Aliens at Home, German Townsfolk Endure Life Surrounded by Swiss

If it were up to them, the villagers of Buesingen would secede from West Germany and join Switzerland. Life, they feel, would be easier if they belonged to the country that completely surrounds them.

Buesingen is a historical oddity--a tiny West German enclave inside the Swiss canton (province) of Schaffhausen. But you won’t find border gates or guards at the village limits.

The village has been part of Swiss economic territory for centuries. Shops and restaurants take Swiss francs as payment. Most villagers work in Switzerland proper and earn francs.

High Taxes, Prices

But as West German residents, they pay the higher German income tax--a financial disadvantage compounded by the fact that prices are higher in Switzerland.

“We are ruled by two types of justice, German and Swiss, and that has become injustice for us,” village councilor Guenter Eiglsperger said.

Why don’t villagers escape Swiss prices by shopping in “mainland” West Germany, which starts with the roadside customs shed at the top of the hill less than a mile east of town?

Because on their way back home, they would have to pass Swiss customs, which limits the entry of certain staples, notably meat, and may slap duty charges on top.

To add insult to injury, a Buesinger must dial nine digits to telephone someone “abroad” in Schaffhausen, the nearest business center, 2.5 miles away, and pay eight times what they would for a domestic call.

Typical of Buesingen’s identity crisis are its public telephone booths--they accept German coins only.

Few Connections

“Except for our right to vote, the income tax, telephone and a passport, we have nothing to do with Germany on a daily basis,” said village attorney Max-Renatus Schott.

After years of lobbying West German officialdom in vain for tax relief against Swiss prices and for permission to install Swiss phones, Buesingen’s patience has worn thin. In July, it filed suit with the Federal Constitutional Court, West Germany’s highest legal body.

“We’ve never smashed windows or set car tires on fire. No extremists live here in Buesingen. We just want to make our case through proper channels,” said Eiglsperger.

West Germany is only a fleeting presence in this sleepy farming village of 1,300 people along the upper Rhine river.

The only Teutonic trademarks are the yellow village name signs (Swiss ones are blue), the yellow phone booths (Swiss are gray) and the car license plate--Buesingen has its very own (BUES), the only village with that distinction in West Germany.

Buesingen developed its split personality through a brutal quirk of history 300 years ago.

The community had long been a part of Austria but was contractually administered by the Swiss city of Schaffhausen, with which the village was economically integrated.

Religious Ties

Schaffhausen expected to acquire Buesingen eventually by agreement with Austria, especially since the village had--like the nearby Swiss--embraced the Protestant Reformation.

But in 1693 fanatical Swiss Protestant cousins of the administrator for Buesingen, Eberhard Im Thurm, kidnaped him on the suspicion he had secretly converted to Roman Catholicism, Austria’s religion.

Im Thurm, a nobleman, was tried in Schaffhausen and sentenced to life in prison. Furious, Austria reacted by canceling Schaffhausen’s contract to administer Buesingen, and it refused all subsequent Swiss entreaties to restore it.

In 1770 Austrian Emperor Joseph II sold his rights to land east and north of Buesingen to the Swiss confederation, leaving the village an enclave.

Buesingen’s fate was sealed in 1810 when it passed into the hands of the Grand Duchy of Baden--now southwestern West Germany--in a territorial swap with Austria.

“The 1693 row between Schaffhausen and Austria prevented Buesingen’s entry into the Swiss confederation. To our eternal vexation, Buesingen remains an enclave in Canton Schaffhausen,” laments a plaque in the village today.

Demand for Union

In 1918, 96% of Buesingers voted in an impromptu referendum for union with Switzerland. But the move failed because the Swiss offered no suitable territory in exchange.

In 1924 and 1925, the villagers formally demanded liberation from Baden. But the state government frostily replied it would never give up any territory of the German Reich.

Just after World War II, a defiant Buesingen Mayor Gustav Hugo painted over German county road signs, removed arrows pointing to the German border beyond the sliver of Swiss land around the village, and filed suit with the World Court.

Hugo was removed from office by French occupation authorities and his crusade evaporated. After that, the village gave up trying to break away and devoted itself to a more modest lobbying for tax breaks.

In 1984, Bonn granted breaks of up to $2,120 per household. Buesingers complained this was not enough to compensate for Swiss prices.

In June, 95% of Buesingers boycotted the European Parliament elections to back the village’s pending complaint to the Constitutional Court.

Asked about the court action, a Finance Ministry spokesman in Bonn said further tax relief was impossible because Buesingers could not prove financial hardship.

“We see that their situation is dissatisfactory but we cannot bend tax law for them,” the spokesman said. “Their problem is that the Swiss franc’s value is so high. If it were the opposite, they would have an advantage.”