Summer Essay: Banks and Mountains | nd-aktuell.de

Is Liechtenstein big or small – and where is it anyway? Like everything in life, this is a question of perspective. If you wanted to walk the 24 kilometers that the principality is long from the Swiss border in Sargans to the Austrian border in Feldkirch, it would be a day’s journey. You can also take one of the country’s own frog-green buses or just to the capital Vaduz, which is halfway there, which only takes half an hour.

What am I doing here? For three months I’m living in a tower house in Balzers that dates back to the 13th century and has meter-thick walls and a vaulted cellar. It bears a striking resemblance to Rainer Maria Rilke’s final refuge in Switzerland’s Muzot, also a 13th-century tower house where he spent his last five years. Perhaps because of this similarity and because I want to write something about Rilke in Switzerland, they thought it would be appropriate to let me use the tower house for a while.

Here I can now understand Rilke’s writing crises and poetic flights of fancy as if in a simultaneous attempt. Every day from 7 a.m. Then the bell of the small chapel opposite Sturm rings – after that, sleeping is no longer an option. The people of Liechtenstein – there is full employment here – immediately begin their working day: mowing the lawn, intensive cleaning of the pavement, taking out the rubbish and taking out the post office, carrying out preventive repairs on every corner… This goes on until midday. Only then can you hear the bells of the cows up on the mountain pasture again in the silence that sets in.

The center of Vaduz turns out to be manageable. The room in which parliament meets, for example, is more reminiscent of a community hall. Is Liechtenstein the miniature version of an ideal state, as Campanella imagined it with the “Sun State” or Thomas More with “Utopia” – the prince and his 37,000 subjects in friendly symbiosis?

There is talk of 11 to 15 Liechtenstein banks, but exactly how many there are remains unclear. Maybe that’s their key to success, because banking secrecy still applies here. Medium-sized industries are flourishing, and the country needs more workers than it has any inhabitants. However, naturalization is not an option. The guest worker idea de luxe is reminiscent of the Federal Republic of Germany in the 1960s: Austrians and Swiss come here to work – but then return home. Since living in Liechtenstein is more expensive than elsewhere, this also works.

Last but not least, art is provided by the Princely House itself, which owns one of the world’s largest art collections. You also come across works whose potential for appreciation I wouldn’t place bets on. But they testify to the sense of irony of the people of Liechtenstein, who insist on being both loyal subjects of the prince (official address: His Serene Highness!) and self-confident democrats at the same time. This sharpens the awareness of contradictions. As I understand the Liechtenstein state idea of ​​a hereditary monarchy on a parliamentary basis, the parliament has the right to depose the prince, and in return the prince can dissolve the parliament. Has been working very well for a long time. The income level of the people of Lichtenstein ultimately exceeds that of the Swiss. Maybe it’s also because you forego such dispensable things as your own army.

The people of Liechtenstein are proud to be both subjects and democrats.

A plaque on one building indicates that Goethe stayed here on his return journey from Italy from June 1st to 2nd, 1788. Not far from there is a 3.80 meter high sculpture by David Cerný, which shows a Tabant 601 on elephant legs. You can even walk between his legs. On the back of the Trabant and Elefant I read on a sign: “Quo vadis?”

The huge castle, dark and almost menacing like Kafka, towers above the mini-center filled with funny exhibits. It has 130 rooms and the royal family still lives there today. “Drones forbidden” can be read on signs all around. If you walk up the steep path, you will inevitably find yourself in front of locked gates. No, you can’t come in here, on any day of the year or at any time. What lies behind the castle walls? Fairytale riches or more functional barrenness, after all, the acting Hereditary Prince Alois is himself a trained banker?

Until now, I only knew this place as the fictional place “Vadutz” from Clemens Brentano’s fairy tale “Gockel, Hinkel and Gackeleia”, in which it is said that he “loved this little country from his youth because of its curious name”, but without knowing where it actually lies. He also “never asked about it, so as not to come out of one of those dreams that gild the pills of so-called reality.” This is the romantic perspective on the legendary Principality of Liechtenstein, which has just as many inhabitants as the German provincial towns of Schönebeck or Naumburg.

How could this defenseless spot between Switzerland and Austria survive as an independent state structure to this day? Through wisdom and a sense of reality! For a romantic idea like the one Eduard Mörike suggested with »You are Orplid, my country! “The distant shines” is probably the only chance. People never subjugated each other, but always reached diplomatic agreements with their neighbors.

It is not known how much money is hoarded in the vaults of Liechtenstein banks. As already said: banking secrecy still applies here. It is not surprising, however, that the International Monetary Fund would like to have access to the bank records. There is currently a debate about this that I am following in Liechtenstein’s only newspaper, Das Vaterland. Some neoliberal economists are calling for Liechtenstein to open up to the IMF so that it can receive help if the small country ever gets into financial difficulties. Let Hereditary Prince Alois be there! Because once the IMF sits at the table, the social and cultural land of milk and honey of Liechtenstein is over.

By the way, nobody talks about money here. The banks, whose names are not necessarily known outside the country, do not reside in palaces, but rather in inconspicuous buildings. Only when a bank suddenly disappears from the scene, like the Havilland Bank, which is said to have managed 1.6 billion francs in customer money, is this worth reporting, albeit briefly: “The Havilland bank lost its banking license in Lichtenstein and liquidated its operations. The reason for this can be found in Luxembourg.«

Case closed, one less bank in Liechtenstein, that’s hardly noticeable.