ABSTRACT
It is not easy for an outside observer to pel1etrate the tangled thicket of cliches that is Swiss l1istory and politics. He therefore turns gratefully to apparently unusual aspects which offer the hope of clearing paths through the maze. 'But what is all too rarely borne in mind' - as a commentator wrote in a German newspaper in 1993 - 'is that Switzerland is the only European country in which the 1848 revolution succeeded and ... a successful example of a functioning, non-ethnic citizen's state'. I Is that just another 'Swiss' cliche? Whether or not, it is at least a possible and by no means new interpretation of Swiss history. If, on a second glance, one changes location and perspective and investigates the way the Swiss see themselves, one immediately encounters further obstacles. In the intensive self-preoccupation with what is 'Swiss' in history, culture and politics that characterises the 'spiritual national defence' in the inter-war period, federalism - the national 'unity in diversity' of the nationalities and linguistic regionsforms a basic assumption which, again, is almost a cliche in itself. Yet powerful forces in the interpretation of this self-image have at the same time turned massively against seeing this feature of 'Switzerland' as being grounded in the successful liberal and democratic revolutions of the nineteenth century and in the federal state after 1848.
