“Katzentreter” from Lucerne – the difficult search for the truth in the heart of Switzerland

One of my earliest childhood memories is the fear of the inhabitants of the hinterland of Lucerne, the wild west of the canton of Lucerne. The so-called hinterland of Lucerne with the valley of the “Luthere” is a mysterious, densely wooded, hilly land that stretches behind Willisau along the cantonal and denominational boundaries between Catholic Lucerne and Reformed Bernbiet over harrows and ridges, through valleys and crevices in the heart to Switzerland.

The inhabitants of Lucerne’s hinterland were (and still are) half-derisively called “Katzentreter”. In answer to my childish questions as to why this was so, I was once told that cats were hunted in the hinterland of Lucerne to be fried in a pan. Besides poaching, this is the only way for these poor people in this remote area to occasionally get meat on the table. The secret recipes for peppering and preparing cat meat are passed down orally from generation to generation. What barbarians!

Every time I saw a car with Lucerne plates on Bernese soil, I was afraid of our farm cats and hurried home from school to protect the poor animals. When in the early 1970s some rascals from Oberaargau in Bern in Luthern in the Lucerne hinterland ignited a tear gas cartridge during the masquerade ball in a packed dance hall (the kind used in the military to test whether the gas masks were leakproof during exercises). years later, I still saw it as a heroic act in honor of the reformed cats. Panic broke out in the hall, thank God no one was hurt. The commissioners did investigate anyway. The corporal who brought the patron back from duty received a hefty prison sentence. He later became a full-blooded officer.

My mistrust of cars from Lucerne did not disappear until much later. Then I got a completely different explanation: the women, men and children in the hinterland of Lucerne were “bungerbar” good, God-fearing people. I can and must take them as role models. Especially in the valley of the “Luthere” (which borders the canton of Bern) everyone “ruid” is pious and the Lutheran bath is a place of pilgrimage, as “shampary” Catholic as perhaps only the Vatican.

The name Katzenstrecker comes from the fact that in the past everyone tried to make an election trip to Einsiedeln. It took almost 20 hours to walk the approximately 90 kilometers from Luthern to Einsiedeln. On their way to Einsiedeln they all came to Einsiedeln via Katzenstrick.

In fact, the “Chatzenstrick” is a pass and pilgrimage route that connects the villages of Einsiedeln and Altmatt in the canton of Schwyz. The pass is about 1000 meters high. Coming from Einsiedeln the road is now paved all the way to the top of the pass. The name comes from the fact that the transition is over a steep path, “requiring the agility of a cat”.

Strick is a common designation for a trail or trail in the Swiss naming landscape. The pious from the Lutheran valley have made every effort for a campaign trip to Einsiedeln. “Katzentreter” are thus the pious who made a pilgrimage over the “Chatzenstrick”.

But is this story true? Coincidentally, I later found an entry for the term «Chatzenstrecker» in the dictionary of the Swiss-German language, the so-called «Idiotikon», which dates back to 1881. And there we actually read: “The people of Lucerne are called “Chatzentretcher” because they used to stretch and unpack cats when they went through strange places and catch them to use the bellows for hats.” There is even a wooden figure from the time of the Freischarenzug, depicting a man from Lucerne holding a cat’s head with his feet and tearing his hind legs with his hands.

So again a new version: the Bernese cats not in the frying pans of the hinterland of Lucerne. But killed to make hats. So barbarians! What is correct now? An even greater contrast with the same name for the same people is hardly conceivable: either the pious custom of the pilgrimage to Einsiedeln or the barbaric stretching and covering of poor, innocent animals.

Ah, who to believe? What is propaganda, what is truth? If it’s so hard to get the truth on our doorstep, how hard must it be out there in the wide world?

By now I don’t even know whether the coat of arms of Lucerne has the blue color at the top or the bottom and whether the bear on the coat of arms of Bern looks to the right at the hinterland of Lucerne or to the left at Welschland.