In 1974, Jura voted to split from Berne and form its own canton. Fifty years later, what makes the most defiant corner of Switzerland the place it is now? The author got on his bike to find out.
Clinique Le Noirmont in the canton of Jura sits like a castle on the hill above the village from which it takes its name. Behind the building, the terrain drops steeply into the deep gorge of the River Doubs that separates Switzerland from France. In the other direction are the tree-topped highlands of Franches-Montagnes – one of Switzerland’s more thinly populated regions.
Wedged in on the border, Clinique Le Noirmont is the biggest national rehabilitation centre for patients with cardiovascular disease. It is a good point from which to begin a tour of Switzerland’s youngest canton, a place where the people have long worn their heart on their sleeve.
The canton has a history of defiant activism – one that inspires outsiders who recognise the generous, dissenting, freedom-loving instincts of the people who live there. Jura serves as a romantic counterpoint to efficient, precise, competitive Switzerland.
Fifty years since the high-water mark of Jura separatism, how much of this rebelliousness is now myth and how much still reality?
To find out, I set off on my bike from Le Noirmont and headed east to Jura’s capital Delémont – a fitting thing to do. The canton of Jura came into being through people battling the political headwinds that came their way. And cyclists are buffeted by plenty of headwinds on the gusty Jura plateau.
Sunday, 23 March 1974 turned out to be a historic day when the referendum results were announced. “Il pleut la liberté [It’s raining freedom],” Roger Schaffter, one of the main figures of Jura’s separatist movement, said poetically on the balcony of Delémont’s town hall as it began to rain.
A narrow majority of voters in the seven districts of Jura had just decided that their canton would split from Berne, correcting an arrangement that dated back to the downfall of Napoleon and the 1815 Congress of Vienna, when the territories of the Prince-Bishopric of Basel in the Jura mountains were assigned to the canton of Berne. Jura was a form of compensation for Berne, which had had to give up its territories in Aargau and Vaud.
Little Jura – Catholic and French-speaking – now found itself part of the big, Protestant, German-speaking canton of Berne. Longing for territorial autonomy and self-determination, many in Jura felt marginalised and resentful. Political experts now say that the strife surrounding Jura before the historic 1974 vote could even have led to a civil war.
This is no exaggeration. From the 1960s onwards, the separatist movement Rassemblement Jurassien and its young militant group Béliers often sailed close to the wind during a resistance campaign against Berne that was as furious as it was effective. In 1969, young demonstrators from Jura gathered at the Bundesplatz in Berne to burn the controversial “Civil Defence” booklet that the Federal Council had distributed to every household in Switzerland. Activists also stormed the National Council chamber in 1968. And radical splinter groups even carried out arson attacks.
Jura eventually voted for self-determination peacefully and democratically in June 1974, but in doing so created a new bone of contention: only Jura’s northern districts – Franches-Montagnes, Porrentruy, and Delémont – wanted to establish a new canton. Its southern districts opted to remain with Berne.
Hence, Jura was divided in two when the eponymous canton was born and became part of the Swiss Confederation in 1979 – a hard pill to swallow. Battle lines remained and became even more entrenched in people’s hearts and minds. Acts of vandalism and provocation followed, including the audacious theft of the legendary Unspunnen Stone in Interlaken. The stone, which weighed 83.5 kg, was traditionally thrown in competition at the Unspunnen Festival. But a lot of water has passed under the bridge since then, with the district of Moutier due to switch allegiance from Berne to Jura in 2026 – increasing Jura’s population by an extra 7,500. Maybe this will be the last piece in the Jura puzzle.
In an interview to mark 50 years since the 1974 plebiscite, Federal Councillor Elisabeth Baume-Schneider – who lives in the Jura village of Les Breuleux not far from Le Noirmont – said that Jura’s birth as a canton was a reminder of what democracy can do. “The right to freedom and self-determination is something that Jura and its people hold dear.”
Cycle through the remote Franches-Montagnes countryside in the direction of Saignelégier (against the headwind naturally) and you will notice that Baume-Schneider’s definition of a free and unfettered Jura extends further than just politics.
Switzerland has a population density of 214 people per km2. The canton of Jura has an average of only 88 inhabitants per km2. Jura has very decent road connections, yet still more than enough space for people to live far enough from each other to tolerate differences of thought or deed.
Café du Soleil in Saignelégier village square is steeped in the spirit of nonconformism. In 1980, the year after Jura became a canton, a group of like-minded friends transformed this old venue into a cultural hub. Their aim as stated in the founding manifesto was to create a “space conducive to critical analysis and to freedom”, where people would “reclaim autonomy for themselves and for their region as a whole”.
Today, Café du Soleil has lost some of the edginess that set it apart in those early days. On the menu, you can order vegetarian spring roll followed by a 200-gram rib-eye steak. Cultural events consist of exhibitions and concerts. Nonetheless, places like Saignelégier epitomise how Jura’s rebellious image persists to this day.
Saignelégier’s camping site, situated not far from the stunning Etang de la Gruère lake reminiscent of the Scandinavian lake districts, is one of the few camping sites in Switzerland with no marked spaces or electrical access points. Or any booking system for that matter. There is enough space for everyone. “C’est ça la liberté,” say the site attendants.
I ride a little further before reaching the ostensibly sleepy Franches-Montagnes village of Les Genevez. Local mayor Anael Lovis, aged 23, is the most exciting thing going for Les Genevez these days. But the small municipality made a name for itself decades ago when its residents opposed the construction of a nearby military base that had long been in the pipeline, viewing the proposed complex as a threat to wetlands like the Etang de la Gruère. “A very important episode in the Jura psyche,” says Baume-Schneider.
And very important in affirming Jura’s progressive credentials in German-speaking Switzerland. Jura’s ambitious 1979 constitution, which was way ahead of its time (and the rest of Switzerland), helped to consolidate the canton’s forward-looking reputation, enshrining the right to strike, the right to work, the right to housing, the principle of gender equality, and the establishment of an office for women’s affairs. Non-Swiss residents in Jura are also allowed to vote in cantonal elections and referendums.
The long ride down from the Franches-Montagnes highlands gives me time to take in the scenery. The weather-worn road has barely enough room to negotiate the deep and narrow Pichoux Gorge. Warm air blows into my face, rising from the more densely populated, intensely farmed stretch of plain between Bassecourt and Delémont, where I discover a different type of Jura. One that is a little less bolshie and more business minded.
Ahead of me I see the A16, an 85-kilometre-long motorway that traverses the Jura, starting in Biel in the canton of Berne and ending in Boncourt on the French border. Also referred to as the ‘Transjura’, the A16 cost 6.6 billion Swiss francs to build not only because of Jura’s complicated geology but also on account of the many bridges and tunnel portals aesthetically designed along the route by Ticino architect Flora Ruchat-Roncati. Construction began shortly after Jura’s inauguration as a canton. It finished in 2017. The A16 was a federal project to connect the underdog border region with the vibrant economic hubs of the Central Plateau, or Mittelland.
There is no real statistical evidence to prove whether the Transjura now serves its original purpose. Switzerland’s population is booming, whereas Jura’s is more or less stagnating. With higher-than-average unemployment, Jura contributes less to the Swiss economy than most cantons. The canton’s finances are less than rosy. It makes you wonder whether the physical lifeline of the Transjura has actually encouraged a sort of brain drain.
Jura historian Clément Crevoisier would probably say it has. Crevoisier has been studying his canton for decades. Jura’s linguistic and geographic isolation is a big problem, he says. Its population doesn’t even feel much affinity with the rest of French-speaking Switzerland. Young people move away to university – often never to return.
But Crevoisier also believes that decades of separatist thinking has created a mental block that prevents Jura from realising its full potential. “Unfortunately, the ideological urge to view everything in black and white ignores Jura’s multicultural roots.”
Jura’s former cantonal government minister Jean-François Roth also worries about the inertia that has beset his canton. “Jura has calmed down quite a bit,” he said on the 50th anniversary of the historic 1974 vote. “I’m not convinced our canton still embodies the idea that people had when it was founded.”
But is that idea more myth than reality nowadays, buffeted by the crosswinds of economic growth? I arrive in Jura’s capital Delémont and leave my bike in a small, unassuming pedestrian precinct opposite the station.
Writer Camille Rebetez is based in Delémont. Until recently, he was working as the art mediator at the ambitious Théâtre du Jura. His parents helped to open Café du Soleil in Saignelégier. Rebetez co-authored a comic called “Les Indociles” (The Troublemakers), which was adapted last year into a series of the same name for Swiss television.
“Les Indociles” follows the exploits of three friends in Jura’s Franches-Montagnes district who, from the 1970s onwards, unshackle themselves from societal constraints to create a community based on equality. Their idealism makes painful acquaintance with reality and the frailties of humanity. “My characters are at the mercy of liberal economics,” Rebetez told the press when the last comic was published. “They must learn how to lose without losing hope. They are unable to save the world but keep fighting for their chance to do so.”
Fifty years after the 1974 vote, the same could be said about Jura.
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Comments :
Je vous remercie pour cet article très documenté. Au delà de l'aspect historique très bien exposé qui est venu combler mes lacunes, j'y ai trouvé une belle idée de destination à vélo.
Ich war in dieser Vorzeit in Rossmaison, 2 km von Delsberg, bei der Familie Koch, Bauern, zirka 45 Kühe und Rinder, 2 Pferde, 2 Traktoren, 40 Sauen und Hühner, Hund und mich als etwa 12-jähriger Arbeitskraft. Meine Freizeit war Sonntags von 9:30 bis 16:30.
So war ich im Vorfeld am Tisch beim Essen Mithörer der Befürworter und Gegner der Gründgung des Kanton. Die Vorwürfe an den Kanton Bern waren sicher nicht ungerecht, Verwaltungen zwang die Anwohner nach Bern in die Büros zu fahren, was für den Bauern oft ein schwieriger Tag wurde. Daraus wurde in Industrie, wie Landwirtschaft hart debatiert, welche Vor- oder Nachteile. Daraus wuchsen die politischen Fantasien. Eigene Büros, Jobs, Infrastrukturen ein riesiges Potential an neuen Arbeitsplätzen.
Fantasien wurden immer mehr zur Notwendigkeit. Offenbar ist es sicher richtg gewesen einen neuen Kanton zu gründen! Sonst würde heute Moutier nicht auch zum Kt. JURA wollen. Die Ruhe, die eingetreten ist, ist doch Zeuge, dass es Schweizerischer nicht sein könnte.
Der wirkliche Grund für die Trennung wird im Artikel überhaupt nicht erwähnt. Es ist der selbe Grund, warum sich Osttimor durch viel Gewalt von Indonesien gelöst hat und warum es in Irland so lange Bürgerkrieg gab und viele Regionen der Welt in Unruhen leben müssen: Dort, wo die katholischen Priester politisch nichts zu sagen haben, machen sie so lange Rabatz, bis sie bekommen, was sie wollen. Jetzt ist der katholische Teil des Kantons Bern selbständig und der katholische Klerus hat die Politik in der Hand. Es ist ja leicht, Frieden zu stiften, wenn man vorher den Zwist selbst inszeniert hat. Schade, dass die ernsthaft katholisch Gläubigen nicht merken, dass sie mit ihren Gaben und ihrer Mitgliedschaft ein antichristliches System unterstützen. Möge der Herr ihnen die Augen öffnen!