Wilhelm Oechsli

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Wilhelm Oechsli

Wilhelm Oechsli (6 October 1851, Riesbach – 26 April 1919) was a Swiss historian.

Oechsli studied theology and history at

University of Zürich.[1]
He tried to popularize critical historiography, challenging the legendary traditions about the Swiss national past:

However painful it may be to the Swiss to do without their

Rütli, in the field of scholarly inquiry the search for truth must prevail over any other consideration. For, as things stand today, there can be no doubt that the old and much-loved notions not only do not correspond with the sources of our national history, but also are frankly contradicted by the available sources... the legend as a whole is indeed a creation of fantasy, particularly in the form in which it was first recorded by Tschudi and subsequently adopted in the influential works of Johannes von Müller and Friedrich Schiller's Wilhelm Tell,[2]

Works

References

  1. James Murray Luck
    , A history of Switzerland: the first 100,000 years, Society for the Promotion of Science and Scholarship, 1985, p.49
  2. ^ Oechsli, Ueber die historischen Stifter der Eidgenossenschaft, Zurich: Schulthess, 1889, p.6. Quoted in Oliver Zimmer, A contested nation: history, memory and nationalism in Switzerland, 1761-1891, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003, p.216
  3. ^ Murry, John Middleton (October 14, 1922). "Review of History of Switzerland by Wilhelm Oechsli". The Nation and the Athenæum. 32, Part 1 (4824): 58–59.

External links