The oldest picture of William Tell, printed and reproduced in 1507 in Petermann Etterlin’s Chronicle.
Swiss National Museum

TERRORIST FROM THE MIDDLE AGES

Good stories don’t just fly smoothly and lightly like flying carpets; they also undergo modifications. In 1507 Tell appeared in print, in Petermann Etterlin’s ‘Kronica von der loblichen Eydtgnoschaft’ (Chronicle of the Swiss Confederation), illustrated with the shooting of the apple – the first ever picture of Tell. Soon, the one Tell had become three Tells, the three sworn founders of the Confederation, cast in metal in 1590 in the ‘Three Tells bell’ of Tell’s Chapel. In 1653, the three Tells resurface in Entlebuch. Three leaders of the rebellious subjects make an appearance in historical costume, dressed as the three Tells, and open fire on a delegation of Lucerne government officials. They’re not the only ones to have opened fire in the name of Tell.

There’s the French warship Guillaume Tell, launched in 1796, which fought in the Mediterranean for the French Revolution. Or John Wilkes Booth, the actor who assassinated Abraham Lincoln, incumbent president of the United States of America, at the theatre on 15 April 1865, and explained himself by saying he had done ‘what made Tell a Hero’. Or the anarchist Tatiana Leontieva, who attempted to assassinate the dreaded Russian Minister of the Interior at a Grand hotel at Interlaken in 1906. However, she shot an innocent French tourist instead. In court she too referred to Tell, as did, later on, the fighters of the Palestinian Liberation Front who in 1969 opened fire with machine guns on an Israeli passenger plane at Zurich Airport.

Among many other things, Tell is also a terrorist from the Middle Ages. Recounting a story sounds a friendly enough activity. But recounting it – and this is what makes the Tell story so hard to ignore – includes the license to kill.

Any person who invokes the story of William Tell – from Sarnen to Paris, Weimar to Washington, Interlaken to the Middle East – becomes the personification of a free peasant farmer from the Middle Ages. And one who comes out the winner in the end. He who purports to speak with the voice of the man with the crossbow casts himself in the role of the innocent victim of oppression. And at the same time, that of the valiant avenger who is fated to press the trigger. No wonder this medieval invention has become one of our top exports.

Where will the next Tell reach for his crossbow? ‘Pity a country that needs heroes’, goes a recent comment – referencing Bertold Brecht’s famous dictum ‘Unglücklich das Land, das Helden nötig hat’ – from Central Europe, where the issue of heroes is currently the subject of intense discussion. In Ukraine, monuments and street names that commemorate Stalin or Lenin are being removed. But should they be removed, and with what should they be replaced? Who knows whether, right now in Syria under Assad, in Egypt under Sisi or in Russia under Putin, Tell’s story is not about to be written once again?

Michael Blatter

The White Book of Sarnen