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H o m e l y a n d y e t c o s m o p o l i t a n
“The character of Berne is above all that of an administrative centre
and a centre for study. It has lots of good libraries and many
educated citizens but life is permeated through and through by a
petit bourgeois sentiment. Berne is an extraordinarily ‘democratic’
city – every day, the wife of the republic’s senior civil servant
beats the carpets on her balcony; but it is the carpets, this creation
of cosy ‘homeliness’, that concern the women of Berne to
the exclusion of everything else”. This character study of the
Swiss capital, which was written in 191 , need not be wrong simply
because it comes from the wife of Lenin, who was preparing
for the Russian revolution there with her husband and who, incidentally,
had herself been operated on there by a Swiss holder of
the Nobel Prize for medicine.
The city was founded in 1191 and even today, with its townscape
from the middle ages and the renaissance, it is still full of bourgeois
cosiness. Since 198 , the old town, with its typical arcades,
known as “Lauben” or “arcades”, has been a UNESCO World
Cultural Heritage site. The city on the river Aare got its name,
the saga tells us, from its founder, the Duke of Zähringen, who is
supposed to have said to his followers: “Go into the oak forests.
The first beast that you slay shall give the town its name!” The
hunters were successful in killing a bear and so “Bear” became
“Berne“. The language spoken is Berndeutsch or Berne German,
The Swiss capital has a lot to offer
a dialect of High Alemannic (the Swiss variety of German).
Many artists and scientists have found the atmosphere of Berne
to their liking. One famous son of the city is Albert Einstein, who
was given his first job at the patent office in 190 as a “technical
expert rd class“. The well known artist Paul Klee also worked
there for a long time.
But Berne does not just live on its past. The city, with its 1 9,000
inhabitants, has a flourishing industry producing health care products
and pharmaceuticals. The foodstuffs industry too is strongly
represented. “Toblerone” chocolate is a product of Berne. And
of course it goes saying that there are many banks and international
organisations in Berne.
And the people of Berne love any sort of festivity. A typical example
is the “Zibelemärit” (the Zwiebelmarkt or Onion Market).
Visitors from all over Switzerland and neighbouring countries feel
the exuberant mood and this gives the market a festival atmosphere.
And let’s not forget the so-called “miracle of Berne” in 1954,
something that the older generation at least, and not just the German
speakers amongst them, like to look back on. This was not
an appearance of the Virgin Mary but the : scored against Hungary
by the German national football team, who became the unexpected
world champions because of this win.