The Museum of the Swiss Charters of Confederation (German: Bundesbriefmuseum; up to 1992 the Federal Charter Archive) is a history museum in Schwyz. It was built in 1936 as a national shrine for the Federal Charter of 1291, which was believed to be the founding document of the Swiss Confederation. Today, the museum explains the national myth and the actual history of the Old Swiss Confederacy. It features a collection of original documents and flags.
First ideas for a national monument date back to the 600th anniversary of the Confederation in 1891. It was only realized in the 1930s when the Canton of Schwyz planned to move its state archive to a wing of the new building. The main part of the building was the exhibition hall for the Charter of 1291 which would lay on an "Altar of the Fatherland". The archive was built and opened in 1936. Murals on the façade and on the interior depict the Rütli Oath and Nicholas of Flüe. Four years later, the monumental sculpture "Wehrbereitschaft" (Readiness to Defend) was erected in the park.
The overwhelming Spiritual national defence of this period vanished over time. The Federal Charter of 1291 is no longer seen as Switzerland's founding document. Other documents have been given equal importance. Beginning with the exhibition design of 1999, the museum began to integrate the latest historical findings. Since 2014, the myth surrounding the Federal Charter is an important part of the current permanent exhibition, while the architectural setting of the 1930s remains present.
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Since 1848 the Swiss Confederation has been a federal republic of relatively autonomous cantons, some of which have a history of federation that goes back more than 700 years, putting them among the world's oldest surviving republics.
Zug is the largest town and capital of the Swiss canton of Zug in Switzerland. Its name, translating from German as "pull" or "tug", originates from the fishing vocabulary; in the Middle Ages it referred to the right to pull up fishing nets and hence to the right to fish.
The canton of Schwyz is a canton in central Switzerland between the Alps in the south, Lake Lucerne to the west and Lake Zürich in the north, centred on and named after the town of Schwyz.
The 26 cantons of Switzerland are the member states of the Swiss Confederation. The nucleus of the Swiss Confederacy in the form of the first three confederate allies used to be referred to as the Waldstätte. Two important periods in the development of the Old Swiss Confederacy are summarized by the terms Acht Orte and Dreizehn Orte.
The Battle of Morgarten took place on 15 November 1315, when troops of Schwyz, supported by their allies of Uri and Unterwalden, ambushed an Austrian army under the command of Leopold I, Duke of Austria on the shores of Lake Ägeri, in the territory of Schwyz.
Schwyz is a town and the capital of the canton of Schwyz in Switzerland.
The Federal Charter or Letter of Alliance is one of the earliest constitutional documents of Switzerland. A treaty of alliance from 1291 between the cantons of Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalden, the Charter is one of a series of alliances from which the Old Swiss Confederacy emerged. In the 19th and 20th century, after the establishment of the Swiss federal state, the Charter became the central founding document of Switzerland in the popular imagination.
Obwalden or Obwald is one of the 26 cantons forming the Swiss Confederation. It is composed of seven municipalities and the seat of the government and parliament is in Sarnen. It is traditionally considered a "half-canton", the other half being Nidwalden.
The Old Swiss Confederacy began as a late medieval alliance between the communities of the valleys in the Central Alps, at the time part of the Holy Roman Empire, to facilitate the management of common interests such as free trade and to ensure the peace along the important trade routes through the mountains. The Hohenstaufen emperors had granted these valleys reichsfrei status in the early 13th century. As reichsfrei regions, the cantons of Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden were under the direct authority of the emperor without any intermediate liege lords and thus were largely autonomous.
The Swiss National Museum, part of the Musée Suisse Group, itself affiliated with the Federal Office of Culture, is located in the city of Zürich, Switzerland's largest city, next to the Hauptbahnhof.
The Rütli Oath is the legendary oath taken at the foundation of the Old Swiss Confederacy by the representatives of the three founding cantons, Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalden, It is named after the site of the oath taking, the Rütli, a meadow above Lake Uri near Seelisberg. Recorded in Swiss historiography from the 15th century, the oath is notably featured in the 19th century play William Tell by Friedrich Schiller.
Sattel is a municipality in Schwyz District in the canton of Schwyz in Switzerland. Its name is the German word for "saddle".
The Swiss National Day is the national holiday of Switzerland, set on 1 August. Although the founding of the Swiss Confederacy was first celebrated on this date in 1891 and annually since 1899, it has only been an official holiday since 1994.
The Old Swiss Confederacy, also known as Switzerland, or the Swiss Confederacy was a loose confederation of independent small states, initially within the Holy Roman Empire. It is the precursor of the modern state of Switzerland.
The Museum of Design, Zürich is a museum for industrial design, visual communication, architecture, and craft in Zurich, Switzerland.
The English name of Switzerland is a compound containing Switzer, an obsolete term for the Swiss, which was in use during the 16th to 19th centuries. The English adjective Swiss is a loan from French Suisse, also in use since the 16th century.
The Swedish National Museum of Science and Technology is a Swedish museum in Stockholm. It is Sweden’s largest museum of technology, and has a national charter to be responsible for preserving the Swedish cultural heritage related to technological and industrial history. Its galleries comprise around 10,000 square meters, and the museum attracts annually about 350,000 visitors. The collections consist of more than 55,000 objects and artifacts, 1 200 shelf metres of archival records and documents, 200,000 drawings, 800,000 images and about 40,000 books. The National Museum of Science and Technology also documents technologies, processes, stories and memoirs in order to preserve them for generations to come.
The Pact of Brunnen is a historical treaty between the cantons of Uri, Schwyz, Unterwalden, concluded in Brunnen on 9 December 1315.
SBB Historic is a foundation aiming at preserving historical documents and artefacts from the history of Swiss railway transportation. It was founded by the Swiss Federal Railways (SBB) in 2001 and it is based in Windisch.
The collection center of the Swiss National Museum is located in Affoltern am Albis, canton of Zurich, and serves as the Swiss National Museum's depot, which also includes the conservators' workshop, handles logistics for packing and shipping cultural objects, and a photographic studio. The center was established by converting an abandoned armory from the 1980s. It is recognized as a national treasure under No. 11777 in the Swiss Inventory of Cultural Objects.
