Once upon a time … the Rütlischwur

On the Rütli, only cows grazed in 1291, wrote the historian Roger Sablonier in the "Tages-Anzeiger" of 1991: "The Rütli and the Rütlischwur are by no means, as is often said , mentioned in the federal letter of 1291: The story of the oath of the three Confederates and their secret meetings on the Rütli is first pronounced in the Sarnen White Paper circa 1470. In the original text of the White Paper , the pbadage of the Rütli (in the new German translation) reads:

"If they had decided to do something, they would spend the Mythenstein at night at a place called Rütli (…). In the meantime, they have only met in the Rütli. "

Who invented these stories and said them for the first time? It was the Obwald Hans Schriber, a gifted chronicler. Peter von Matt writes of him: "No Swiss author has ever produced a work of bigger impact. "A strange paradox is that almost no one today knows the name of Hans Schriber. In England everyone knows Shakespeare, who in his Hamlet – like Schriber – has taken over motifs and legends of the Danish history of the monk Roskilder Saxo (+1220).

Yes, who is Hans Schriber, the legend of the Northern Saxon apple The Obwaldner Landschreiber

Schriber, of Engelberg, was at the Sarnen writer's town hall from 1434 to 1478. He was a humanist scribe, politically influential and respected, notary, deputy and referee at the time. brother Klaus. Around 1470, after the Sarnen fire, he wrote a collection of copies of important documents of the State Chancellery.

At the end of this book, Sarnen's White Paper, Schriber wrote a chronicle on the formation of the Confederation. History of the liberation of the Habsburg yoke by tyrannicide. He probably wrote this tendentious and anti-Habsburg story not without political intention, since Obwald was still in open conflict with Archduke Sigismund of Tyrol because of Koller's trade and was also against a peace treaty with the Austria Habsburg (1474). Waldstätte's release from the arbitrary regime of Austrian governors with episodic narratives: the glare of the farmer at Melchi, the deadly bath in the old cells, the clash between Stauffacher and Gessler in front of his stone house in Schwyz, the foundation of the secret society in Uri with deliberations and oaths the Rütli and the scholarly conquest of the lower castle of Sarnen. Obwaldner Landschreiber combined local episodes circulating at the time into a glorious and narrative liberation story, and placed them in familiar surroundings around Lake Lucerne – including the Rütli and the oath of the three confederates

. he comes …

The highest point in history is the story of Tell. In the story of Tell, Obwaldner brilliantly combines the Northern Tokosage and the Apple Shot with a legend of Uri and the inevitable deadly arrow on Gessler in the Hohlen Gbade. Obwalden was obviously inspired by a contemporary incident in 1465, when Austrian captain and knight Hans von Rechberg, ostracized by the Zurich war, was shot down an empty path in the Black Forest, no for political reasons, but because he was the Schützen nachhielt.

The stories of the white paper are via the print version of Lucerne chronicler Petermann Etterlin (1507) of Schiller in his 1804 drama William Tell " Schiller's Tell has become a fixed Swiss literary history of freedom, and Rütli, the "quiet lakeside zone," became a patriotic pilgrimage site in the 19th century.

Even the "King of fairy tale "Louis II followed the literary footsteps of Tell.On the nights of the full moon, in 1885, he drove several times from Brunnen on the lake to the Rütli and was recited by the actor Ludwig Kainz verses of Schiller drama.Tel became a national show in Switzerland in the 19th century

The amazing – and little known: The beginning of this national show is in Sarnen, in the chronicle of the White Paper of Sarnen, written around 1470 by the writer Obwald Hans Schriber. Without him and his brilliantly written liberation story we probably would never have had the opera of the same name from Schiller's Tell and Rossini.