Liechtenstein, the inaugural winner of the Weirdest Shaped Shit Award
boundaries dating from the medieval period —> crazy modern boundaries.
although if you think the Liechtenstein’s municipal exclaves are weird, you should see Baarle-Hertog (Belgium) and Baarle-Nassau (Netherlands).
also, a quick note re your tags — Liechtenstein’s subdivisions are called “communes” (Gemeinden), not “cantons”, which is Switzerland.
Martin Häusle & Stefan Tenhalter - Parsonage library of the Liechtenstein institute, located in a former rectory, Bendern 1995. Photos (C) Barbara Bühler.
Bendern, Gamprin, Liechtenstein.
I just read that in Liechtenstein (which is a small country located between Austria and Switzerland) women didn’t get suffrage until 1984. A referendum was held (which was limited only to male voters) and d’you know how women won the vote in Liechtenstein? Because the number of votes FOR suffrage was 2.6% higher than the number of votes AGAINST, which pushed it into a majority vote of 51.3% FOR. And I thought France were slow for only getting suffrage after world war 2. I had no idea that there were places in Europe where women couldn’t vote until as late as the 70s and 80s.
Switzerland had it pretty bad too — 1971 at the federal level, but the last canton didn’t get there until 1991. But yeah, 1984 is pretty much unacceptably late to have gotten on the bandwagon.
Interestingly, in the first referendum on the subject in 1968, the only of the three referenda on the subject where women’s and men’s votes were tabulated separately, only 25 more women voted in favor of suffrage than voted against (1,266 for and 1,241 against).
Women are still only 6 of the 25 Members of the Landtag, which is actually still a better rate of representation than in the US Congress (24% vs. 18.1% in the US), but still not great.
Also interestingly, at least according to David Beattie, one of the reasons men voted against women’s suffrage was that they were concerned if it were allowed women would try to illegalize divorce again.
Liechtenstein has a very unusual political history. (See also: the 2012 referendum.)
I feel like at this point the only angle from which we have not seen Vaduz Castle on this blog is straight above.
byertfjord-deactivated20130210 asked: seriously thank you for this blog. ever since my five hours in vaduz, i am in love with this country.
you’re very welcome! I apologize for how inactive it’s been recently; that’s likely to continue, but I may try to start pulling things out of the tag again.
so is it really true that an Italian befriended the army of Liechtenstein in 1868 or not??
because I’ve seen differing info?????
the spirit of the story is true, but not the details. during the Austro-Prussian War in 1866, Liechtenstein was reluctant to involve itself directly (despite the Principality’s close ties to Austria). as a compromise, the Principality sent its army (80 men) down to watch the border with Italy. David Beattie (Liechtenstein: A Modern History) summarizes:
The contingent saw no action and, indeed, no enemy. Eighty men sent out; eighty-one returned in September to general rejoicing, having been joined by an Austrian soldier who was looking for work.
so there you have it.
…There are two reasons, lack of interest and inability to participate the contest. 1FL TV is not an active member of European Broadcasting Union which is required for participating the song contest. The broadcasting company is relatively new, it was formed in 2008 and its one target is to become full member of EBU, according to CEO Peter Kölbe. However, they are not hurrying with it at the moment and even if they’d file an application now, they would be able to participate in 2014 at the earliest.
I already knew they weren’t going to debut, but I still needed to see the official notice. I kept on checking up on this news since Eurovision 2012 ended up until August despite being supposed to be confirmed by the end of June or July. Then college happened and I completely stopped paying attention to this but apparently this official announcement came out the end of September.
What disappointing pre-Christmas news either way, especially the lack of interest of even wanting to join now…
sad times!
Read on the internet that once in 1866 (Liechtenstein’s last military engagement) none of the 80 soldiers sent were injured, and that in fact 81 returned, including a new Italian ‘friend’
XD
(well, misleading and inaccurate, but.)
cloudsinmyhead-deactivated20130 asked: Do you know anything about how the borders of the communes came to be? Tried researching it on the internet before and came up empty.
To be perfectly honest, I have no idea. My best guess would be that it’s a result of lots of land sales in the pre-modern era, as happened with Baarle-Hertog and Baarle-Nassau in Belgium and the Netherlands.
