[Switzerland’s two enclaves mirror each other in funny ways. Each had an ineffective pro-Swiss referendum: the citizens of Büsingen had theirs in 1919, after the First World War had made Germany the most unpopular country in Europe. A whopping 96 percent of the inhabitants voted for annexation by Switzerland. The people had spoken loud and clear, but their voices were ignored. As the Swiss were unable to offer Germany any suitable territory in exchange, the deal was off. Büsingen would remain, somewhat reluctantly, German.]
By Frank Jacobs
 |
| Joe Burgess/The New York Times |
You could go to
Switzerland for the mountaineering, the chocolate, the precision-watchmaking
or, once every three years, the National Yodeling Festival [1]. You could also go enclave-hunting. The
alpine confederacy is rife with bits and bobs of subnational territories
stranded outside their “mainland” [2].
Why are there so many
geopolitical islands on the Swiss map? Three factors come to mind. First,
mountainous terrain tends to produce isolated communities (giving the lie to
the Diana Ross song “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough”). One could also argue that
Switzerland’s long tradition of local democracy favors small political units.
Most important, however, is that the Alps have helped keep out invaders, who
might have forced uniformity onto the decentralized mountain geography [3].
Thanks to all that,
today we have a treasure trove of intra-cantonal enclaves and exclaves.
Wouldn’t it be great to be able to collect them all? If only there were such a
thing as the All-Switzerland Enclave Stamp Card [4], you could get stamps for each of the five
exclaves of the bilingual canton of Fribourg/Freiburg; for Céligny [5], the only exclave of Geneva, in the
neighboring canton of Vaud, but consisting of two separate parts; and for the
picturesque little town of Steinhof, a little piece of Solothurn enclaved in
Bern — among many, many others.
The stamp cards could
also include, for the completists, two cantonal quadripoints, and some space
for the curious case of the two Appenzells, formerly a unified canton enclaved
within Sankt Gallen. In 1597, it was split along religious lines into a mainly
Catholic Appenzell Innerrhoden, and a largely Protestant Appenzell
Ausserrhoden. Since each, after the split, is surrounded by two cantons,
neither is a proper enclave anymore. But the situation looks delightfully
complex on a map, and is further embellished by two Innerrhoden exclaves inside
Ausserrhoden [6].
However, the two crown
jewels on any card would be Campione d’Italia and Büsingen am Hochrhein,
Switzerland’s two international enclaves. They make excellent bookends to your
Swiss enclave hunt: Campione is located in the south, a stone’s throw from
Switzerland’s mountainous border with Italy, while Büsingen borders the Rhine
frontier with Germany in the north. You could start with either, and work your
way to finish at the other.
Campione is a splinter
of Italy wedged in the westernmost of Switzerland’s three alpine fingers [7], in the Italian-speaking south of the
country. Barely three times the size of the Vatican [8], this is Italy’s only exclave — the
Vatican and the ancient republic of San Marino being Italy’s two better known enclaves.
Administratively, the
little town on the eastern bank of Lake Lugano is part of the Italian province
of Como [9]. The Italian border is less than a mile
away, but only if you follow Diana Ross’s mountaineering advice. The only
overland connection to Italy is a wraparound road, over nine miles long.
Founded by the Romans
in the 1st century B.C. as the garrison of Campilonum [10], Campione’s administrative separation
from its surroundings dates from A.D 777. At that time, the local Langobard
lord, Toto of Campione, left his inheritance to the archbishopric of Milan,
which consigned it to the Milanese abbey of Sant’Ambrogio. That abbey would
retain ownership of Campione for just over a millennium, until the French
takeover in 1798.
Initially, the
surrounding area, known as Ticino, remained under the sway of the bishop of
Como [11]. But in 1521, Pope Julius II gave Ticino
to the Swiss as thanks for their support during the Wars of the Holy League,
which were fought between 1508 and 1516 [12]. “Nothing to do with us,” said the monks
of Sant’Ambrogio, who went on maintaining their sovereignty over Campione,
which then still extended to the lands on the opposite, western shore of Lake
Lugano, around Capo San Martino.
By sheer luck or
whimsy, Campione’s status aparte even survived the attention
of the Sarkozy-size Corsican. Even as Ticino was fully absorbed into the
Helvetic Republic, Campione maintained its ancient privileges, remaining part
of the political entity to the south — even if this was also another
short-lived Napoleonic creation, the Cisalpine Republic.
Ticino twice tried to
absorb Campione: in 1800, it proposed exchanging the enclave for Indemini [13], a border town south of Lake Locarno
judged by its inaccessibility to be the “remotest town in Switzerland.” In
1814, the campionesi themselves were asked their opinion in a
referendum, and the overwhelming sentiment was: “Grazie, ma no grazie.”
This they would come
to regret. By 1848, with chaos and violence gripping pre-unification Italy,
Campione petitioned the Swiss for annexation. In Ticino, they couldn’t break
out the festive polenta fast enough. But the Swiss federal government, keen to
maintain its vaunted neutrality, felt obliged to reject the offer.
With Italy unified in
1861, both governments fixed the frontier and established free-trade privileges
for Campione within Switzerland. This was to compensate for the enclave’s
considerable loss of territory: the San Martino shore became Swiss in order to
solve two traffic problems. The postal road from Lugano to Melide, passing by
Capo San Martino, would no longer have to cross a small stretch of Italian
territory. And Switzerland’s gain of San Martino facilitated lacustrine [14] navigation by removing a strip of
Italian territorial waters from between two Swiss parts of the lake. Campione’s
portion of the lake now extends only halfway.
The agreement led to
an increasing symbiosis of Campione’s economy with Switzerland’s, causing
Mussolini to assert the exclave’s “Italianness” in the 1930s by adding the
epithet d’Italia, and by building an ornamental gate at the
entrance to the town.
For all Il Duce’s
bluster, the town’s separation from Italy proper put it outside of his reach,
making it a magnet for political refugees. During the final stage of Fascist
rule in Italy, under a Nazi puppet state called the Repubblica Soziale
Italiano, Campione became a focal point for Italy’s royalists [15]. The exclave also was a staging ground
for O.S.S. operations [16] inside Italy.
All of which must have
made for some very interesting evenings at Campione’s casino. That casino was
set up in 1917 by the Italian government with the explicit intention of being a
“listening post” — to extract sensitive military information from foreign
diplomats in a relaxed atmosphere. Its tax-exempt status arguably proved more
useful to the Italian state: since its extension in 2007, the casino now has 56
tables and 500 slots, and is not only one of the largest casinos in Europe, it
is also the largest employer of the enclave. Its revenue is more than enough to
allow life in Campione to be pretty much tax-free.
Campione, and the
casino in particular, continues to exert an attraction on Italian royalists.
But perhaps for the wrong reasons. In the summer of 2006, Prince Victor
Emmanuel of Savoy, son of the last king of Italy, was arres¬ted on charges of
procuring girls for prostitution at the Casino di Campione.
Things are a bit less
lurid in the German enclave of Büsingen am Hochrhein, in the north of
Switzerland — noted for its Bible college rather than for the absence of a
casino. Even so, this enclave’s history is equally bizarre, and even more
ancient.
Büsingen’s
acquaintance with borders goes back to Roman times, when it was on the¬ limes —
the defensive wall shielding Roman civilization from Germanic barbarism. Fast
forward to the 17th century, by which time Büsingen has been an Austrian fief
for a few centuries, despite a standing Swiss claim on it. In 1693 the Swiss
abducted, tried and condemned to death Eberhard Im Thurm, the Austrian lord of
Büsingen. The local dispute came close to all-out war. Austria was dissuaded
from marching on Bern, but it swore never to relinquish control over Büsingen
to the perfidious Swiss — if merely to spite them.
This held true even
after Austria sold its rights to the nearby villages of Ramsen and Dörflingen
to the canton of Zürich in 1770, effectively making Büsingen an enclave within
Switzerland. In 1805, the Peace of Pressburg handed Büsingen to the southern
German kingdom of Württemberg. After the Congress of Vienna in 1815, the town
came under the overlordship of the Grand Duchy of Baden. Last left holding the
parcel was the German Empire, which acquired jurisdiction over Büsingen after
the first German unification in 1870.
Switzerland’s two
enclaves mirror each other in funny ways. Each had an ineffective pro-Swiss
referendum: the citizens of Büsingen had theirs in 1919, after the First World
War had made Germany the most unpopular country in Europe. A whopping 96
percent of the inhabitants voted for annexation by Switzerland. The people had
spoken loud and clear, but their voices were ignored. As the Swiss were unable
to offer Germany any suitable territory in exchange, the deal was off. Büsingen
would remain, somewhat reluctantly, German.
Renewed negotiations
in 1956 backfired spectacularly. Not only did the Landkreis of
Konstanz, to which Büsingen belongs, refuse to consider the idea of a transfer;
as if suddenly alerted to the exclave’s existence, it demanded a land corridor
to Büsingen instead. Since 1956 was not yet the best time for Germans to start
demanding territorial concessions from their neighbors, the answer was a
no-brainer: Nein!
By a combination of
historical accident, geopolitical inertia and bad timing, both Büsingen and
Campione d’Italia have remained marooned inside Switzerland. Over the
centuries, coping mechanisms were developed, some of which are quite similar.
For one, both enclaves
are in a customs union with Switzerland, but de jure in Buesingen’s case, and
de facto for Campione. And the more common currency in both territories is
still the Swiss franc instead of the euro, though the latter by its sheer
volume is more prevalent than the German mark and the Italian lira ever were.
Moreover, both countries share two post codes, one Swiss, the other their
national one. And in both cases, their special tax status attracts tax
refugees, largely from abroad in Campione’s case, and more from inside
Switzerland as for Büsingen.
But each also has its
peculiarities. The Swiss police may pursue and arrest suspects in Büsingen, but
no more than 10 Swiss police officers are allowed in the town at one time.
Similarly, there may never be more than 3 German police officers per 100
inhabitants in Büsingen. And Campionesi who work in Switzerland pay taxes where
they work; Switzerland transfers part of this tax to Italy.
Such is the absurd
paradox of daily life in the enclaves: they’re foreign splinters in the Swiss
body politic, but they’re also inextricably connected to their Swiss
surroundings. If there’s one overriding argument to maintaining a situation
that causes so much trouble — apart from the tax breaks — it must be that
enclaves relish their peculiar status. Who knows, maybe one day it will even
bring tourists, bearing stamp cards.
Frank Jacobs is a
London-based author and blogger. He writes about cartography, but only the
interesting bits.
[1] Previous one was at Interlaken in 2011.
Next one in 2014, location to be confirmed. Check the Eidgenössisches
Jodlerverband Web site for
updates.
[2] That definition actually describes an
exclave — which is often, but not always the same as an enclave. For an
overview of the difference and the similarity between both, see this previous
entry: An Apology of
Enclaves.
[3] Invaders know they won’t win popularity
contests, and are often able to sweep away centuries of local privileges and
particularisms. The Swiss did have to contend with one such unsolicited visit.
Napoleon overran the Old Confederation and felt obliged to restructure
Switzerland. But the highly centralized Helvetic Republic was very unpopular,
and extremely short-lived, lasting from 1789 to just 1803.
[4] Dear Swiss Tourist Board, do we have to
do everything ourselves?
[5] Notable not merely because it comes in
two parts. It is also the burial site of Richard Burton, the actor (unfairly)
best remembered for marrying Elizabeth Taylor twice. His last resting place is
itself also part of a double act: a few yards from his grave lie the remains of
the writer Alistair Maclean, whose book “Where Eagles Dare” was made into a
movie, starring … Richard Burton.
[6] Not surprisingly, both are Catholic
convents: Kloster Grimmenstein and Kloster Wonnenstein.
[7] Of these three protrusions, this one
reaches farthest south. Switzerland’s southernmost point at Chiasso is only 25
miles north of the city center of Milan. For good measure, there are also three
Italian protrusions north into Switzerland. Again, the westernmost one
penetrates farthest into the other country’s territory, halfway up the 90-mile
distance between Chiasso and the central Swiss city of Lucerne.
[8] Note that much of Campione’s surface is
lake, though.
[9] See also the eponymous Lake Como. If
you’re around, don’t forget to visit the Isola Comacina, an island in the lake,
about 100 meters from shore. Formerly the site of a Byzantine fortress, it was
given to Belgium’s King Albert I in 1919 — no doubt as a consolation prize for
Belgium’s suffering in World War I. It was handed back to Italy in 1920.
[10] Ironically to keep out the Helveti, the
nominal forebears of today’s Swiss (Switzerland’s official name and its
two-letter ISO country code abbreviation still refer back to these Celtic
tribes: Confoederatio Helvetica, CH).
[11] A similar feudal origin lies at the
basis of the separation of the two Baarles on the Belgian-Dutch border, also
discussed in the previous post mentioned in [2].
[12] The same pope in 1506 asked the Swiss to
send him a contingent of soldiers to serve as guards. The Swiss were once famed
for their mercenary skills, and many European courts had Swiss Guards. The unit
in the Vatican is the last remaining today.
[13] Hence “indemnity”?
[14] Of or relating to lakes. I had to look
that up, obviously. “Lakial” just didn’t sound right.
[15] The Italian monarchy was abolished by
referendum in 1946, in part because of its association with Fascism, and
members of the formerly ruling house were barred from Italian soil until 2003.
