Swissness

the openness and the democratic platform this is, because this is nonprofit.

You are giving your time and you are promoting the métier d'art and the several ones and the Swissness of things as well, but you've opened up internationally.

If you look at the generations, Gen Alpha is coming and you literally open the pavilion this weekend.

Kids can literally play with calibers.

And this idea of that Swiss people are opposed to nobility and aristocracy and are fundamentally democratic kind of working people who come together to solve their problems together and don't get involved in the bullshit that other people are involved in.

becomes like very fundamental to what like Swissness is.

And like when myths start to develop about the concept of the Swiss, like when the idea of the Swiss emerges, you get, we'll talk about William Tell as like the Swiss myth.

But like the idea of that aristocrats are going to try to oppress you and we're just not going to have any of it.

And that's how that lasts for such a long time.

Yeah.

It is during this phase of Swiss history, when it is expanding, when it is growing fantastically and being fantastic on an international stage and showing aristocrats where to shove it, that the story of William Tell emerges for the first time as a core myth of Swissness, which I didn't know.

I had to go and read about the myth of William Tell because all of the books assumed that I knew what it was.

Conventional line drawn across the map of the rolling hills.

There is no inherent Germanness in this grass and inherent Swissness in that grass.

Is it kind of in- Germany is imagined.

Understood.

Markus, bringing you in.

You wanted to talk about Swissness and products, and the way that putting a Swiss flag on a thing that you are selling is actually quite a complicated thing nowadays in twenty twenty-six.

Well, uh, it's getting easier, and that's the point that, that haunts Switzerland a little bit.

So, um, there's a political discussion going on about the rule of what could be named Swiss and what is Swissness and how you brand s- something made in Switzerland.

And the classical rule is that you produce eighty percent to, to eighty-five percent resources and manufacturing you do in Switzerland, and then you, then you can say it's made in Switzerland, which is a huge brand, which is a huge differentiator in the world.

Especially for companies that have a huge production here in Switzerland, and they are relying on it and saying, "We are-- We're having classical labor finance with this, and so we can charge higher prices, we can get a premium.

... to, to outside Germany, and, and, and it, and it felt, some people called it a bit of a betrayal.

Yeah.