Commemoration (Switzerland)

This article examines how Switzerland has remembered and commemorated the First World War, during which the country maintained a state of neutrality but in which it was still manifoldly involved. It suggests a periodisation following from the historical and political uses made of the theme “Switzerland in the First World War” and shows how the state’s politics of history steered and functionalised the war narrative, especially in the period of the “Geistige Landesverteidigung” ("spiritual defence") (from the 1930s until roughly 1968). Besides the national narrative, which historical studies have never shirked, group-specific commemorative traditions are examined. Finally uncharted fields of research are mentioned as well as how urgently further research into the history of commemorating the absent war is needed.