page_title: Landsgemeinde
section_title: Origin
hierarchical_section_title: Landsgemeinde / History / Origin
caption_attribution_description: Die Landsgemeinde, Gemälde von Albert Welti (1862-1912), 1910/12, fünf Felder, je 273 x 144 cm, Guache auf Papier auf Leinwand, Kunsthaus Zürich, Eigentum der Schweizerischen Eidgenossenschaft. Das Original befindet sich im Ständeratssaal in Bern.
context_page_description: The Landsgemeinde or "cantonal assembly" is a public, non-secret ballot voting system operating by majority rule, which constitutes one of the oldest forms of direct democracy. Still at use – in a few places – at the subnational political level in Switzerland, it was formerly practiced in eight cantons. For practical reasons, the Landsgemeinde has been abolished at the cantonal level in all but two cantons where it still holds the highest political authority: Appenzell Innerrhoden and Glarus. The Landsgemeinde is also convened in some districts of Appenzell Innerrhoden, Grisons and Schwyz to vote on local questions.
  The German term Landsgemeinde itself is attested from at least the 16th century, in the 1561 dictionary of Pictorius.
  It is a compound from Land "land, canton; rural canton" and Gemeinde "community, commune".
  Eligible citizens of the canton or district meet on a certain day in the open air to decide on specific issues. Voting is accomplished by those in favor of a motion raising their hands.
context_section_description: The Landsgemeinde assembly is a tradition with continuity back to the later Middle Ages, first recorded in the context of the formation of the Old Swiss Confederacy. The tradition ultimately continues the Germanic thing, although not uninterruptedly, as the Alamanni had lost their independence to the Frankish Empire in the 8th century, but re-emerging in territories with imperial immediacy since the 13th century.
  The first Landsgemeinde proper is attested for Uri in 1231; however, these early assemblies grew as it were seamlessly out of the older institution of blood courts (assemblies with the purpose of dispensing judgement on criminal offenses, see high justice).
  The Middle Latin texts when recording a Landsgemeinde usually express this by making universitas "the universality", or communitas hominum "the community of men" of a certain canton the subject of a sentence (see, for example, the Federal Charter of 1291), in order to emphasize that the decision was made by the community (direct democracy) rather than by a political elite.
  In the Old Swiss Confederacy, the existence of a Landsgemeinde was the defining feature of the rural cantons (Länderorte, as opposed to the city-cantons).
  These Cantons were: Uri, Schwyz, Unterwalden (the forest-cantons), Glarus and Appenzell and Zug.
  Zug took an intermediate position, as it was a city-canton which due to the existence of a Landsgemeinde was also counted under the rural cantons.
  With the formation of Switzerland as a federal state, the formerly sovereign cantonal assemblies became subject to federal law, and the Landsgemeinden came to be seen as anachronisms.
caption: Die Landsgemeinde, fresco in the Federal Palace of Switzerland  by Albert Welti and Wilhelm Balmer
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