Rather discreetly, Switzerland commemorated its last war 175 years ago, which was a civil war.

Two camps faced each other in the "Sonderbund War" of 1847: the liberal, economically advanced, anti-clerical cantons fought against the Catholic-conservative estates.

The monasteries were closed in Aargau.

In return, Lucerne entrusted the Jesuits with teaching at the secondary level.

Enemy action began on November 9, the decisive battle took place after three weeks in Gisikon near Lucerne.

Hundreds of dead were to be mourned.

Juerg Altwegg

Freelance writer in the feuilleton.

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The historian Olivier Meuwly compares the Sonderbund War with the American Civil War and emphasizes the respectful treatment of the victors towards the vanquished.

While the counter-revolution in Europe in 1848 stifled the “spring of the peoples” and the hopes of the republicans, democratic institutions were able to flourish in Switzerland.

In the long term, their civil war welded the Confederates together and laid the foundation for their federal system.

It is based on the sharing of power and the interaction of majorities and minorities, for which there is no right of veto.

The First World War was a major test of national cohesion: the neutral Swiss stuck to their mother tongue countries.

In 1940, too, Switzerland, surrounded by Hitler, Pétain and Mussolini, was spared.

The defense plan envisaged a retreat to the "Réduit", to the underground bunkers in the Alps.

Réduit and neutrality also shaped the Swiss horizon after 1945.

The historian Jean-Rodolphe von Salis concluded that Switzerland had left history at the end of the Cold War.

Then just via detours

On December 6, 1992, Christoph Blocher's new Swiss People's Party prevented accession to the European Economic Area with the Réduit ideology and the mirage of an immaculate Swiss past.

But Switzerland too found itself in the dock of world public opinion when a commission of historians clarified allegations about its conduct during the war: the country had supplied both sides with weapons.

The gold - the stolen gold - of the National Socialists, which came to Switzerland and was washed clean by the National Bank, became a symbol of the Swiss fall from grace.

Switzerland was later criticized for its gold deals with the apartheid regimes in South Africa and the Soviet Union.

With Putin's invasion of Ukraine, history and the past caught up with them too.

"Switzerland is at war," announced Christoph Blocher, referring to the implementation of the sanctions against the oligarchs.

Since then, a fierce debate has been going on about the country's neutrality.

So far, Switzerland hasn't brokered much.

The Biden-Putin meeting did not prevent the war.

It is true that no Russian gold entered Switzerland in March and April.

At the beginning of August, it banned the import.

But detours also lead to federal refineries.

"The import ban is full of holes," writes "Blick".

The European Union is in the process of establishing evasion of sanctions as a "euro crime".

The NZZ describes an initiative by sovereign circles as a “declaration of war” on Brussels