Swiss airlines include Edelweiss Air and
Helvetic Airways.
The only domestic flight connection is the
Zurich-Geneva route offered by Swiss.
Skyguide, a private limited
company, is responsible for air traffic control in Swiss airspace and
the adjacent airspace in Germany, Austria, France and Italy on behalf of
the Federal Office of Civil Aviation (FOCA). In Swiss airspace, this
includes both civil and military air traffic control.
The federal
air transport service, which is also responsible for the Federal
Council's two jets, is based at Bern-Belp Airport.
According to
Greenpeace, air traffic in Switzerland is subsidized to the tune of 1.7
billion Swiss francs annually, as airlines do not pay mineral oil tax
(see also kerosene tax). In addition, in 2016 the environmental and
health costs of around 1.2 billion Swiss francs from air traffic were
almost entirely borne by the general public. The cost of these external
effects was 1.4 billion Swiss francs in 2017, which corresponds to 10%
of the total external costs of transport in Switzerland. In 2018, 77
percent of destinations from Switzerland were in Europe.
The operating length of public passenger shipping, including car ferries, in 2020 is 514 kilometers. The only international ports with sea connections are the Swiss Rhine ports, which are located in and near Basel on the Rhine.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, numerous Swiss ships transported thousands of slaves to America. The 600-ton frigate Helvétie transported 550 slaves to Havana in Cuba and landed 414 survivors there in February 1792. Swiss ships such as the Ville de Bale, Pays de Vaud and Ville de Lausanne brought slaves to Cap-Francais in the French colony of Saint-Domingue (now Haiti). 50 ships financed by Basel merchants transported 16,261 enslaved blacks to the west; only 14,601 survived the transports. In 1817, the Le Cultivateur brought in 16,236 francs by transporting 178 men, 90 women, 166 boys and 85 girls, after deducting 27 who died en route. Swiss troops also earned money by transporting them to suppress slave uprisings.
Four shipping companies operate (as of 2020) a total of 19
ocean-going vessels under the Swiss flag. Switzerland is considered (as
of April 2022) the fourth largest shipping location in Europe.
In
addition, there are the ports of the inland lakes, which, in addition to
the ferry services across Lake Zurich, Lake Constance and Lake Lucerne
and the development of the municipality of Quinten on Lake Walen, have a
high tourist share.
The only freight traffic on the lakes is
normally gravel transport with ledi ships. Excursion boats operate on
most of the larger lakes and rivers, sometimes only in the summer
months. The restored paddle steamers, which are listed as historical
monuments, are particularly popular with passengers.
Due to the topography, there are many mountain, funicular and aerial
cable cars in Switzerland, which are mainly used for tourist
development, but also as public transport for the development of
settlements. The train station on the Jungfraujoch is the highest train
station in Europe, and the aerial cable car to the Klein Matterhorn is
the highest train station in Europe.
Due to their location, some
places in the Swiss mountain region are not or only partially accessible
by road. The places and holiday settlements in Switzerland that can only
be reached by train or cable car include Belalp, Bettmeralp, Braunwald,
Fiescheralp, Gimmelwald, Gspon, Landarenca, Lauchernalp, Mürren,
Niederrickenbach, Rasa, Riederalp, Schatzalp, Stoos, Wengen, Wirzweli
and Zermatt. For those arriving by car, parking spaces or even parking
garages are available at the last train station accessible by car or at
the valley station, for example in Lauterbrunnen for Mürren and Wengen,
and in Täsch for Zermatt.
In 2015, 37 percent of all journeys or 6 percent of all passenger
kilometers in Switzerland were slow traffic. The bicycle vignette was
abolished at the end of 2011. The Bicycle Path Act came into force on
January 1, 2023, which obliges the federal government and cantons to
plan and build a network of bicycle paths on their roads by the end of
2042.
SwitzerlandMobility is the national network for slow
traffic, especially for leisure and tourism. Slow traffic is the
official umbrella term in Switzerland for hiking, cycling, mountain
biking, skating and canoeing. The project was launched in 1998 and
consists of several parts. The Veloland Switzerland Foundation promotes
recreational cycling in Switzerland and created nine national routes by
1998. Other topics include mountain biking in Switzerland, skating in
Switzerland and canoeing in Switzerland.
The hiking trails are
also part of the SwitzerlandMobile project under the name Hiking in
Switzerland. Switzerland has a network of uniformly marked hiking trails
with a total length of 62,441 km, of which 13,880 km are hard surface
and 23,090 km are mountain trails (as of 2007). There are three types of
hiking trails with different levels of difficulty: yellow marked hiking
trails, white-red-white marked mountain trails and white-blue-white
marked alpine routes. In 2017, SwitzerlandMobile was supplemented by a
uniformly signposted winter offer for winter hiking, snowshoeing,
cross-country skiing and sledding.
Switzerland is one of the wealthiest countries in the world. Measured
by gross domestic product, Switzerland ranked 20th in 2019 with the
equivalent of 705 billion US dollars, and fourth in terms of gross
domestic product per capita with 92,371 US dollars. According to a study
by Credit Suisse Bank, Swiss residents have the second highest per
capita wealth in the world at 537,599 US dollars (as of 2017), and one
in ten adults has assets of more than one million dollars.
In
2020, 5.0 million people in Switzerland were employed. 2.8 percent
worked in agriculture (primary sector), 20.8 percent in industry and
commerce (secondary sector) and 76.4 percent in the service sector
(tertiary sector). As of June 30, 2021, the unemployment rate was 2.8
percent. The general price level is high. The cost of living is the
highest in Europe and was 63.3 percent above the EU average in 2015.
Zurich and Geneva were the most expensive cities in the world in 2016.
Switzerland's economy is considered one of the most stable economies
in the world. Price stability is one of the factors contributing to its
success. In 2008, for example, annual inflation was 2.4 percent, above
1.8 percent for the first time since 1994. Economic freedom is
guaranteed by Article 27 of the Swiss Federal Constitution and all 26
cantonal constitutions. In 2020, Switzerland ranked fifth on the
Economic Freedom Index. In the World Economic Forum's 2017-2018 Global
Competitiveness Report, which measures the competitiveness of countries,
Switzerland ranks first, ahead of Singapore and the United States.
Switzerland ranks first on the Global Innovation Index, which represents
the innovative capacity of individual countries.
According to
Brand Finance, the five most valuable brands (and companies) from
Switzerland are: Nestlé, UBS, Zurich, Rolex and Roche. Economiesuisse is
the largest umbrella organization of the Swiss economy. The Swiss
Federation of Trade Unions is the largest union in the country.
The four Swiss companies with the highest sales (2022) are those that
trade in foreign commodities on the world market. This service-related
commodity trade contributed significantly more to Swiss economic output
than tourism before the sanctions introduced in the wake of the war in
Ukraine against Russia in 2022.
The Swiss franc (Fr., SFr. and CHF for short) is the official
currency of Switzerland. After the US dollar, euro, pound and yen, the
Swiss franc is one of the most important smaller currencies in the
world.
As an independent central bank, the Swiss National Bank
(SNB) conducts the monetary and currency policy of the Swiss
Confederation and in 2013 held currency reserves of 477.4 billion francs
and gold reserves of 35.6 billion francs. Banknotes in circulation
amounted to 65.8 billion francs. By February 2018, foreign currency
reserves had risen to 826 billion US dollars (779 billion francs),
making the country the third-highest in currency reserves behind the
People's Republic of China and Japan.
The small-scale structures, the sometimes unfavorable terrain, the high wage level and the strict regulations (animal husbandry, landscape protection) have a negative impact on international competitiveness. As the agricultural market becomes increasingly open, Swiss agriculture is coming under pressure. The structural change from many small businesses in mountain and Alpine foothills to a few large businesses in the flat central plateau has been ongoing for decades. Between 2000 and 2011, the number of full-time employees in agriculture fell by 23,280 and in 2011 was only 72,715 (-24 percent). The number of farms also fell by 1.8 percent, while the area under cultivation hardly decreased. Agriculture is supported by the federal government with considerable funds (subsidies or direct payments subject to conditions). The gross self-sufficiency rate has been below 60 percent in recent years. The net self-sufficiency rate (including imported feed) was 48 percent in 2016.
Energy consumption in Switzerland is largely based on the import of fossil fuels. The wave of motorization from the 1950s onwards led to a rapid spread of crude oil, whose share of consumption rose from one percent to eleven between 1910 and 1939 and fell from 64 to 55 percent between 1990 and 2008, before reaching a value of 51.5 in 2014. In 1966, the Cressier refinery was opened, which was directly connected to the South European pipeline. Around a quarter of the fuels required in Switzerland (petrol and diesel) are produced there, the rest is imported by the petrol station operators. The Collombey refinery, which began operations in 1963, ceased operations in 2015.
The Swiss natural gas trading and transport company Swissgas procures and transports natural gas on behalf of the four Swiss regional gas distribution companies. Twelve feed-in points are connected to the European gas pipeline network. The most important supply line is the Trans-Europe natural gas pipeline, which runs from the Netherlands to Italy. In 2003, 781 communities were connected to the gas network. In 2012, 41 percent of the natural gas consumed in Switzerland came from the European Union, 24 percent from Norway and 21 percent from Russia. The remaining 12 percent came from other countries. In 2021, 43 percent of the gas came from Russia. In 2015, the share of gas in total final energy consumption was 13.5 percent. The regional companies also import a significant amount of the gas. Natural gas was extracted in Finsterwald from 1985 to 1994. In the meantime, more and more biogas plants are being built, which also feed the processed gas into the network.
To ensure base load energy, nuclear energy contributes 39 percent of domestic electricity production on average over a ten-year period, and up to 45 percent in winter. The Swiss nuclear power plants, with four reactor blocks at three locations, have a total output of 3.095 gigawatts; their annual availability is around 90 percent. On May 21, 2017, the Swiss population approved the Energy Strategy 2050 with 58.2 percent of the vote. This means that the construction of new nuclear power plants is prohibited. Furthermore, renewable energies (including cost-covering feed-in tariffs) and the more efficient use of energy are to be promoted.
In addition to nuclear power, hydropower from run-of-river (around
49%), storage (47%) and pumped storage power plants (4%) is used to
ensure base load energy. The more than 700 power plants (power plants
with an output of at least 300 kW) account for almost 58 percent of
domestic electricity production (as of 2023). In 2016, the Swiss Federal
Research Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape counted 249 energy
cooperatives based on commercial register entries that primarily trade
and promote renewable energies.
Meanwhile, more virtual water is
imported than exported, the amount of which is equal to that of Lake
Thun every day. This virtual water comes to Switzerland, for example,
through the purchase of strawberries from Andalusia. In total, around 82
percent of Switzerland's water footprint is generated outside the
country.
29 waste incineration plants (WIPs) supply around 2 percent of Switzerland's total energy. Due to the biomass content of the waste, 50 percent of this energy is considered renewable. Due to consumer behavior and population growth, operators can expect above-average amounts of waste. According to Eurostat, 703 kilograms of municipal waste per capita were generated in 2017, of which 336 kilograms were incinerated. Comprehensive recycling of beverage cartons to obtain secondary raw materials was discontinued because not all retailers wanted to participate in the collection. Many of these waste incineration plants are among the largest CO2 emitters in Switzerland. The Federal Department of the Environment, Transport, Energy and Communications (UVEK) and the Association of Swiss Waste Recycling Plant Operators (VBSA) signed an agreement in March 2022 that all waste incineration plants must implement CO2 capture and storage by 2050.
Gravel, lime, clay, gypsum, granite and salt are mined in
Switzerland, among other things.
Around five million tonnes of
cement are consumed in Switzerland every year, 86 percent of which was
covered by the six Swiss cement plants in 2019 and 14 percent by
imports. This high level of self-sufficiency can only be maintained if
new mining permits are granted for the necessary cement raw materials or
significantly less cement is needed.
The six cement plants are
located at the Eclépens, Cornaux, Péry, Wildegg, Siggenthal-Station and
Untervaz sites. In addition to the use of coal, heavy oil, petroleum
coke and natural gas, they also recycle plastic waste, solvents, sewage
sludge, animal meal, animal fats and almost half of all old tires
generated in Switzerland.
In Switzerland, a good five million
cubic metres of wood are harvested every year, which corresponds to
around two thirds of the usable wood that grows back in Swiss forests
each year. Switzerland imports more wood and wood products than it
exports. Every year, around six million cubic meters of wood are used
for energy, consumed as cardboard or paper, processed into furniture or
used in construction.
The ecological resources in Switzerland are scarce. The biocapacity or biological natural capital per capita is 40 percent smaller than the world average: In 2016, Switzerland had 1.0 global hectare of biocapacity per person, compared to the world average of 1.6 global hectares per person. The use of biocapacity and thus Switzerland's consumption-related ecological footprint, on the other hand, was 4.6 hectares per capita. With around 4.6 times more biocapacity used than Switzerland contains, the densely populated country has a substantial biocapacity deficit. The consumption of fossil energy, which has grown sharply in recent decades, accounts for almost three quarters of Switzerland's ecological footprint. In 2022, Energy Independence Day fell on April 12.
Switzerland leads the world in terms of per capita industrial
production with around 12,400 US dollars, ahead of Japan with 8,600 US
dollars and Germany with 7,700 US dollars. In absolute terms,
Switzerland's industrial production, at around 100 billion US dollars,
is significantly higher than that of Belgium, Norway or Sweden and is
roughly on a par with that of Taiwan and the Netherlands. In 2008,
Switzerland's industrial share of value added caught up with Germany and
overtook Japan. This is mainly because industry produces very
high-quality goods such as medical technology products, pharmaceuticals,
precision instruments or luxury watches.
The share of value added
in the industrial sector in the total gross domestic product has fallen
since 1970 from around 30 percent to around 22 percent today. The
largest decline occurred between 1973 and 1979, when the share fell by
around 6 percentage points to less than 24 percent. The previously
dominant textile industry has largely disappeared. From the 1950s to the
1980s, the machine industry in Switzerland offered the highest number of
jobs in the second sector, even ahead of the construction industry.
Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs for short; companies with
up to 249 employees) are of crucial importance in the Swiss economy.
More than 99 percent of all companies are SMEs. They provide two thirds
of all jobs.
Large international companies play an important role
in the machine industry such as ABB, in the food industry such as
Nestlé, Lindt & Sprüngli and Givaudan, in the pharmaceutical industry
with Novartis and Roche, in the chemical industry with Syngenta and in
the watch and luxury goods industry with Swatch Group and Richemont.
Some of the federally owned armaments companies were merged into
RUAG in 1998.
Of the 1,035,000 employees in industry and commerce
in 2013, 31.7% worked in construction, 10.4% in the watch and precision
instrument industry, 9.6% in metal processing, 9.5% in mechanical and
vehicle construction, 6.8% in chemicals, 6.4% in food, beverages and
tobacco, 1.4% in the textile industry and 24.2% in other industries.
The tertiary sector has by far the largest number of employed people (72 percent). The dominant sectors are trade, health and education, banking and insurance, including UBS, Zurich, Swiss Life and Swiss Re, as well as the legal profession, with lawyers often also working as financial intermediaries. In the years after 2000, companies from the commodity trading sector settled here: Vitol, Glencore, Xstrata, Mercuria Energy Group. According to estimates by the KOF Economic Institute, transit trade in raw materials generated 65.8 billion francs in 2022. Switzerland is responsible for 1.8% of global service exports - mainly thanks to tourism, financial services, IT services, legal services, auditing services and research and development.
Tourism has been an important economic sector in Switzerland for around 150 years. It was favored by the Alps, the many lakes, the central location in Europe, stable politics, a secure society and a strong economy. The most popular destinations and most visited regions include Zurich, Lucerne, Graubünden, Bernese Oberland, Valais, Geneva, Vaud, Basel, Ticino, Eastern Switzerland and Bern. In 2013, Switzerland had a total of 5,129 hotels and health resorts with 249,666 beds and over 25,000 classified holiday apartments and guest rooms. There are also 755 group accommodations, 52 youth hostels, 412 campsites, over 1,000 bed-and-breakfast establishments, 29,000 train stations and 2,500 cable cars. 210,000 of Swiss employees (4 percent) in 167,590 full-time positions worked in tourism. In 2022, 38.2 million hotel overnight stays were recorded. Tourism (foreign guests only) was in fourth place in export revenues in 2012 with 16 billion francs (4.6 percent). Tourism is an important economic factor, especially in the economically weaker mountain regions. In the mountain cantons of Graubünden and Valais, the share of gross domestic product is up to 30 percent, and across Switzerland it is 2.6 percent.
Retail in Switzerland is dominated by Migros and Coop. Aldi and Lidl have also recently become competitors. In addition to Migros and Coop, the largest retailers in Switzerland in 2022 included Denner and Digitec Galaxus (both part of the Migros Group), Volg and Landi (both Fenaco Group), Jumbo (Coop Group), Ikea (independent) and Interdiscount and Dipl. Ing. Fust (both Coop Group). In total, the Swiss retail branch network consists of around 49,000 branches. The country's largest shopping center is the Glattzentrum.
The following table shows Switzerland's ten most important trading partners for the export and import of goods (as of 2021). The pharmaceutical and chemical industry has the largest share of exports, accounting for 44.9 percent in 2016. Swiss arms exports, on the other hand, account for less than one percent.
National newspapers are the internationally respected Neue Zürcher
Zeitung (NZZ) and the newspapers Tages-Anzeiger, Basler Zeitung and Der
Bund, which are linked by their editorial staff. The most widely read
daily newspaper is the free commuter newspaper 20 Minuten (French 20
minutes), ahead of the tabloid Blick and the Tages-Anzeiger. Other
newspapers are regionally oriented. In Romandie (French-speaking
Switzerland), Le Temps is a national daily newspaper. A regional daily
newspaper in Romandie is 24 heures.
Well-known news magazines are
the weekly formats Die Weltwoche and Die Wochenzeitung. A well-known
French-language magazine is L’illustré.
A “media quality ranking”
by media scientists from the universities of Zurich and Freiburg
mentioned the NZZ, Le Temps and the Bund in leading positions in 2018.
In addition to numerous private providers, the Swiss Broadcasting
Corporation SRG SSR is by far the most important and largest provider of
radio and television programs in Switzerland.
SRG SSR
The
Swiss Broadcasting Corporation SRG SSR is a private association with a
public mandate based in Bern and the owner of the largest electronic
media company in the country. The activities of the SRG are based on the
Swiss Federal Constitution, the Radio and Television Act, the Radio and
Television Ordinance and the federal license, which give it extensive
tasks in the service of the general public (public service). The SRG SSR
is independent in terms of both publishing and organization. Through its
corporate units
Swiss Radio and Television (SRF)
Radio Télévision
Suisse (RTS)
Radiotelevisione Svizzera (RSI)
Radiotelevisiun
Svizra Rumantscha (RTR)
the SRG SSR is present in all language
regions with its radio and television programs.
The public SRG SSR operates six radio programs in German (Radio SRF
1, Radio SRF 2 Kultur, Radio SRF 3, Radio SRF 4 News, Radio SRF Virus
and Radio SRF Musikwelle). There are also four programs in French (La
Première, Espace 2, Couleur 3 and Option Musique), three in Italian
(Rete Uno, Rete Due, Rete Tre) and one in Romansh (Radio Rumantsch). The
SRG SSR also operates the specialty programs Radio Swiss Pop, Radio
Swiss Classic and Radio Swiss Jazz. The radio programs are financed by
broadcasting fees. The SRG SSR is not permitted to run radio
advertising.
Since 1983, private, commercial radio stations have
been operating in all regions. There is also a large group of
non-commercial regional stations that produce complementary programs
that are not the same old thing. They have joined together in the Union
of Non-Commercial Local Radios (UNIKOM) group.
All SRG radio
programs and many private radio stations are broadcast not only on FM,
but also on DAB+.
SRG SSR's public television offering includes six channels with full
programs, two for each of the three major language regions
(German-speaking Switzerland SRF 1 and SRF two, French-speaking
Switzerland RTS Un and RTS Deux, Italian-speaking Switzerland RSI LA 1
and RSI LA 2). SRF also produces the news and repeat channel SRF info,
which can be received unencrypted via satellite throughout Europe. All
seven television channels are produced in HDTV quality (720p) and can be
received via the Hotbird satellite. The French-language RTS Info can be
received as a live stream all over the world.
To promote the
Romansh language, short programs with German subtitles from Televisiun
Rumantscha are broadcast daily on SRF 1.
SRG SSR's television
programs are financed by broadcasting fees and advertising.
Private broadcasters with a national broadcast area include: 3+, 4+, 5+,
Star TV, Puls 8, S1, TV24 and TV25. There are also many local channels.
Many German channels such as RTL, RTL II, VOX, Sat.1, kabel eins and
ProSieben broadcast their programs in German-speaking Switzerland with
special advertising slots and a few programs produced specifically for
Switzerland. With the exception of local programs, almost all German and
Austrian channels as well as French and Italian channels can be received
in Switzerland.
SWI swissinfo.ch is the name of Switzerland's multimedia foreign service produced by the SRG in 10 languages. The internet platform replaced the outdated medium wave service Swiss Radio International in 1999 and is co-financed by the federal government.
The three network providers Swisscom, Sunrise and Salt Mobile each
operate their own nationwide mobile network. The then state telephone
monopolist PTT (predecessor of Swisscom and Swiss Post) put the analogue
Natel-A network into operation in 1978. The Natel-B network followed in
1983 and the Natel-C network in 1987. Since the amount of data
transferred is constantly increasing, the mobile network has been
expanded several times, currently to 5G. In 1998, the state monopoly
fell. The word Natel is an abbreviation for "national car phone" and is
still used in Switzerland today as a synonym for mobile communications.
The federal government holds 51.22 percent of Swisscom AG at the end of
2013.
In 2016, 87.2% of the population used the Internet.
Swiss Post AG is the state postal company in Switzerland.