Gregory A. Fossedal, Direct Democracy in Switzerland, 2002.Preface
As a child, I spent several summers in Switzerland, in what I suspect was a vain hope by my half-Swiss mother and my Swiss grandmother that I would acquire some European manners and sophistication. Not much came of this effort, but I did absorb a sense of the remarkable mountain nation that Gregory Fossedal describes so well and sympathetically in this book.
Stories from those summers have become part of our family legend, gentled and amusing in retrospect. But at the time, I definitely did not enjoy the camp in Zug where we helped clean out septic tanks and endured a quality of toilet paper (read: old newspaper) to which a delicate American was not accustomed. Nor did I welcome, as a seven-year-old, the lecture to which my mother was subjected one day by a typical Swiss citizen, who, upon seeing me drop a candy wrapper on the street, strode over to denounce her as a bad parent. Nor the time that my beloved uncle Erni and I were told by a waitress in a Zurich restaurant that we had eaten too much and could not order another portion of fondue.
Today I share these memories, softened by time, with Swiss friends who tell me that they, too, endured such things as time in a septic tank. And I have many other warmer remembrances that stay with me still: the bonfires that arose on every hilltop on August 1 to celebrate Switzerland's National Day; the perfect blend of people and mountains; the family outings; the boat trips on Lac Leman; sneaking on the trains between Rougemont and Gstaad (and getting caught, of course); and, from my great-grandmother, the sturdy lessons and values of Switzerland.
My great grandmother was in her early nineties by then, and the part of the summer I spent with her in Sils Maria in the Engadine was always especially memorable. She had stayed in the same hotel (The Waldhaus, of course) for decades, and one day, when a slightly less elderly woman sat after dinner in an easy chair that my great grandmother usually occupied at that time of day, my great grandmother berated the other woman for usurping her place earned by years of seniority. Realizing, in true Swiss fashion, the superior strength of my great grandmother's claim (and perhaps looking towards the future) the other woman quickly yielded in the face of such an obvious grand dame.
During the day I often hiked into the snow mountains with members of the hotel staff, once almost falling while attempting an incline beyond my ability. My love of the mountains surely dates from those days, and other days spent climbing in other parts of Switzerland.
My great grandmother's doctors had warned her that simply driving over the high Julier Pass from Zurich to Sils-Maria could endanger her life, but she was not willing to give up her beloved annual vacation. However, she would not leave the revered soil of Switzerland, fearing that she might die outside Switzerland's sacred soil. So each year, we would go by car to the Maloja Pass near the border and she would point into Italy -- but we never set foot in it.
She and my grandmother often related to me the Swiss view of history. The mined tunnels that would have been blown up if Hitler had invaded. The standing army ready for mobilization at a moment's notice. The reasons why neutrality fit Switzerland's situation perfectly, even to the point of not joining the U.N. The legend of William Tell. Why women could not vote.
All of this I absorbed without question. Switzerland was not taught in the European history courses that I took in college, or given much attention by the Foreign Service, which I entered immediately after graduating from college.
My career took me elsewhere, to Asia first and then to North Africa, but eventually I returned to the Europe I had once thought of as a second home. Bosnia was aflame, and, curiously, something called "the Swiss model" was being discussed as a possible solution to the dilemma of another multiethnic country. But few people understood what this actually meant. As I got pulled into the Balkan mess, I returned to Switzerland for the first time as a government official, and found enlightened and surprisingly engaged Swiss officials ready to play key roles in international affairs. These men and women (for the vote had finally been granted in 1971) included the Swiss foreign minister Flavio Cotti, who, by rotation, assumed the Chairmanship of the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe during a critical year for the Balkans, and Carla del Ponte, the tough and able chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.
Talking with them, and then later serving as American Ambassador to the U.N., I came to hope that the Swiss people would become even more actively involved in world affairs, and, at the earliest possible opportunity, vote in favor of joining the United Nations as a full member. Switzerland has much to contribute to a troubled world, and, as Fossedal points out, the world can learn much from Switzerland.
In a remarkable coincidence, for three years between State Department assignments, I worked as a private citizen for the First Boston, the New York-based investment banking arm of Credit Suisse First Boston. It felt strange to be back in my grandmother's hometown as a government official or, even stranger, as my uncle joked, as a "Swiss banker"; he said that my grandparents would have been proud.
All this may seem a long way from Gregory Fossedal's book. But reading it, I learned for the first time why those bonfires were lit each August 1; how the "Swiss model" might be valuable to other situations where different ethnic groups must live together or else suffer endless strife; what the banking system is really about, and why; and, in general, why Switzerland evolved the way it has. Too little has been written about this amazing country, which is treated by the rest of the world as unique; therefore, as conventional wisdom goes, one cannot learn from it. Furthermore, for the most part the Swiss like it that way. As my grandmother told me years ago, the Swiss do not like outside scrutiny -- and not just in their fabled banking system.
Fossedal effectively disputes this conventional wisdom, and offers many thoughtful suggestions on what the rest of the world can learn from Switzerland. He is especially interesting in his discussion of that most-disputed of all events in Swiss history: its role and activities during World War II. His chapter is essential reading for anyone confused over whether the Swiss "behaved correctly" or not. Whether or not one agrees with his conclusions, the chapter is essential reading. For me, it carried special meaning: I learned for the first time that Jews had not only been allowed to be a part of Swiss life for many years, but, in fact, were positively welcomed in from France by a treaty signed in 1864." This was the very decade in which my great grandmother, who was Jewish, had been born. I had never been able to reconcile her (and my grandmother's) great pride in being Swiss with the seeming indifference of the Swiss to the tragedy going on around them during the war. Fossedal shows how one could be both Swiss and Jewish and take pride (as my family did) in both.
I hope the reader will forgive me for having linked my deep respect and admiration for this book so closely to my own background. You do not have to be part Swiss to appreciate what Fossedal has done, and everyone who reads this book will learn a great deal of wider relevance from it.
Richard Holbrooke New York July 2001
Note 1. The treaty had to pass a popular referendum to become official. and did so in 1866. Most countries in Europe, which saw rising anti-Semitism over the next 100 years, did not pass similar provisions encouraging Jewish immigration until after World War II, and many, of course, positively closed their doors. Further information is in chapters 3 and 9 of this book.