William Tell - Historicity Debate

Historicity Debate

François Guillimann, a statesman of Fribourg and later historian and advisor of the Habsburg Emperor Rudolph II, wrote to Melchior Goldast in 1607: "I followed popular belief by reporting certain details in my Swiss antiquities, but when I examine them closely the whole story seems to me to be pure fable."

In 1760, Simeon Uriel Freudenberger from Luzern anonymously published a tract arguing that the legend of Tell in all likelihood was based on the Danish saga of Palnatoki. A French edition of his book, written by Gottlieb Emmanuel von Haller (Guillaume Tell, Fable danoise), was burnt in Altdorf.

The skeptical view of Tell's existence remained very unpopular. Friedrich von Schiller used Tschudi's version as the basis for his play Wilhelm Tell in 1804, interpreting Tell as a glorified patriot assassin. This interpretation became very popular, especially in Switzerland, where the Tell figure was used in the early 19th century as a "national hero" and identification figure in the Helvetic Republic, and later in the beginnings of the Schweizerische Eidgenossenschaft, the modern democratic federal state that developed. When historian Joseph Eutych Kopp dared to question the legend in the 1830s, his effigy was burnt on the Rütli, a meadow above Lake Lucerne where — according to the legend — the oath was sworn that concluded the alliance between the founding cantons of the Swiss confederacy.

Historians continued to argue over the saga until well into the 20th century. In 1891 Wilhelm Öchsli published a scientific account of the founding of the confederacy (commissioned by the government for the celebration of the first National holiday of Switzerland on August 1, 1891), dismissing the story as fiction. Still, 50 years later in 1941, when Tell had again become a national identification figure, historian Karl Meyer tried to tie the saga's events to known places and events. Modern historians generally regard the saga to be fiction, since neither Tell's nor Gessler's existence can be proven. The legend also tells of a Burgenbruch, a coordinated uprising including the slighting of many forts; however, archeological evidence shows that many of these forts were abandoned and destroyed long before 1307–1308.

A possible historical basis of the legend was suggested by Arnold Schärer in 1986. He identified a Wilhelm Gorkeit of Tellikon (modern Dällikon in the Canton of Zurich) as the real William Tell. "Gorkeit", he claimed, was a version of the surname Armbruster (crossbow maker). Historians were not convinced, but the theory was once referred to by Rudolf Keller, at the time president of the nationalistic right Swiss Democrats, on 1 August 2004 in Basel.