**A street name in Trun GR, but so much more. Caspar Decurtins made a mark on the political culture of Surselva that can still be felt clearly today.** Wikimedia / Adrian Michael

Minor language, monumental work

In his ‘Rätoromanische Chrestomathie’, unconventional Graubünden politician and cultural scholar Caspar Decurtins (1855-1916) created the most important older source text on the Romansh culture of his home canton. And did so while accomplishing a great deal more.

Peter Egloff

The folklorist Peter Egloff is a publicist in Zurich.

Website: Werke von Peter Egloff beim Limmat Verlag

‘Chrestomathy’ is of Greek origin, and describes a selection of texts from various authors for study purposes. The 13 volumes of the Rätoromanische Chrestomathie contain a total of 7,260 pages of Romansh literature and 176 pages of German introductions and commentaries from the publisher. They cover a plethora of material of philological, historical and folkloric interest: deeds, statutes, laws, codes of procedure, legal traditions, political and spiritual songs, passion plays, religious polemic, chronicles, letters, diaries, and even travelogues. The work also encompasses the most important collection of fairy tales in Switzerland, with a huge number of sagas, folk songs, proverbs, country and weather lore, riddles, nursery rhymes and magic spells. Added to this are records of customs, children’s games, flora, folk remedies and superstitions. It all appeared in numerous instalments, published in Erlangen, Germany, between 1896 and 1919.

**Caspar Decurtins, painted by Balthasar Caratsch, 1895.** Museum Sursilvan, Trun

The Rätoromanische Chrestomathie would be an impressive life’s work in itself. It is therefore all the more surprising to learn that its creator Caspar Decurtins was primarily a politician, who was engaged and exposed on a variety of fronts. The chrestomathy was more of a by-product of his indefatigable drive. Born in 1855 in Trun, his father was a doctor and his mother a member of a prominent local family. Decurtins studied history, art history and constitutional law in Munich, Heidelberg and Strasbourg, gaining his doctorate at just 21. Only a year later he was elected Landammann (chief magistrate) and member of the cantonal parliament for the district of Disentis. From 1881 he was a member of the National Council in Bern, where he soon became one of the leading lights of the Catholic-Conservative faction, rising to chair of the parliamentary party in 1902. It was not long before he was dubbed the ‘Lion of Trun’. He was indeed a tough, conservative, dyed-in-the-wool Catholic with an uncompromising stance on Rome and the Pope – albeit in his very own particular way. “Catholicism is a large house with left and right wings. I live in the left wing,” was how he characterised his political position. Decurtins had a deep knowledge of and belief in the socialist classics, and had no qualms about collaborating with Social Democrats such as August Bebel or Hermann Greulich on the social issue of improving the protection and situation of the working class. Although the Catholic-Conservative party is seen as the forerunner of the Christian Democratic People’s Party (CVP) and today’s centrist Mitte party, it is difficult to reconcile some of Decurtins’ other views with their policies. He was an unswerving advocate of humane Swiss asylum policy, applicable equally to persecuted French nuns or German, Italian and Russian socialists and anarchists. He opposed having a military ‘juggernaut’, and believed that funding for the army would be better used to support more disadvantaged members of society. An arch-Catholic, he also campaigned – unsuccessfully – to have the ban on Jewish butchers lifted, because he believed it was based more on antisemitism than on animal welfare. Positions like these, combined with his passionate and unconventional manner, made Decurtins many adversaries over the years, and he ultimately became isolated even within the ranks of his own party. In 1905 he withdrew from politics and took the Chair of Cultural History at the University of Fribourg, an institution he had helped significantly to found.

Melusine playing with the dragon’s tail: mythical creatures occasionally escape the written word to adorn building walls, where they fire the imagination and encourage their sagas’ retelling. Sgraffito on a house in the Engadin village of Cinuos-chel. Photo: Christian & Hans Meisser © Fototeca dal DRG

Caspar Decurtins was one of the leading figures in the ‘Romansh Renaissance’, a movement that began in the late 19th century. At the time, this mountain language was neglected, occasionally suppressed, and in decline, but with the aid of Decurtins and others, it became a subject of academic study and respected as part of Graubünden culture. (It was also finally recognised as Switzerland’s fourth national language in 1938.) Decurtins’ great compendium is regarded as the heart of these efforts. Even as a 15-year-old high school pupil, he had begun to collect the folk songs, fairy tales and sagas of Surselva. As a 20-year-old in 1875, he gave a talk in Chur on the folk songs of the Romansh people, based on 500 lyrics that he had compiled independently and with the help of friends. In 1885 he announced his plan to produce the Rätoromanische Chrestomathie by sending out a pamphlet, while at the same time having a detailed questionnaire on local folklore printed and sent to sources throughout the canton. He succeeded in putting together a staff to help him produce his chrestomathy, instructing them to collect not only testimonies on the region’s oral tradition, but also manuscripts and old prints. Unfortunately, little is known about Decurtins’ sources and how they worked, but from much of what he himself said, we can be confident that he took great pains to faithfully reproduce what he and his staff had been told. Unlike the Brothers Grimm and many other proponents of folklore in the 19th century, Decurtins was financially secure and was not encumbered by commercial considerations when publishing his texts. The volumes of his Rätoromanische Chrestomathie appeared as inserts in a Romance-language journal, aimed primarily at an academic readership. As a result, Decurtins did not need to polish the fairy tales and sagas into fine literature, neither was he forced to select and censor with a broad market in mind. That is why the work includes many variations, fragments, crude motifs and short versions of stories that were unlikely to be published elsewhere. Originally planned to be just two volumes, the compendium expanded over the decades far beyond its original scope, and certainly could not be described as an example of method and manageability.

**‘Igl uors en Val Sumvitg’ – the saga of bears in the Val Sumvitg (top right) in a questionnaire collecting folklore for the ‘Rätoromanische Chrestomathie’, 1887...** Disentis Monastery, Disentis/Mustér

Decurtins’ political attitudes and his commitment to the rights of ordinary people also influenced the way this collector and cultural scientist saw the world. They led him to call for conventional historiography to be broadened to include the perspective of ‘simple folk’. It was unusual at the time, but it remains the accepted contemporary approach. To Decurtins, political songs were not just the subject of philological debate, but material from which to write history from the bottom up, a “valuable way of getting to know the life and work, hardships and political activities of the people – their thoughts and opinions about the affairs of the country and the men who settled them among themselves, and how they viewed historical and political events.” When Caspar Decurtins died in 1916, his epic was far from finished as he would have wanted it. Two further volumes were published before work ceased prematurely in 1919. It was reprinted in full with a new and comprehensive index between 1982 and 1986, and since 2011 the entire Rätoromanische Chrestomathie has been freely available online in digitalised form.

**…and then printed (bottom left) in the second volume of the Decurtins’ monumental work, which appeared in 1901.** Zentralbibliothek Zürich

More of: 20th / 21st century Politics Society Language Literature

Further posts

Switzerland: the reluctant host of Italian guest workers

Noëmi Crain Merz 19.01.2024 In the 1960s, Switzerland faced a dilemma regarding its Italian guest workers: their labour was desperately needed, their presence in society less so...

Italian workers arriving in Brig in 1956.

The Brünig-Napf-Reuss line: a cultural boundary through Switzerland

Birgit Huber 18.10.2023 The theory of a cultural divide running through Switzerland first emerged at the time of the “spiritual defence of the nation”, a time when academic research into folklore was being strongly promoted. This cultural boundary, which did not coincide with the language border, was supposed to provide evidence of national identity and cultural diversity.

German or French playing cards? The ‘Brünig-Napf-Reuss line’ as a border for the use of French or German playing cards in Switzerland. Illustration based on a map from the “Atlas der Schweizerischen Volkskunde” collection.

The different fates of Switzerland’s dialects

Alexander Rechsteiner 27.09.2023 Dialects play different roles in Switzerland’s language regions: in German-speaking Switzerland they dominate everyday life, while in French-speaking Switzerland they have virtually disappeared, and in Italian-speaking Switzerland they are only spoken with close friends and family. The reasons behind these differences can be found in history.

The French- and German-speaking areas of Switzerland meet on the hills above the town of Biel-Bienne