The Sechseläuten in Zurich is legendary, the spring festival in April when the members of the 26 Zurich guilds and societies march through the streets of the city with Tschingderassabum. Finally, the Böögg, a huge artificial snowman, is burned. The faster the Böögg loses its head, the more beautiful the summer should be. In 2020 and 2021 the Sechseläuten had to be canceled due to the pandemic, but it can be assumed that if the event had taken place, nothing would have changed in the pictures: mainly men can be seen.
In the pictures of the Sechseläuten parade, one or the other woman appears in the fray: for example, female guests of honor, musicians or even a scantily clad belly dancer who adorns the car of the “Zunft zum Kämbel”.
… and the women smile, wave and give away flowers. Unless they are guests of honor, like the Swiss pop singer Beatrice Egli here at Sechseläuten in 2017.
(Photo: Walter Bieri / picture alliance / Keystone)
But the main characters at Sechseläuten are men, around 3500 guilders in their traditional costumes. Women are allowed to wave to them from the roadside and hand out flowers and kisses. But they are not intended as members in the associations that see themselves as the heirs of the medieval craftsmen’s associations, which also held political power in Zurich until the end of the 18th century.
A working group for women
With this order – men strut, women cheer – it could soon be over. Like recently the Swiss radio reported, the largest Zurich guild is thinking about whether it is not slowly about time to also allow women. According to its guild master Gustav von Schulthess, the “Zunft zur Meisen”, which emerged from the association of wine merchants, landlords, saddlers and painters, founded a working group to find out whether and how women could participate in guild life. “Excluding women from a guild is actually no longer appropriate”, said Schulthess of the NZZ.
When that became public, something was going on in Switzerland. from “Paradigm shift” wrote the newspapers, from “End of male rule”.
To understand the excitement, you have to know what role guilds and similar associations play in Swiss society. It’s not just about folklore clubs that are crazy about costumes, but amazingly influential associations to this day – although, mind you, they come from a time when descent and class thinking shaped society and not principles such as equality of rights and democracy. In some regions they are called guilds, in other civil or civic communities, in some cases both exist in parallel. They are structured differently and have different powers. What they all have in common, however, is that they managed to make the leap into the present surprisingly well despite their traditional structures – and that in Switzerland of all places, this supposed primeval democracy.
Membership by birth or adoption
A prominent example of such a remnant of the premodern is the civic community in Bern with its 18,700 members, a public corporation with its own constitution and its own electoral system. To put it simply, she is the heiress of the old Bernese government, which shaped the fortunes of the powerful city-state until the end of the 18th century and was mainly recruited from the patrician families. You are a burger by virtue of birth or adoption, but you can also apply for “burglary”.
The civic community owns real estate, a cultural center, a museum, a library, forests and other lands, and with its billion dollar fortune it plays an important role as a patron in the federal city. In addition, she also has state-supporting tasks: she takes on social assistance and guardianship for her relatives. The civic community thus forms a kind of parallel structure to the political community of Bern. Incidentally, there have always been women among burgers, but they have only had a say since the 1960s.
There is still such a wealthy community in Basel, and there are also guilds under its roof. Although they no longer have government responsibilities, they are considered an important social network in the city. One that women have only recently had access to: Most Basel guilds were all-male clubs, similar to those in Zurich. After years of quarreling, the community changed this in the regulations in September. In future, the guild ordinances will refer to “guild members” instead of “guild brothers” in a gender-neutral manner.
And in Zurich? There the guilds are “only” associations under private law with no special tasks, but here, too, the network character makes up much of their unbroken attraction. The old, influential Zurich families are still represented in the guilds, as is the new elite from politics and business. Bank managers like Josef Ackermann or Urs Rohner are members of the “Zunft zur Meisen”, as is the former Swiss Re boss Walter Kielholz. The prominent publisher and politician Roger Köppel has also been a guild for several years. No wonder: it can “still be helpful for career and business if you know this network”, confessed quite frankly a few years ago the then president of the central committee of the guilds of Zurich.
Representing all professions, from doctors to truck drivers – just no women
Georg Steiger, guild master of the “Zunft zum Widder” and currently chairman of the Zurich guild masters’ meeting, does not want to leave it as it is. “The guilds are definitely not an elitist group that rules Zurich,” he says. Important prerequisites for admission are “a good repute, an active relationship with Zurich and the joy of traditions”. All professions are represented in his guild, from doctors to truck drivers.
Only women, they are not there. The “Gesellschaft zur Fraumünster” has existed in Zurich since the 1980s, and in turn only women are allowed to become members. But to this day the society is not part of the central committee of the guilds, and the Fraumünster women are only allowed to walk as guests of the “Gesellschaft zur Constaffel” during the Sechseläuten parade.
Now the “Zunft zur Meisen” has surprisingly pushed ahead with its working group. So is this last male bastion called the guild soon to fall completely? Guild master Steiger waves it away. “As far as I know, the ‘Zunft zur Meisen’ is the only one that deals with the issue of women in such concrete terms.” He emphasizes the club’s autonomy: “Each guild can decide for itself.”
Women could possibly sue
However, even this line of argument is now in question. When the issue of guilds and women was disputed last in Basel, politicians had legal reports drawn up to clarify whether the exclusion of women from public corporations is even permissible. If it is not, the experts judged. And two lawyers from the University of Zurich went even further: the exclusion of women was already “tricky” under civil law – including guilds like those in Zurich that are organized as associations. In terms of association law, the exclusion could constitute a violation of personality, so the reviewers.
So if a couple of Zurich women complained, it wouldn’t look so bad for them. So it could be that the Zurich guilds will soon look a little less like yesterday.