Switzerland: In Search of the Hero William Tell

Story and photography by
Nancy & Eric Anderson 

 

The Golden Pass Line, "the best of the Swiss panoramic trains" rolls rapidly across the Bernese Oberland towards Lucerne. It is spring but the famed peaks are covered in snow and 1000 foot-high waterfalls cascade in ribbons down the mountains. The Alpine meadows are ablaze with forsythia and apple trees in blossom; the meadows themselves belying the suggestion that only Ireland has 40 shades of green. The little villages are widely scattered on the steep slopes, the farms look like ski lodges and the goats and cattle ambling across the vista are almost cartoon-like as they balance precariously on two short and two long legs. "Don't mock our cattle," says a local, overhearing tourists' comments. "We have the most beautiful cows in the world!"

He grins amiably then stumps off at the next stop and strides off up a mountain. It's easy to imagine what kind of people such inaccessible and difficult terrain might spawn. They'd be proud, uncomplaining and tough with the fire of independence burning in their belly. And they'd have their heroes.

Our children grow up hearing about Johnny Appleseed, British children have heard the story of King Arthur but, of course, the whole world knows the tale of William Tell. Or does it? What really happened? How much is legend? Does it matter?

Answers are inconclusive in Switzerland, a remote mountainous land that has defied intruders throughout time. Indeed, William Tell was defying an intruder. The tale as told to every Swiss schoolchild -- here necessarily abbreviated -- is that around 1307, shortly after the Gotthard Pass opened, Austria sent an official called Gessler from the Habsburg empire to control the Swiss town of Altdorf. Tell, a local Swiss chamois hunter, declined to bow to Gessler's authority and was ordered as punishment to shoot an apple from his son's head. He succeeded but an extra arrow was discovered, hidden in his belt for Gessler, he said, should his first shot kill his son. While being transported by boat to prison, he escaped by leaping to a rock at the lake's edge. He hurried to Gessler's castle, and dispatched him with an arrow. So bad things happen to bad people.

There are, strangely, no records of a William Tell and his leadership in the subsequent rebellion that gave Switzerland its independence. "The first mention of his name," says a guide on one of Lake Lucerne's paddle steamers, "is in 1472 – but that rock shows the man who made him famous in 1804." She points to the Schillerstein, a granite monolith rising 80 feet high at the lake's edge. It bears the name Friedrich Schiller, the playwright whose drama showed Tell a hero. Shortly afterwards the guide points out the little chapel built on the shore beside the very rock where Tell jumped to safety.

And beyond the picture postcard town of Bauen, at the north end of the lake where the land flattens out to embrace the upper waters of the River Reuss, sits Altdorf, complete with two statues of William Tell and in nearby Burglen, Tell's birthplace, the William Tell Museum itself. The museum has a marvelously articulate and beautifully presented short film of the William Tell legend.

The train brings you quickly to Lucerne where Americans who bought Rail Europe two-country passes before coming to Europe can now head for France or Austria or both depending on what they purchased (888-382-7245 www.raileurope.com ).

But Lucerne itself justifies some time. You're traveling light so it's an easy 10-minute stroll over the Reuss river admiring, as you walk, Lucerne's much photographed 14th century Chapel Bridge with its famous water tower over to your west. The Hotel Schweizerhof, the oldest of the city's Great Old Dames and still family-owned and run is just beyond -- and all around are the architectural delights of a city considered to be one of the most beautiful in Europe.