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Switzerland

by Christian Lüthi

Introduction

The local historiography started in Switzerland around 1850. However, first topographic descriptions were published in the context of the Enlightenment Era in the second half of the 18th century already. The liberal revolution around 1830 in the majority of the cantons and 1848 on the national level was the starting point for local history studies. The liberals saw local history as an instrument of national education, and education as a precondition for a working democracy. Until the 20th century local history was dominated by non-academic historians such as teachers, parsons, or local authority members. Besides individuals, various groups were active in this field: local and regional historical associations and, in some cases, universities.

Based on the Swiss Constitution, communities have a strong position in Switzerland. In the 19th century already, local history and cultural heritage (Heimatkunde) were subjects in primary school. Thus local history was popular with a large part of the population. Authors and orderers of historical publications aimed to strengthen the identification of the local population with their community. In the 20th century most communities published a local history monograph. Since 1980, the number of local history publications has strongly increased.

Genres and publications

The most common form is the monograph on villages, towns, or cities. Beside the local history it covers a large spectrum of subjects including geology, field names, economy, demography, schools, poor assistance, health care, churches, traffic, and local planning. Mostly the school system and the church history are described in detail, these institutions being organized on local level. Many local history books contain short portraits of local associations, companies, and political parties in dictionary form. Many of these publications shed light on the local situation only without taking into account national or international realities. These studies are hardly ever based on academic research either. Local history publications are initiated by authors, jubilees, or local authorities. The publication of these books is normally financed by the involved community.

In the second half of the 20th century many photo and picture books on communities and towns were published. Moreover, there are approximately 200 yearbooks and periodicals of local, regional, and cantonal historical societies all over Switzerland.

Cantonal history books are another genre. They have been published since the 19th century for each of the 26 cantons of Switzerland. Since 1980, the number of publications in this field has been increasing parallel to the boom in local historiography. These cantonal history books selectively treat the history of communities as well.

City histories are available for two of Switzerland’s ten biggest cities only (Basle and Berne). In many cantons however, e.g. Aargau and Thurgau, small towns have recently published monographs dealing with their history.

The academic field

Most Swiss universities hardly care about local history with the exception of the University of Zurich, where an academically oriented local historiography has been established in the 19th century already.

After 1960, the universities put their focus on social and economic history, in the course of which they started to examine individual communities. In this context, historians tried to explain social change by means of local source material. This problem-oriented analytical approach to local history constituted a rupture with the hitherto existing local historiography of non-academic historians. In the last decades more academic historians have been working on local history projects. This professionalization has linked local history closer to the researchers at universities.

In Switzerland, there are neither academic institutions nor university chairs of urban history. The only academic institution for urban studies is the Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (www.gta.arch.ethz.ch). In 1995, the Swiss Working Group for Urban History (Schweizer Arbeitskreis für Stadtgeschichte, http://www.hist.unizh.ch/SAK/start.htm) was founded. It is concerned with urban history of all epochs and organizes annual conferences.

Institutions, organizations, networks

Many historical associations are active on the local level, and in each canton there is a cantonal historical society. There is no national institution for local history, just as the Swiss Historical Society (Schweizerische Gesellschaft für Geschichte, http://www.sgg-ssh.ch) has no local history section, either.

The most crucial institutions are archives, libraries, and museums, collecting source material on community and cantonal level and engaging in local historiography. The Swiss Archivist Association (Verein Schweizerischer Archivarinnen und Archivare VSA, www.vsa-aas.org) offers various platforms as well as assistance with historiography in Switzerland.

Two national institutions are responsible for basic tools. Firstly, the Historical Dictionary of Switzerland (Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz, www.dhs.ch) publishes, since 1998, an overview article for each of the 3.000 Swiss communities in printed and electronic version, the latter freely accessible via the internet. Secondly, the Swiss National Library (http://www.nb.admin.ch/slb/index.html?lang=en) owns a big collection of source material (including grey literature) relevant to local historians. Such collections exist also in the cantonal libraries which collect material that pertains to their territory. In most cantons, bibliographies on cantonal history and culture are published every year.

The internet is no important platform for local history yet. Few cantonal libraries only give online access to digitized historical materials on their websites: Digibern, Berner Kultur und Geschichte im Internet (www.digibern.ch); Rerodoc (http://doc.rero.ch).

The genealogists are well organized in different associations; they dispose of a good network and a high presence on the internet (Swiss Genealogy on the Internet, www.eye.ch/swissgen).

Bibliography and references

Baumann, Max: Orts- und Regionalgeschichte. In: Schneider, Boris; Python, Francis (Hrsg.): Geschichtsforschung in der Schweiz. Bilanz und Perspektiven 1991. Basel, 1992, 417–428. First published in: Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Geschichte, 41 (1991), 169–180.

Brändli, Sebastian: Konstruierte Heimat. Zürcher Gemeinden im Bundesstaat. Ortsgeschichte und nationale Identitätsbildung. In: Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Geschichte, 51 (2001), 318–341.

Brändli, Sebastian: Lokalgeschichte als Geschichtsschreibung von unten? Zürcher Ortsgeschichten: Anlässe, Autoren, Themen. In: Geschichte schreiben in Zürich. Die Rolle der Antiquarischen Gesellschaft bei der Erforschung und Pflege der Vergangenheit. Zürich, 2002 (Mitteilungen der Antiquarischen Gesellschaft in Zürich, Bd. 69), 59–92.

Coutaz, Gilbert: Panorama des monographies communales. Un premier bilan à l’occasion du bicentenaire du canton de Vaud. In:Revue historique vaudoise, 111 (2003), 94–239.

Fritzsche, Bruno: Moderne Stadtgeschichte. In: Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Geschichte, 41 (1991), 29–37.

Lüthi, Christian. Ortsgeschichtsschreibung im Kanton Bern. Bestandesaufnahme und Trends der letzten Jahrzehnte. In: Berner Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Heimatkunde, Jg. 67 (2005), 1–36. http://www.bzgh.ch/1_05/luethi.pdf

Körner, Martin (Hg.): Bibliographie der Stadtgeschichte der Schweiz von 1986 bis 1997. Bern, 2002.

Meier, Bruno: Geschichtsschreibung im Lokalen. Ergebnisse und Trends aus dem Aargau in den letzten 25 Jahren. In: Argovia, 115 (2003), 39–45.

Salathé, René: Ein Blick auf die Gipfelflur der landeskundlichen Forschung im Kanton Basel-Landschaft. In: Baselbieter Heimatblätter, Jg. 66 (2001), 97–120.

Walter, François: La Suisse urbaine, 1750–1950. Carouge-Genève, 1994.

Weblinks

• Cantonal historical societies, http://www.sgg-ssh.ch/de/links.php#02
• Swiss libraries in the internet (http://www.switch.ch/libraries/)
• Museums in Switzerland (www.museums.ch)

Acknowledgements

Responsible for this presentation is Christian Lüthi, historian, lic. phil., Universitätsbibliothek Bern. He may be contacted at christian.luethi@ub.unibe.ch.

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