| English: Call'st Thou, My Fatherland? | |
|---|---|
.png) A 1914 postcard containing the opening line | |
Former national anthem of Switzerland | |
| Also known as | Ô monts indépendants (English: Oh Independent Mountains) |
| Lyrics | Johann Rudolf Wyss (Henri Roehrich), 1811 (1857) |
| Music | Unknown composer (the melody of "God Save the King", 18th century) |
| Adopted | c. 1848 |
| Relinquished | 1961 |
| Audio sample | |
"Rufst du, mein Vaterland" | |
"Rufst du, mein Vaterland" (Swiss Standard German: [ˈruːfst duː maɪn ˈfaːtərˌland]; "Call'st Thou, My Fatherland?") is the former national anthem of Switzerland. It had the status of de facto national anthem from the formation of Switzerland as a federal state in the 1840s, until 1961, when it was replaced by the Swiss Psalm.[1]
The text was written in 1811 by Bernese philosophy professor Johann Rudolf Wyss, as a "war song for Swiss artillerymen". It is set to the tune of the British national anthem "God Save the King" (c. 1745), a tune which became widely adopted in Europe, first as the German hymn "Heil, unserm Bunde Heil" (August Niemann, 1781), somewhat later as "Heil dir im Siegerkranz" (Heinrich Harries 1790, originally with Danish lyrics, the German adaptation for use in Prussia dates to 1795), and as anthem of the United States, "My Country, 'Tis of Thee" (1831).
In Switzerland during the 1840s and 1850s, the hymn was regularly sung at patriotic events and at political conventions. It is referred to as "the national anthem" (die Nationalhymne) in 1857, in the contest of a "serenade" performed for general Guillaume Henri Dufour.[2] The Scottish physician John Forbes, who visited Switzerland in 1848, likewise reports that the tune of 'God Save the King' "seems to be adopted as the national anthem of the Swiss also".[3]
As in the American "My Country, 'Tis of Thee", the lyrics replace the image of the monarch with that of the fatherland, and the promise to defend it "with heart and hand" (mit Herz und Hand), the "hand" replacing the "voice" praising the king of the original lyrics. The pact to defend the homeland militarily is made explicit in the first verse,
|
Rufst du, mein Vaterland? |
Are you calling, my Fatherland? |
The German lyrics were translated into French in 1857, as the result of a competition sponsored by the Societé de Zofingue of Geneva. The competition was won by Henri Roehrich (1837– 1913), at the time a student of philosophy,[4] whose text is less explicitly martial than the German lyrics, beginning Ô monts indépendants / Répétez nos accents / Nos libres chants "O free mountains / echo our calls / our songs of liberty" and comparing the Rütli Oath with a Republican liberty tree.
Yet in spite of the Republican sentiment in the lyrics, the tune remained more strongly associated with royalism and conservativism, and it remained the anthem of the British, the German and the Russian empires.[5] This fact, and the lack of association of the tune with Switzerland in particular, led to the desire to find a replacement, which came in the form of the Swiss Psalm (composed 1841), from 1961 as a provisional experiment, and since 1981 permanently.
- ^ Kreis, Georg, (1991), Der Mythos von 1291. Zur Entstehung des schweizerischen Nationalfeiertages. Basel: F. Reinhardt, 67–69.
- ^ Allgemeine Zeitung, Augsburg, 15 January 1857 (Nr. 15), p. 237.
- ^ John Forbes, A Physician's Holiday; or, a month in Switzerland in the summer of 1848 (1850), p. 53.
- ^ Nanni Moretti, Journal Intime, 1979, p. 261
- ^ Estebán Buch, Beethoven's Ninth: a political history, University of Chicago Press, 2003, ISBN 978-0-226-07812-0, p. 23.