The Swiss Press

** Berne, 11 January. The political press of Switzerland is developing greater activity with each year. Apart from some twenty literary periodicals, there are now 98 political newspapers in the 22 cantons. One must not, however, imagine these sheets to be newspapers in the large format of the German or, still less, the French papers. They are small, appearing, with the exception of a few Vaud papers, only as little sheets in half a sheet and quarto format, of which scarcely a dozen appear daily, a few five times, most three times, and a number only once a week; and, with few exceptions, they are truly wretchedly run and written. Naturally, for how could any significant journalistic talents develop on the narrow soil of local cantonal conditions and amid the most pettifogging polemics that are here the only possible ones, and what real talent would allow itself to be confined to these tiny conditions and to the space of a little quarto sheet three times a week!

The finest quality of the Swiss press is its insolence. Here, in the public sheets, people tell each other things, they make impertinent personal attacks with such complete abandon that a Rhenish public prosecutor, to whom Article 270 of the Code pénal is sacred, would not last three days in such a country.

But that is all. Take away this unscrupulousness, which is exploited without the slightest wit, and almost nothing remains but the most cringing servility towards the repulsive narrow-mindedness of a small people, still fragmented in its smallness and boundlessly puffed up, a people of antediluvian Alpine herdsmen, pig-headed peasants and dirty philistines. That in large countries a paper orients itself according to its party, that it accepts nothing contrary to the interest of the party, is understandable and does little harm to freedom of discussion, because

every tendency, even the most advanced, has its organs. But in the restricted conditions of Switzerland the parties themselves are restricted, and the press is just as restricted as the parties. Hence the narrow-minded viewpoints from which everyone sets out, hence the lack of any organs for tendencies which, though advanced, have long been the order of the day even in Germany, hence the fear, even of the most radical, of deviating by a single jot from the narrow programme of their party, which is directed only to the very nearest things, or of attacking even the most narrow-minded of Swiss national narrow-mindednesses. A patriarchal lynch law would instantly chastise the wretch who sinned against the national sanctuary. What else would the honest Swiss have his fists for?

This is the average state of the Swiss press. Above this average stand the better organs of French-speaking Switzerland and of Berne; below it the great mass of the East Swiss journals.

Let us begin with the press of the Swiss capital. In Berne a certain centralisation of the Swiss press is already developing. The press of the canton is already centralised here and is beginning to seize a certain capital-city influence.

The reactionary or, as they say here, aristocratic party has for its main organ the *Schweizerische Beobachter*, the Moniteur of the Swiss officers in foreign services, as the *Berner Zeitung* correctly calls it. This nice little sheet (3 times weekly) extols the heroic deeds of the Swiss Croats in Italy, attacks the radicals with the filthiest weapons, defends the military capitulations, fawns upon the patricians, sings the praises of Radetzky and Windischgrätz, defends the murder of Robert Blum, slanders the revolution in every country and denounces the refugees to the government. The noble sheet actually has no editor at all; it is scribbled together from all kinds of contributions and marginal glosses by idle patrician sons and seekers of seats on the city council. Worthily at its side stands the *Intelligenzblatt*, an organ in which only advertisements are to be found in the front and the touting of pietism and of the profit-mongering of patrician civic property at the back. *Die Biene* is supposed to represent the Charivari of this party. Since, however, the patrician gentlemen these days have on the whole more to weep than to laugh about, the wit of this Biene turns out frightfully arid and lame.

The moderate or liberal party, Ochsenbein’s party, is above all served by the *Berner Verfassungsfreund* as its organ. This paper, edited by Dr. and former Professor Karl Herzog, is regarded quite simply as Ochsenbein’s semi-official journal. Edited with a certain routine but without any talent

whatsoever, it confines itself to apologising for the acts of the government and the Federal Council, insofar as these originate from Ochsenbein’s party. In the eastern cantons, especially the original cantons, it is naturally frightfully liberal-minded, and on the occasion of foreign politics it occasionally emits a resounding fanfare, in order to smuggle through the most colourless neutrality beneath a warlike note. A more or less obscure *Bundeszeitung* sails in roughly the same waters, as does the French paper *La Suisse*, edited in bad French by the Piedmontese Bassi. Less directly linked to the government than the *Verfassungsfreund*, it nevertheless burns no less incense before the ruling liberal majority, and attacks with great persistence but little success the revolutionary press of French Switzerland, especially the *Nouvelliste Vaudois*. It behaves more decently in the Italian question, in which its editor is directly involved. – These three papers appear daily.

The radical party has the most organs. At its head stands the *Berner Zeitung* under the general direction of the advocate, Vice-President of the Grand Council and member of the Council of States, Niggeler. It is the organ of the decidedly radical party of the German part of the canton, represented in the Government Council by the Finance Director Stämpfli. The implementation of democracy in the legislation and administration of the canton, where much old rubbish still has to be cleared out, the greatest possible centralisation of the whole of Switzerland, the abandonment of the policy of neutrality at the next opportunity – these are the main principles according to which this paper is edited. The notables of Berne radicalism collaborate on it, and it is therefore no wonder that the *Berner Zeitung* is the best-edited paper in the canton, indeed in the whole of German Switzerland. If the editors and contributors could write with complete freedom, it would be considerably better still; the one and indivisible Helvetic republic, and with a very reddish hue at that, would come to the fore; but that simply is not possible yet, the party still does not tolerate it. Alongside the *Berner Zeitung* there has also been appearing daily since 1 January: *L’Helvétie fédérale*, the continuation of the *Helvétie* that previously appeared in Pruntrut in the Jura, the organ of the Jurassic radicals and their chief, Colonel and Government Councillor Stockmar. The old *Helvétie* took up a decidedly red stance; the new one does so likewise, indeed even more decidedly.

The *Schweizer Zeitung* (formerly the *Freie Schweizer*) likewise represents radicalism, but radicalism of the exclusively bourgeois kind, and therefore confines itself entirely to the demand for such economic reforms as are advantageous to the ruling propertied class. For the rest, however, this paper also goes beyond the ordinary Swiss cantonal

narrow-mindednesses (neutrality, cantonal sovereignty, etc.). Apart from these three daily papers, Berne radicalism also possesses a humorous paper, indeed the only good one in Switzerland, Jenni’s *Guckkasten*. The *Guckkasten* (once a week) confines itself solely to Swiss, and particularly Bernese, cantonal interests, but precisely thereby it has succeeded in becoming a power in the state, which bore its honest share in the overthrow of the Neuhaus government and is now seeing to it that the Ochsenbein party does not remain at the helm too long. The ruthless wit with which Jenni strives to strip the nimbus of popularity from every governing personality, right down to Ochsenbein, brought upon him under Neuhaus countless lawsuits and chicaneries, and later threatening letters and brutalities, but all in vain; and the great gentlemen of Berne still await each new Saturday number of the *Guckkasten* with great uneasiness. When Blum was shot, the *Guckkasten* provided as its weekly drawing a block with an axe, surrounded by a mass of broken crowns, with the caption: the only help. When the solid citizens of Berne were horrified at this, there followed the next week a lamppost with a crown hung from it and the inscriptions: “Suaviter in modo, fortiter in re – to the manes of Messenhauser!”

The *Seeländer Anzeiger*, published by the member of the National Council and Grand Council J. A. Weingart, alone represented socialism until New Year. The *Seeländer Anzeiger* preaches a strange mixture of lachrymose sentimental and charitable socialism and red revolution – the former for the canton of Berne, the latter as soon as it speaks of foreign countries. As far as form is concerned, this weekly sheet is one of the worst-edited in the canton. Otherwise, Mr. Weingart, despite his Christian-soft-hearted outpourings of the soul, is in politics a follower of the most decided radicalism. Since New Year the *Seeländer Anzeiger* has acquired a competitor in the likewise once-weekly *Unabhängige*, which has set itself the admittedly somewhat thankless task of finding, in the conditions of the canton of Berne and of Switzerland in general, starting points for the propaganda of the rudiments of socialism and of proposing measures to remedy at least the grossest evils. At any rate, this little sheet is the only one in the whole of Switzerland that has taken the right path to gain ground for its tendency in this country; and if its chances of success are proportionate to the fury it has already aroused among the high and highest authorities, then its prospects are not so bad after all.

Of the papers appearing outside the city, I mention only one: *Evolution*, as the leader of the volunteer corps Becker has now renamed his

*Revolution*. This most decided of all papers appearing in Switzerland appeals solely and exclusively to a new European revolution and seeks, in its circle, to win fighters for it. By way of thanks it is abhorred by the tranquil citizens and, apart from the German refugees in Switzerland, Besançon and Alsace, finds little public.

In a following article I shall go more closely into the extra-Bernese press.