Swiss Landsgemeinde

The Swiss Landsgemeinde, also called the Diet, appears in the play as a gathering where local authority is enacted through elected officers and public ritual. Its upright swords signify the power of the meeting, while the later fate of Hermann Gessler’s cap sets coercive spectacle against a communal ceremony capable of changing the meaning of a political symbol.

Identity and Offices

A note on Swiss practice explains that the Landamman was chosen by the Swiss Gemeinde, or Diet, to preside over it. The Banneret was entrusted with keeping the state banner and other banners captured in battle. These offices give the assembly a distinct civic structure: one officer presides, while another safeguards emblems associated with the community and its military history.

The play’s explanatory note also identifies a customary sign of the Diet’s authority. At its meetings, swords were planted upright in the ground. This is not merely decoration: the blades make the assembly’s power visible in the space where it gathers, joining deliberation to the capacity to defend the community.

Meeting and Ceremony

During a night meeting, Rosselmann proposes forming a ring and planting the swords of power in the ground. The stage direction makes the custom part of the assembly’s physical arrangement: the participants form a circle around the emblems of authority. The meeting continues through the night, and when dawn appears over the mountains, those present involuntarily remove their caps and contemplate the light in silence.

The scene presents the Diet not only as a place of counsel but as a body held together by shared gestures. Its nighttime deliberation gives way to a collective pause at daybreak; the swords and the uncovered heads make communal authority visible without reducing it to a single speaker’s command.

Coercive Display and Reversal

The play sets this civic ritual beside a different public ceremony in Altdorf. A crier announces in the emperor’s name that a cap will be placed on a lofty pole in the marketplace, and calls on the men of Uri to look at it. The imposed display turns a governor’s hat into an instrument of demanded deference: the community is made to witness the symbol and the authority asserted through it.

After the uprising, girls bring the cap back on a pole before a stage filled with people. Walter Furst rejects the suggestion that it should be burned, arguing instead that it should be preserved: once an instrument of despots, it can become a lasting symbol of freedom. The object’s public reappearance reverses the earlier display. What had been used to stage submission is retained by the liberated community as evidence of the transformation in power.

Political Significance

The Swiss Landsgemeinde’s customs and the cap’s changing role frame political authority as something publicly performed and recognized. The planted swords embody the assembly’s own power; the pole-mounted cap first embodies a demand for obedience and later a remembered victory over despotism. Through this contrast, the play links local self-government not only to offices and deliberation, but also to control over the signs through which authority is made visible.