For centuries, Zurich boys were among themselves at the boys’ shooting.
In the fall of 1953, Ursula has had enough. The Zurich secondary school student wants to take part in the boys’ shooting, although only boys are allowed. She no longer wants to just stand on the sidelines and watch. She wants to join.
When the flag-bearers and brass musicians march through the Bahnhofstrasse during the festival parade, she sneaks into the crowd. Dressed as a boy, she wears heavy shoes and a windcheater over her skirt. The long hair is hidden under a beret. Her plan works: in the back row on the far left she waves her flag. She’s the only girl far and wide.
“Happiness shone from her eyes that she had managed to convince a boy that a girl could also carry flags,” writes the NZZ, which documents the rebellious act in detail.
However, the girl does not push her “breaking of rules and regulations” any further. “In the shooting range, of course, an Urs, who would actually have been an Ursula, did not appear,” says the newspaper.
Equality «does not make sense»
For centuries, shooting in Zurich was a man’s job – and in autumn it was a boy’s job. Whenever thousands of Zurich residents flocked to the boys’ shooting, only the boys took up arms. The girls watched; only the young maids of honor next to the marksman king were briefly in the spotlight.
As late as 1985, the Schützengesellschaft justified the exclusion of girls by saying that there were areas in which gender equality “didn’t make sense”. The chairman at the time said in his speech that the girls had not been “unloaded” but had never been there.
In 1990, the dispute between traditionalists and progressive voices escalated. The president of the municipal council, Vreni Hubmann (SP), canceled her participation as a guest of honor on the grounds that she “didn’t feel comfortable” at the boys’ shooting because her peers were not welcome. When she then also demanded that the event be changed into a youth festival without a shooting competition, she finally became the archer’s enemy.
Hubmann’s protest was intended to help girls to take part in boy shooting in 1991 for the first time. Their demands were anything but new, as a look at the archives of this newspaper shows.
Decades of hesitation
More than a hundred years before Hubmann, an author in the NZZ 1882 praised shooting at boys as a “beautiful custom”. But: “The wish can hardly be suppressed that over time it would turn into a real youth festival in which boys and girls could take part”.
Quiet criticism of shooting boys in the NZZ of August 22, 1882.
Ten years later, the Zurich city government actually “seriously considered” such a youth festival instead of the boys’ shooting. In the end, the majority of the city council spoke out against what the then mayor, Hans Konrad Pestalozzi, expressly welcomed in his speech: “If we saw the enthusiasm of the young shooters yesterday and today, then this decision is certainly the right one. We must raise men who can stand up for the fatherland in times of danger; and this our fatherland, long live!”
The military fitness of the young boys seems to be in the foreground even during the war years. In any case, the discussion about the participation of the girls only picked up again in the post-war years. Mayor Emil Landolt puts the girls off at the boys’ shooting in 1952 that the Züri-Fäscht will be held next year: “But then the girls can also be there. Then they don’t have to stand aside like they do today and shoot in a shooting gallery instead of standing still.”
More than a decade goes by, and Emil Landolt – still mayor – puts the girls off again. Shooting boys brings people together and lets them “feel that they belong together,” he said in his speech in 1965. Girls are not excluded from this community either. Each member of the Confederation has its own task and its own duties, and it is only important that one solves one’s tasks and fulfills one’s duty.
Duties and gender roles or not, the discussion goes on. In the 1970s, shooters came up with two new arguments why the shooting range should be reserved for boys. In 1974 it was said that the break with tradition was “primarily due to the renaming of this 17th-century autumn festival”.
In 1975, the justification is even more trivial: “The expected crowd of girls would exceed the capacity of the organization and all of the honorary officials,” the organizers are quoted as saying. In addition, one cannot procure enough gifts for everyone.
So the girls continue to get nothing. Even the appeal of the first Zurich city councilor, Emilie Lieberherr, went unheeded when, in her 1984 speech, she wished that her fellow women would participate in the future.
It almost seems cynical that a year later the Schützengesellschaft advertised with posters for the first time, but instead of showing a shooter, it was the face of a girl. “Girls aren’t actually shooting, but they’re very welcome as well-wishers at the fairground,” said the NZZ in 1985, commenting on the marketing move.
But even the most conservative shooters are now realizing that the wind has changed. The press reports give an idea of how the internal discussion developed. The organizers “already thought about participating, but never seriously considered it,” it said in 1982. Three years later, such liberalization was “in the air.”
But in the same year, the girls were rejected again. «Without fundamentally closing themselves off to innovations, the Board of Directors of the Schützengesellschaft is convinced of its task of preserving and cultivating tried-and-tested customs and customs. In this sense, he refused to allow the girls to shoot,” said a 1985 communiqué.
The NZZ can’t help but make a snappy comment: “Basic changes: yes. But no girls, for heaven’s sake!’
More years pass, the girls’ question is “seriously discussed” and is “more and more topical”; the step is “by no means utopian,” assures the rifle club.
What finally initiates the turning point is unclear. Is it the declining number of participants, as evil tongues claim? Is it a “gift from the rifle club” for the Swiss anniversary year, as the shooters put it? Or is it the cancellation of the highest city of Zurich, Vreni Hubmann, as the guest of honor last year?
The SP politician and later Zurich National Councilor remembers: “My cancellation triggered a minor earthquake. I think that got the rifle club to think.” It was never her goal to forbid someone to celebrate and spoil the joy. “But I couldn’t understand what the men’s problem was. Your arguments were outrageous.”
When it became known that the girls were allowed to shoot for the first time in 1991, the commentators spoke of a “breakthrough”. The girls had “finally conquered the bastion of the magnificent Zurich rifle club,” wrote the NZZ after the announcement, even if the traditional term “boys’ shooting” was retained.
But the shooters have kept a back door open. Because: Participation is initially limited to the anniversary year.
Within the Schützengesellschaft, the opening initially remains controversial, as Claudio Gick explains. The former deputy chairman and boss of the boys’ shooting only joined the board of the rifle club after this decision. However, he reconstructed the discussion based on conversations and meeting minutes.
“There was a pro and a con camp. The chairman at the time was in favor, but many seasoned shooters were against it, »says Gick. But the course of the shooting of boys in 1991 proves the progressive forces right. The organizers had expected the participation of 350 to 400 girls. Almost 1000 came.
“Overwhelming” was the success, according to the chronicle of the Schützengesellschaft. “And so in the following year no sane person thought of excluding the girls again.”
In 1997, 15-year-old Rahel Goldschmied from Zurich became the first female shooter at the Zurich Knabenschiessen.
After decades of procrastination and hesitation, the big step is finally taken quickly. In the first meeting after the anniversary boys’ shooting, the board decides that girls can continue to shoot and that young people from all over the canton can take part.
Today the participation of the girls is a matter of course. About a third of the field of participants is female. At the last event before the Corona pandemic in 2019, Neva Menzi was crowned a marksman queen for the seventh time.
The rifle club itself remains male-dominated. Women have been accepted as full members since 1992. Today, however, there are still ten men on the board of twelve.