Geschichte der Schweiz im 20. Jahrhundert

Jakob Tanner, arguably the most well-known Swiss historian of contemporary history, situates the Swiss Confederation within the history of the 20th century and demonstrates how exciting it can be to be a small country. In the 1949 film "The Third Man," Harry Lime explains to his friend: "In the thirty years under the Borgias, there was only war, terror, murder, and blood, but there were Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, there was brotherly love, five hundred years of democracy and peace. And what do we have from that? The cuckoo clock!" There are many stereotypes about the neutral small state, which are mostly based on the idea of exceptionality. However, Switzerland was just as integrated into the structures and processes of European modernity as its neighboring countries. Jakob Tanner explores the tensions between democracy, capitalism, and national mythology.