A waitress becomes a legend
During World War I Gilberte Montavon from Courgenay was a ray of light for Swiss-German soldiers, easing the drudgery of their day-to-day life on the border.
Beat Kuhn
Beat Kuhn is Regional Editor at the Bieler Tagblatt and pulls out the occasional exciting news story from the archives.
Website: Bieler Tagblatt
Switzerland’s official national figure is Helvetia, a warrior armed with spear and shield and clad in a Roman gown that covers her almost from head to foot. During World War I the nation also had an unofficial national figure. Gilberte Montavon, a young waitress from the Jura village of Courgenay, who not only served food and drinks to countless soldiers, but also cheered them up and provided a listening ear and a kind word. Her outfits were always high-necked.
Thanks to the film, and the song from which it takes its title, Gilberte hasn’t been forgotten. But the effect that she had during World War I as a real person, and during World War II as the main character in a film, of creating a sense of identity, has faded.
When World War I broke out in 1914, the Ajoie bordered not only on France, but also on the German Empire, through what was at that time German Alsace. Due to the exposed location of the Ajoie, hundreds of troops were deployed to protect the border between the two warring factions. Appropriately, the region’s German name is Pruntruter Zipfel, because it bulges outwards, markedly lengthening the border. It was mainly soldiers from the German-speaking part of Switzerland who were transferred to this area which was, for most of them, a foreign place.
The then 18-year-old Gilberte was put to work as a waitress, because she had once spent a year in Zurich – the counterpart to the earlier Welschland year for girls from the German-speaking part of Switzerland – and was therefore able to converse in dialect with the soldiers from “outside”, crossing the language barrier. At best, the Swiss-German soldiers spoke a “Français fédéral”, struggling along on their schoolboy French. Gilberte’s phenomenal memory for names, thanks to which she was able to greet the soldiers by name as early as their second visit to the bar, also made her popular.
But Gilberte also became a ray of sunshine for these men because of the bleak historical backdrop. Imagine the situation in which these men found themselves: often they were away from home for months on end, away from their wives and children, who were left without a provider. Switzerland didn’t yet have any policy of compensation for loss of earnings, and the soldiers received only a minimal payment for serving their country. The food was meagre and the soldiers slept on straw. In addition, they were subjected to military discipline and drills by their commanding officers on a daily basis. On a personal level, the soldiers’ emotional welfare was not catered to. The oppressive fear that the country would at some point be dragged into the war should not be underestimated either. The border is just ten kilometres from Courgenay.
The composition eventually found its way into the hands of Hanns In der Gand, who was engaged by the army as a “Soldatensänger”, singing Swiss folksongs to entertain and uplift the troops. The song was incorporated into his repertoire from 1917 – making Gilberte known throughout Switzerland. As the song became more widely known, the not-quite-true part of the story began. Hanns In der Gand’s real name was Ladislaus Krupski, and he was the son of a Polish father and a German mother. He is thought to have adopted the Uri name In der Gand in order to have easier access to the local people as a collector of folk songs. Even today, Krupski is often wrongly credited as the writer of the song.
The so-called “Oberstenaffäre” (colonel’s affair) of 1915, for example, drove a wedge between the two halves of the country. Two high-ranking Swiss-German officers – both colonels in the Swiss General Staff – covertly provided the German and Austro‑Hungarian military attachés with the daily bulletins issued by the general staff and other confidential papers. When this came to light the two were punished by General Ulrich Wille, the head of the Swiss Army, with a mere 20 days of detention, and then dismissed from their roles by the Federal Council. These were paltry consequences for treason, for which the death penalty is often given in time of war. This mild punishment unleashed an outcry in western Switzerland.
Thankfully, there was still this lovely waitress from Courgenay who kept the country united in music and legend...
This article appeared in the Bieler Tagblatt. It was published in that newspaper on 10 July 2020 under the title “How a waitress became a legend”.
Read here how the legend lived on in World War II.
Read here how the legend lived on in World War II.
